Getting any good hardware has been an absolute nightmare this year. But let’s just take a small moment to commiserate for those who tried to buy an RTX 3080, with some stores telling users that their cards won’t arrive in the country until February.
One user shared their tale of woe in the Kotaku Australia Discord channel, showcasing their struggles trying to get an RTX 3080. They were trying to order the card from PC Case Gear, one of the biggest online PC retailers in country, only to be hit with this miserable news:
The RTX 3080 has been super popular since its release, partially because it offers strong enough 4K ray traced performance while not costing over $2000 like the RTX 3090. And consequently, stores in Australia have constantly been struggling to fulfil orders of Nvidia’s flagship gaming card.
Here’s a look at the full PC Case Gear update for the RTX 3080 supply. While all orders were filled for some models, many others have stalled shipments, and other users who placed their orders in October or November won’t get their cards until February at least.
Now, it’s not just PC Case Gear that’s having trouble either. Another major retailer, PLE Computers — who offered the widest range of RTX 3080 cards that were closest to the original Nvidia MSRP — has it much worse. According to their status tracker, many users preordered RTX cards in September and they still don’t have an ETA on when it’ll arrive:
Imagine dropping $1200+ on a card in mid-September and still not having a shipping date.
MWAVE, another one of the big retailers based out of Sydney, is similarly hard up for stock. Some EVGA models are arriving just before Christmas, but other small shipments have already been allocated, and others either don’t have an ETA or they’re not scheduled to arrive until January at best.
For those who preordered when the second wave of GPUs dropped in October — and for some still who have been waiting since September — it’s been a rough few months. At least everyone who ordered a PS5 or Xbox Series X by September or October actually got their consoles before Christmas.
And, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like supply is going to get any easier by the start of the new year. Nvidia’s chief financial officer told the Credit Suisse annual tech conference that supply shortages will be the norm throughout all of this quarter, meaning that it could be March or April before things start to really settle down.
In the interim, what the Kotaku Australia reader — and others I know who have been in a similar situation — did was downgrade: they cancelled their order to buy a RTX 3070 instead. It’s definitely not as good as the RTX 3080, but when faced with that or no GPU at all, the RTX 3070 is the best choice. (And it’s not like things are any better with the RX 6800 series cards either.)
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