Less than a week after launch, the RTX 3070 Ti seems to have vanished

When Nvidia announced the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti, we knew both cards would sell out immediately. Less than a week after launch, though, the RTX 3070 Ti seems like it never launched. Nvidia’s RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition went out of stock immediately in the U.S. and U.K., and despite a thriving scalping market, the card hasn’t shown up much on eBay. As pointed out by The Verge, Nvidia partnered with Best Buy in the U.S. to distribute the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti. Unlike previous Ampere launches, Best Buy sold a limited number of RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards in-store. The RTX 3070 Ti, however, was only available online and met hopeful buyers with a gray “sold out” button immediately after launch. That’s not a strange occurrence given the ongoing GPU shortage, but things get interesting when looking at the secondhand market. Filtering by sold items on eBay, we found only four listings for the RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition, two of which came from the same seller. There weren’t any Founders Edition cards listed for sale at the time of publication. Similarly, we couldn’t find Founders Edition cards on Facebook Marketplace or Mercari. The RTX 3070 Ti isn’t a full-on paper launch, but it looks close. We weren’t able to track down any Founders Edition cards, but we found a few listings for board partner cards. EVGA’s FTW3 variant seems like the most readily available option, though it’s hard to tell given how few listings there are. Interestingly, the FTW3 card is the only one available through EVGA’s queue system, which is one of the few ways to buy a new graphics card in 2021. There are two cheaper variants that aren’t part of the program. The RTX 3070 Ti hasn’t shown up much on Newegg Shuffle, either, despite the RTX 3080 Ti showing up in multiple Shuffles. Digital Trends has reached out to Nvidia and Best Buy for comment, and we’ll update this story when we hear back. The RTX 3070 Ti is an updated version of Nvidia’s RTX 3070. Sporting more CUDA cores and faster memory speed, we found in our RTX 3070 Ti review that it can deliver up to a 10% performance increase over the RTX 3070. The card launched for $599, though the few secondhand units we could find sold for above $1,400. Although Nvidia has already established the flagship RTX 5090 as one of the best graphics cards you can buy, most PC gamers are eagerly waiting for Team Green’s more budget-conscious offerings. According to a new rumor, Nvidia’s RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti will ditch the 16-pin power connector that Nvidia has used for the past few generations in favor of a standard 8-pin power connector. The rumor comes from Brother Pan Talks Computers, a Chinese media outlet that VideoCardz reports has ties to Zotac. Nvidia has yet to announce the RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti, but they’ll be some of the most important entries in Nvidia’s latest RTX 50-series lineup. Traditionally, Nvidia’s 60-class graphics cards are among the most popular GPUs on the market, and last-gen’s RTX 4060 still tops the charts in the Steam hardware survey. Nvidia is launching its RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards today — read our RTX 5090 review and RTX 5080 review — and the anticipation is clear. In Japan, multiple stores held a lottery to give attendees an equal chance at scoring one of Nvidia’s best graphics cards, but the event ended in chaos, with screaming and the destruction of a sign at a kindergarten, according to VideoCardz. The report of chaos came via X, where a user shared that “angry shouts were heard” as customers began lining up, and that “some people even climbed over the fence of the kindergarten next door.” The RTX 5080 arrived with a bit of a thud. As you can read in my RTX 5080 review, the card probably won’t be making among the best graphics cards any time soon. It falls short of Nvidia’s last-gen flagship, and in the vast majority of games, it doesn’t even crack a 20% lead over the RTX 4080 Super. It’s not the only GPU in town, though. Although AMD is sitting out the flagship battle this generation, there are still some excellent last-gen options to keep in mind. Here are three alternatives to the RTX 5080 and why you should consider picking them up over Nvidia’s latest.
Nvidia RTX 4090 (used)