It looks like Nvidia’s flagship-toppling, ultra-premium GeForce RTX 3090 is already sold out on launch day, mirroring a situation that happened roughly a week ago when the company’s GeForce RTX 3080 flagship first became available.
The RTX 3090 card — which is based on Nvidia’s newest Ampere graphics architecture — costs $1,499 and essentially replaces the Turing-based Titan RTX. It’s the first time that Nvidia is positioning its ultra-premium card in mainstream gaming systems. Nvidia boasts that the RTX 3090 is capable of 8K gaming at 60 fps.
Would-be buyers reported that stock of the premium GPU was sold out within minutes at retailers. By 6:05 a.m. PT, the card was out of stock on Nvidia’s site, with some users saying the RTX 3090 was already out of stock before the release started.
In a blog post Wednesday, Nvidia apologized in advance for the launch.
“Since we built GeForce RTX 3090 for a unique group of users, like the TITAN RTX before it, we want to apologize up front that this will be in limited supply on launch day,” the company wrote. “We know this is frustrating, and we’re working with our partners to increase the supply in the weeks to come.”
If you’re eager to experience the power of the RTX 3090 for yourself in your own rig, the situation may not be too dire. When the RTX 3080 sold out, Nvidia apologized for the popularity of its second-generation ray-tracing card, noting that it was “inundated with over 10 times the traffic of our previous generation launch.” The company promised to increase the supply of the cards on a weekly basis, and the boost in production could likely extend to the RTX 3090 as well, so be sure to check your favorite retailers for replenished inventory.
When the RTX 3080 became available for purchase, unscrupulous scalpers using bots had overwhelmed Nvidia’s ordering system, causing the site to grind to a halt and wiping out inventory. “While individuals using bots may have shown images of email inboxes filled with confirmed orders, NVIDIA has canceled hundreds of orders manually before they were able to ship,” the company informed gamers who were infuriated that they weren’t able to grab a card on launch day. Scalpers capitalizing on the popularity of the RTX 3080 began selling the card on sites like eBay and Amazonfpr prices as high as $70,000 (although, those high bids may be trolls with no intent to fulfill their purchase).
The company promised to change the ordering system on its online store to prevent a repeat of the incident. Given the pent-up demand for the RTX 3080 and the fact that you can snag a much more powerful RTX 3090 directly from Nvidia without having to pay absurd scalper prices, the RTX 3090 appears to be a popular, albeit more expensive, alternative to Nvidia’s flagship. While the card had sold out, in the interim, be sure to check out our review of the RTX 3080.
