More casualties in the wake of the chip shortage are cropping up, with some of Nvidia’s higher memory card versions being the latest to hit the chopping block.
According to Igor’s Lab, sources have revealed that the releases of the Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti 16GB and RTX 3080 12GB are postponed. The cards were rumoured to be on the horizon for a while now, with the official announcement said to be coming up in just a few days on December 17. Instead, sources are saying now only the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti will be shown off at CES, and sources are saying they’ll be up for purchase just before Chinese New Year. I have no idea how much those bad boys will be going for but I suspect the price would probably make me cry.
Given the current state of things, it’s not too surprising the memory upgrades to those GPUs are being dropped for now. Any half decent graphics card will fly off the market, and the little boost in VRAM probably isn’t going to change that. We finally saw the boosted 12 GB variant of the RTX 2060 hit stores and the price leaves a lot to be desired.
There’s no chance the upgraded RTX 3070 or RTX 3080 would be releasing with a more budget mindset, and why bother when Nvidia can flog the standard versions already just by sneezing about them with such high demand. If you’re really desperate to see an RTX 3070 with 16 GB of VRAM, well this modder has you covered anyway.
Best CPU for gaming: the top chips from Intel and AMD
Best graphics card: your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: get into the game ahead of the rest
Another point of speculation is Nvidia could be waiting to see AMD’s hand. Everyone in the silicon scene is under the crunch and keeping wary eyes on their competitors. Partner relations are also strained, so it could just be a case of green waiting to get a sneaky look at blue.
In the coming weeks as CES and other brand announcements flood in after the holidays, it’s likely we’ll know more about Nvidia and AMD’s plans for any upcoming cards. AMD's is set for January 4, and may just surprise us with some cool hardware. Plus, we've heard about beefy cards coming to Asus laptops to be announced. Though who knows how much any of these things will wind up costing us, or whether or not we'll be able to buy them in the first place.
