If you’re desperate to buy an RTX 3000-series graphics card, there’s bad news: Nvidia expects the products will remain scarce throughout 2020, even as it continues to churn them out.
“I believe that demand will outstrip all of our supplies through all of the year,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during a call with journalists.
The RTX 3080 and 3090 graphics cards have been nearly impossible to buy from retailers due to consumers and bots buying up the stock almost instantly. To obtain the cards, you’ll have to go to eBay and purchase them from third-party scalpers, who’ve been charging as much as $1,000 or more over the normal retail prices.
Unfortunately, Nvidia’s CEO doesn’t expect the situation to improve anytime soon. During the call, Huang indicated that his company has already maxed out the manufacturing capacity for the RTX-3000 series cards.
“It’s a demand issue, not a supply issue. The demand issue, it's much greater than we ever expected,” he said. “We built a lot. They are just getting sold out in seconds."
Huang went on to compare the RTX 3080/3090 release to other fabled launches in computing history. “Our partner retailers will tell you they haven’t seen a phenomenon like this in a decade in computing. It harkens back to Windows 95 and Pentium processors. That people were out of their minds...to buy this stuff,” he said.
Not helping the matter is the approaching holiday shopping season, which he described as a “double-whammy” to the demand issues. “This is a phenomenon we have not seen in a long time, and we were just not prepared for it,” he added. “Even if we knew all the demand, I don’t think it would’ve been possible to have ramped up that fast.”
Huang is well aware consumers are upset. “I get a lot of letters. I respond to as many as I can. I let them know we are trying very hard,” he said.
Nevertheless, Huang indicated there's little else the company can do. "I don’t think there is a real problem to solve. It is a phenomenon to observe," he said, pointing to the massive demand.
Still, to try and make supplies easier to obtain, the company has postponed the launch of the $499 RTX 3070 card from Oct. 15 to Oct. 29 in the hopes enough stock will be available on day one for the most eager consumers to buy.