Geforce RTX 3080 sold out within the first half hour

Yesterday, sales of Nvidia’s new graphics card Geforce RTX 3080 opened, and as expected, demand was extremely high. When the dealers opened the gates at 15:00, it was clear that the total stock balance in Sweden could be counted in hundreds rather than thousands, and just under half an hour later, the first delivery was completely sold out.

Even Nvidia’s own Founders Edition, which is only marketed through the company’s own website, was extremely difficult to get its hands on. At the start of sales, the card was not available to order and shortly thereafter the stock status was changed to “Out of stock”. Later in the afternoon, however, the model could be ordered for a very short period and then return to being sold out.

This morning we saw unprecedented demand for the GeForce RTX 3080 at global retailers, including the NVIDIA online store. At 6 a.m. pacific we attempted to push the NVIDIA store live. Despite preparation, the NVIDIA store was inundated with traffic and encountered an error. We were able to resolve the issues and sales began registering normally. To stop bots and scalpers on the NVIDIA store, we’re doing everything humanly possible, including manually reviewing orders, to get these cards in the hands of legitimate customers.

In a statement on Nvidia’s forum, the company says that despite preparations, they experienced technical difficulties at the start of sales due to the high pressure on the website. Once the sale started, there must have been problems with large volumes of robot purchases with the aim of reselling the cards more expensively, and the company now says that it goes through the orders manually to sort them out.

At partner manufacturers, the buying pressure is judged to be significantly higher than usual, and especially with regard to graphics cards in this high price range. A manufacturer that SweClockers spoke to currently has a residual listing of almost 10,000 cards for a single model in the Nordic market, where Sweden makes up a large part of the latter in terms of sales of graphics cards.

A quick look at the various retailers talks about small batches of incoming cards in the near future, which will then be used exclusively to cover already existing orders. For those who place a new order, it looks all the gloomier as many cards have estimated delivery dates that are in October, while the dates for more popular models have slipped all the way into November.

On top of this, there are some question marks surrounding the introductory prices that Nvidia has sanctioned some retailers to keep on selected partner models. Until 16 October, the current models are subsidized by up to SEK 1,000, and it is currently unclear whether these discounts will also apply to horizontal orders whose cards are delivered after the campaign ends.

Whether the estimated delivery dates are correct remains to be seen, but it is clear that the buying pressure on the Geforce RTX 3080 is extremely high at the same time as the manufacturers have a part to catch up on the delivery front – something that is not entirely uncommon with new hardware releases.

Did you get a Geforce RTX 3080 yesterday, or were you sniffed at the confectionery? Share in the comment thread!