Editor's Note: As of September 2022 the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, 4090 have been unveiled — here's what they'll cost.
Nvidia’s GPU problems appear to have swung from one extreme to the other. And the word is that it’s going to impact the upcoming RTX 4000 series’ ETA.
Over the pandemic, a perfect storm of supply chain shortages and a cryptocurrency goldrush meant that the only way to get a GPU was to be extremely lucky or pay well over the odds.
Now, with things easing up and the crypto market crashing, you have your pick of GPUs at MSRP.
Unfortunately this sudden freedom has coincided with energy price rises and a global cost-of-living crisis that means new graphics cards are the last thing on hard-up peoples’ minds.
This, according to YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead (MLID), means that Nvidia intends to delay the RTX 4000’s debut until November or even December to give retailers a chance to sell off all of the suddenly available Ampere stock they have accumulated.
One of MLID’s sources was pretty candid: “We’ve been forced to swallow tens of thousands of high-end Ampere cards we don’t want, nor are we sure we can sell them above what we paid.”
“We have a warehouse full of low-end Turing cards we paid $200 - $300 for depending on SKU, and we’re getting desperate to move them,” said another.
“Massive overstocking, price is dropping like a rock,” reads an extract from a third source. “It is a mess and prices are dropping every day.”
Of course the sudden arrival of a new generation of Nvidia cards would make the ageing RTX 3000s even harder to shift. So the theory goes that the RTX 4000 series will be held back until the end of the year, when the Lovelace GPUs should have been good to go in October.
Notably this also seems to chime with an earlier story from DigiTimes, which stated that companies including Nvidia were trying to cut back on chip orders it had already requested from TSMC.
“The large number of second-hand cards released to the market, and the less-than-expected demand for gaming PCs, forced Nvidia to adjust its plans and indicated to TSMC that it would delay and reduce the first wave of orders,” the piece claimed (via Google Translate).
Advantage for AMD? Or the consumer?
With Nvidia faced with inertia, this could present a golden opportunity to AMD and its upcoming RDNA 3 GPUs. One tipster reckons that the next generation of AMD graphics cards will arrive possibly as early as October, and no later than mid November.
🤫3rd gen DNAJune 14, 2022
If that’s the case, the perennial underdog in the GPU race could get a big advantage, allowing inpatient gamers to upgrade faster with AMD than with Nvidia. But it all depends on the reliability of both sets of rumors, really.
Overall, the real winner is likely to be the consumer at long last. With stock now easy to come by, we’re facing the very real possibility of GPUs being sold below MSRP — something as unthinkable six months ago.
Our advice? Keep a close eye on the upcoming Prime Day sales for an idea of just how low prices could go — and don’t be afraid to take advantage.
You also might want to wait before upgrading your graphic cards as Nvidia and AMD were tipped to be working on "monster" graphic cards.
You can also read our guide to finding out what graphic card you currently have on your PC.
Read next: Powerful Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics cards crash in price — get upgrading now.
