Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is now reportedly delayed 'indefinitely'

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Nvidia postpones the new RTX 3080 Ti

GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
(Image credit: Nvidia)

If you’ve been patiently waiting for Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 Ti to seemingly inevitably arrive, your wait just got extended indefinitely. 

According to the latest video from GamersNexus’ Editor Steve Burke, the RTX 3080 Ti now faces an uncertain delay. Citing partners and contacts, Burke explains that the delay will last until Nvidia can get supply of its existing RTX 30 units under control. 

You can hear the whole segment around the 8:30 mark, but Burke posits that the delay might well be down to consumer anger about the scarcity of existing cards. 

“Postponement is likely due to the community response to the cards in general, and you can just look at the chat window from the live event to see why Nvidia might think it was in poor taste to announce yet another GPU,” Burke says against a backdrop of cascading chat extracts featuring phrases like “out of stock”, “no stock” and “paper launch.”

Burke continued: “From what the board partners were telling us, Nvidia decided to put this on hold, until it can get more supply in place for the existing SKUs that it already sells. Nvidia was also working on other refreshes for January, but it sounds like all those have basically been postponed at this point."

He goes on to state that lower-end cards – like the rumoured RTX 3050 and 3050 Ti – could end up coming out sooner “because they don’t need as aggressive yields on them.”

The million dollar question, then, is when will Nvidia be in a comfortable enough supply position for the postponement to end? The company has been quite cagey on that point, stating last month that it will probably “take a couple months for it to catch up to demand”. It’s understandably difficult to put a figure on this: much of the world is back in coronavirus lockdown while dealing with another wave of the virus, and this not only impacts supply chains but also demand — people tend to buy more home entertainment equipment when housebound.

Assuming it does see the light of day eventually, the RTX 3080 Ti should be worth the wait. Due to sit between the 3080 and top-of-the-line 3090, the rumor is that the card will feature a massive 20GB of GDDR6X memory — up 8GB from the 12GB featured on the vanilla RTX 3080. Pricing hasn’t been revealed, but it will sit somewhere between the $700 RTX 3080 and $1,500 RTX 3090 if and when it eventually emerges.

Alan Martin
Alan Martin

Freelance contributor Alan has been writing about tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the web and in the occasional magazine too. When not weighing up the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you'll probably find him tackling his ever-growing games backlog. He also handles all the Wordle coverage on Tom's Guide and has been playing the addictive NYT game for the last several years in an effort to keep his streak forever intact.