NVIDIA Allegedly Restarts GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Production Amid GPU Shortages
One of the most frustrating developments over the past several months has been the shortage of PC hardware, including graphics cards, which are obviously essential to gaming (you can only go so far on integrated graphics). This has led to rumors that NVIDIA is bringing back some previous generation GPUs, which might include the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.
That was once a flagship graphics card based on NVIDIA's Pascal GPU architecture, before Turing (GeForce RTX 20 / GTX 16 series) came along, and now Ampere (GeForce RTX 30 series). Incidentally, it is what I am currently running in my main PC—a Founders Edition variant with the stock cooler swapped out for an Arctic Accelero Xtreme IV.
It is still a capable card, but is NVIDIA really bringing it back? We don't know, but the interesting thing is that a user on the Quasar Zone forum submitted a busted EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SC2 graphics card to the company for warranty repair or replacement, and seems to have received a brand new model in return. The card has a production date of 2021, as indicated by its serial number.
Another user in the thread claims they also received a recently produced GeForce GTX 1080 Ti from EVGA, from its FTW lineup. It is not unusual for companies to have stock on hand for this purpose, or to continue making new cards for a period of time. But the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti came out four years ago (March 2017).
There are multiple different possibilities here. One is that EVGA still has Pascal GPUs on hand, and is making cards for warranty claims. The other is that NVIDIA has quietly ordered and sent out older generation GPUs to its add-in board (AIB) partners, while we all wait for newer generation GPUs to be more plentiful.
This latest situation comes on the heels of rumors cropping up out of China that NVIDIA has been pumping the market with a supply of GeForce GTX 1650 graphics cards, based on Turing. The GeForce GTX 1650 is not terribly exciting, but hey, anything is better than nothing, right?
We'll be keeping an eye on this situation to see if anything further develops.
