Nvidia Apologizes For RTX 3090 Supply Issues Before Sales Even Begin

When Nvidia launched its highly anticipated RTX 3080 earlier this month, its website was hammered so hard by traffic and bots alike that the company was forced to issue an apology on the matter. Today, ahead of the sale of the much more expensive RTX 3090, Nvidia didn't wait to do that same.

The RTX 3090, which is already sold out after having gone up for sale earlier, is no impulse purchase. It's more than double the price of the RTX 3080 at $1500, targeted more towards gamers who are also planning on doing heavy video editing work or AI research. Still, Nvidia anticipated a great demand for the card, prompting the company to preemptively apologize for expected issues on its website for customers.

"Since we built GeForce RTX 3090 for a unique group of users, like the TITAN RTX before it, we want to apologize upfront that this will be in limited supply on launch day," a blog post from Nvidia reads. "We know this is frustrating, and we're working with our partners to increase the supply in the weeks to come."

The post also serves to temper expectations of the card's raw gaming performance, with Nvidia only expecting between 10-15% performance increases at 4K. Despite losing the name, this is very much Ampere's own Titan card, making it the absolute best in its range but a product of diminishing returns if used just for gaming. Still, if you're looking for a product that can support gaming at even 8K and have the budget to spare, there really is nothing else like it on the market right now.

That could change in the coming week, with AMD set to reveal its latest RDNA 2-powered GPUs on October 28. The cards, referred to as "Big Navi", run on the same architecture that will power the Xbox Series X, Series S, and PlayStation 5 consoles that launch later this year. AMD is also set to announce its Ryzen 4000 series CPUs even sooner, with an event planned for October 2.