Looks like the long-awaited launch of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has once again been delayed until at least mid-May.
The report comes from ITHome, which claims Nvidia unveiled the delay in an internal company memo. According to the internal memo, a release should be expected "around mid-May."
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The upcoming RTX 3080 Ti was originally rumored as an upgraded 20GB version of the RTX 3080. The Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) has since shifted to include revised specs, with the card now sporting 12GB of memory. The reduction was likely due to the ongoing memory and chip shortage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the launch is rumored to take place in two months time, it's possible that the RTX 3080 Ti will release alongside the highly-anticipated RTX 3070 Ti.
Speaking of memory, recent rumors point to the fact that the RTX 3080 Ti will also equip less Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) cores, compared to what's been said in the earlier leaks. The manufacturers are reportedly planning for the upcoming GPU to include 10,240 cores, that being 256 cores less than what's been initially anticipated.
Some of the leaks also suggest that Nvidia intends to limit the crypto-mining possibilities of the RTX 3080 Ti to discourage bulk-buying from miners. This would alleviate stock for regular consumers who are already having trouble finding where to buy RTX 3080.
The company used a similar approach before with the launch of the RTX 3060, with the hash rate limiter that allowed the card's firmware to detect any kind of mathematical hashing operations that are generally used to mine cryptocurrency. Unfortunately, Nvidia accidentally unlocked the card for Ethereum mining shortly after via a software update.
According to HKEPC, the RTX 3080 Ti is expected to be priced around $999, thus hitting the perfect price midpoint between the RTX 3080 ($699) and RTX 3090 ($1499). The graphics card was initially rumored to arrive back in December 2020, which was then pushed further into January and February. Subsequent reports then stated that the release had been delayed "indefinitely". A report earlier this month by ChannelGate claimed that the RTX 3080 Ti was expected to hit the shelves mid-April.
Although the launch is now rumored to take place in just a bit under two months, finding one will likely remain challenging given high demand and manufacturing hurdles caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
