Published , by Chris Jarrard
Published , by Chris Jarrard
After months of rumors and speculation, NVIDIA has finally made the RTX 3080 Ti official. The new GPU was unveiled as a part of the company’s keynote address at this year’s Computex event in Taipei, Taiwan. The RTX 3070 Ti also made an appearance at the show and is expected to slot into NVIDIA’s gaming GPU lineup between the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080.
Gamers won’t have long to wait for the official release date for these GPUs, though securing one through retail channels will likely prove difficult if the last six months of PC hardware hysteria has taught us anything. Still, landing one of these cards will be possible for those who are eager and informed. We have prepared this guide to show the release dates and pricing of the new GPUs so you can get a leg up on upgrading or building your gaming PCs.
The RTX 3080 Ti will take the RTX 3080’s place as NVIDIA’s new gaming flagship GPU and will be the first of the two products announced during the Computex Keynote to launch. The RTX 3080 Ti will be available on June 3, 2021.
The RTX 3070 Ti will have its official release on June 10, 2021, just a week after its bigger brother. Both cards will be available from NVIDIA as Founders Edition models. Custom-designed variants from partner OEMs will also be available, though exact details on availability and pricing will vary depending on the model and manufacturer.
In North America, NVIDIA ceased selling cards to consumers directly several months ago and all Founders Edition GPUs are sold through retailer Best Buy. While it is possible that Best Buy will have some RTX 3080 Ti cards available on June 3, the availability of previous GPUs has been extremely limited and the company tends to offer multiple card variants in drops that occur weekly or semi-weekly. The exact day and time of these drops have varied.
As these new GPUs are designed to slot in between existing products performance-wise, they are also priced accordingly. The RTX 3080 Ti will ship with 12GB GDDR6X memory, has a boost clock of up to 1665Mhz, and an estimated TDP of 350 watts. The Founders Edition model will retail for $1199 USD.
The RTX 3070 Ti ships with 8GB of GDDR6X memory, has a boost clock of up to 1770 MHz, and has an estimated TDP of 290 watts. The Founders Edition model will retail for $599. This slots the RTX 3070 Ti directly between the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 in price and performance.
As we have seen previously, the availability of these new GPUs will be extremely limited on launch day and into the foreseeable future. While NVIDIA and its primary rival AMD are making new GPUs as fast as possible, their output is still not enough to meet consumer demand. NVIDIA has publicly commented that the ongoing chip shortage, a primary cause of the supply constraint, may run into 2023. Hopefully, things get sorted out before that, but we do wish good luck to those PC gamers who will try and score a 3080 Ti on launch day.