The good news is that more pictures of Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti partner cards are showing up, further pointing towards a release in the very near future.
The bad news is that one of these allegedly comes from a retailer in the United Arab Emirates, which has put an MSI Suprim X version of the RTX 3080 Ti on sale for 12,500 AED: with tax, that’s about $3,500. Not too encouraging, in other words, for the prospects of an ordinary launch with plentiful stock.
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While tech YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead tweeted an image of a Gigabyte-made RTX 3080 Ti, Reddit user u/FaisalKhatib posted a shot of the MSI cards apparently stacked in the U.A.E. store.
Specs-wise, these only really confirm a detail we were already very sure of — the RTX 3080 Ti using 12GB of video memory instead of the originally rumored 20GB — though the MSI Suprim model looks practically identical to the GeForce RTX 3080 Suprim X 10G, if you were curious about the GPU’s sizing.
Just to confirm from my end - the RTX 3080 Ti 12GB is certainly real, and coming soon™️.I obviously blacked out the background to protect someone, but that's a real 3080 Ti someone I know has their hands on... pic.twitter.com/sn18aNbboaMay 4, 2021
The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti release date has supposedly been pushed back from May to June, though the fact that these partner cards have already been sent out backs up rumors that a launch is close. It’s just a shame that this development is accompanied by a clear attempt at price-gouging. We don’t know how exactly how much the RTX 3080 Ti’s MSRP will be, but you can bet it won’t be anywhere near $3,500.
Sadly this follows a pattern of behaviour from less scrupulous retailers surrounding Nvidia’s latest graphics cards. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 appeared for hundreds of dollars above its recommended price just prior to its release earlier this year, driven by a worldwide GPU shortage and booming interest in cryptocurrency mining that’s only driving demand even higher.
Although the RTX 3080 Ti will release with a hash rate limiter designed to limit its appear to miners, we wouldn’t be surprised if the GPU has such little stock available that some retailers — and especially resellers — try their luck with similarly inflated prices. Still, this isn’t the only reason to avoid engaging with sellers that break the street date for graphics hardware, as the RTX 3080 Ti’s driver software hasn’t been released yet either.
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