NVIDIA’s supply problems with Ampere and the GeForce RTX 3080 have led to a difficult supply situation: GeForce RTX 3080 stock is currently not available through official channels, with scalpers having bought out NVIDIA and AIB supplies in most regions.
This has resulted in eBay pricing for the card going up to several thousand dollars, as scalpers try to make a profit off impatient gamers. Overnight, however, it appears that Ampere fans decided to strike back. Competing listings for the GeForce RTX 3080 “Paper Edition” (usually a drawing of the RTX 3080) are drowning out scalper listings. Moreover, automated bots have been pushing bids on scalpers RTX 3080s into the five-figure range, making it impractical for them to sell off these units.
The ethicality of scalping GeForce RTX 3080 units is debatable. However, the supply issue is also in large part because of the limited availability of the chip from NVIDIA. Here’s to hoping NVIDIA provides enough RTX 3080 GPUs to settle the market down in the weeks and months to come.
