NVIDIA RTX 3080, 3090 Shortage Could Persist Until Next Year

What could be NVIDIA's biggest GPU generation could turn out to be a massive sales headache. It might very well still be its greatest, at least as far as CEO Jensen Huang is concerned, but the supply problem of its latest GeForce RTX 30-series cards could leave some PC buyers and gamers rather disappointed. Even worse, however, is the chief exec's confirmation that this problem could persist until the end of the year, which could put its holiday sales figures in danger.

Sony and NVIDIA have been competing in headlines the past weeks when it came to preorder and supply concerns. Retailers opened PS5 preorders too early, leaving many legit buyers without a console as they lost available slots to bots and scalpers. NVIDIA's RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, on the other hand, have been in short supply, including NVIDIA's own Founders Edition, leading to speculation about supply problems over at the company.

Huang has a sort of bad news, good news thing going in a press Q&A. The bad news is that it expects this situation to last throughout the year. The good news is that he doesn't think it's actually a problem.

There is no supply shortage but is instead an abundance of demand, says Huang. They expected a lot of demand but the actual market demand was even higher. He is pretty much trying to put a positive spin on the same fact, that the demand outstrips the company's ability to supply that, even with great yields.

The situation with the RTX 3070 isn't any better now that its own launch has been postponed. The entry-level GPU is positioned to more powerful than the previous-gen GeForce RTX 2080 Ti at half the price. Tom's Hardware, however, predicts it will experience the same supply "non-issue" this year.