Tag Archives: Graphics hardware

Technology

AMD’s RDNA 3 GPUs are Way Cheaper Than the RTX 4090

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Screenshot: AMD

Back in August, Dr. Lisa Su introduced the world to AMD’s newest iteration of CPU technology, the Ryzen 7000 Series–but she didn’t stop there. We got an announcement for an announcement: RDNA 3, AMD’s next generation of GPU technology. Well, today is November 3rd, and we now know more about AMD’s answer to the RTX 40 Series.

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Dr. Su began the presentation by reflecting on the Ryzen 7000 Series release and stating AMD’s ambitious goals, much like she did during the previous presentation. For RDNA3, she reiterated the company’s commitment to energy efficiency and performance.

“At the forefront of what we’re doing, it’s all about power and energy efficiency. We want to make sure that we continue to innovate around performance-per-watt leadership to enable all of the gamer upgrades with fantastic performance, but at a reasonable power.” – Dr. Lisa Su

Starting with the new chiplet design, RDNA 3 takes a modular approach with the intention of optimizing the efficiency of the overall GPU design. Much like the Ryzen CPU family, RDNA3 will utilize a mixed chiplet architecture. With a 5nm graphics die (GCD) compute unit containing all of the shaders, display engines, and updated media engine, the GCD is paired with a 6nm Memory Cache Die (MCD) that consists of the GDDR6 controller as well as 96 MB of AMD’s Infinity Cache–2nd Generation Infinity Cache, that is!

With this new design, the RNDA 3 chiplet will have an interconnect speed of up to 5.3 TB/s (a 2.7x increase over RDNA 2), enabling up to 61 TFLOPS of compute. All of this will be supported by up to 24 GB of GDDR6 with a memory bus up to 384-bit (not the GDDR6X we saw in the RTX 4090) and, according to Dr. Su, will enable RDNA 3 GPUs to achieve up to 54% greater performance-per-watt over the previous generation.

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So, what is this magical mystery GPU? Well, it’s actually two GPUs: the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT.

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX comes with 24 GB of GDDR6 and Radeon RX 7900 XT comes with 20 GB of GDDR6. Engineered as both 4K and 8K gaming GPUs, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT have a number of updates over the previous generation that will help push it into the future of gaming.

Starting with dedicated AI acceleration, RDNA 3 is said to improve AI-based functions of the GPU by 2.7x and ray tracing instructions by 1.8x over RDNA 2. In rendering applications–including ray tracing, this new architecture is said to obtain up to 50% more performance per compute unit and double the instructions per clock. This is a much-needed leap for Radeon graphics to compete within this particular space of graphics processing!

Screenshot: AMD

But, there’s more:

AMD’s new Radiance Display is the engine pushing all of that data into the display. The engine will support 12 bit-per-channel color with up to 68 billion colors as well as higher refresh rates. Thanks in no small part to DisplayPort 2.1 and HDMI 2.1 adoption, the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT will support refresh rates of up to 900 Hz at 1440p, 480 Hz at 4K, and 165 Hz at 5K.

Alongside of the Radiance Display engine, AMD also unveiled a new dual media engine for simultaneous encode and decode for both AVC and HEVC formats. This engine will also support AV1 encoding and decoding, with a max resolution of 8K60. Later on in the presentation, AMD teased future support for AV1 encoding support within OBS as well as other popular video streaming and editing software. This teaser also included a future feature called SmartAccess Video, which will leverage Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs together to supposedly provide up to a 30% uplift in 4K multi stream encoding.

When it comes to gaming performance, the RX 7900 XTX is purported to operate up to 1.7x better than AMD’s former flagship GPU, the Radeon RX 6950 XT, in rasterization and up to 1.6x better in ray tracing games. Using FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), the charts AMD showed for the 7900 XTX showed several titles running at frame rates far exceeding 200 FPS at 4K. One standout was Valorant, which showed the RX 7900 XTX running at 704 FPS! Lots of bold claims here, but we’ll have to see for ourselves once the cards are in the hands of 3rd-party reviewers!

When it comes to the actual specifications, the RX 7900 XTX will have 96 compute units with a game clock of 2.3 GHz. All of this is said to run at a total board power draw of 355 W. For context, that is 95 W less than NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 Founder’s Edition while hovering close to the RX 6950 XT’s typical board power. The RX 7900 XT will have 84 compute units with a game clock of 2 GHz and a total board power of 300 W.

Oh yeah, and neither one of them will require a special cable to power them.

This is just the hardware, though. AMD took some time to talk about FSR adoption, the uplift in performance seen within FSR2, and how well RDNA 3 operates with it enabled. One example the company showed off was Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla running at 96 frames per second at 8K. It was a short clip, but pretty wild to see all the same. But AMD wanted us to know that FSR isn’t stopping at FSR2. There’s a new iteration, FSR3. At the time of the announcement, AMD said that Radeon users can expect up to 2x more frames per second over FSR2 and that the technology would be available in 2023.

Continuing the conversation about software, AMD’s Frank Azor shared updates to Radeon Adrenaline software, including a new feature coming in the first half of 2023 called AMD HYPR-RX. This feature will be a one-button optimizer to give AMD systems the best possible performance without having to make all of the adjustments yourself.

Screenshot: AMD

Team Red also shared its commitment to providing the best CPU and GPU unified experience by working with system integrators to bring the AMD Advantage line to the desktop platform. This means pairing AMD GPUs and CPUs together in system configurations carefully curated by AMD for the supposed best possible AMD experience.

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT will be available on December 13th, 2022. And the price? $999 and $899 USD, respectively. This is an amazing distinction from NVIDIA’s $1599 flagship.

We look forward to seeing just how these GPUs perform out in the wild! Let us know in the comments what you are most excited for in AMD’s announcement today and if you plan on making an upgrade before the year is through.

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Technology

Nvidia Investigates Melting PC Graphics Card Power Cables

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Image: Smith Collection / Gado / Contributor / Kotaku (Getty Images)

Perhaps the over-sized, power-hungry, and highly-priced 4000-series graphics cards from Nvidia are a bit too hot of a product right now. After one user posted photos of their charred 12-volt, high power (12VHPWR) connector on Reddit, Nvidia responded with an investigation into at least two cases.

Yesterday, Reddit user reggie_gakil shared photos of a freshly seared cable and power connector on their RTX 4090 graphics card, titled “RTX 4090 Adapter burned” with a caption that reads “IDK [how] it happened but it smelled badly and I saw smoke.” Though the card reportedly still works, reggie_gakil was not alone. Another Reddit user began their reply with, “You aren’t the only one. This happened to me today as well.” This follows reports that PCI-SIG, the consortium that sets standards for PCI, PCI-X, and PCI-Express connections (the ones used in said graphics cards), was aware of potential “safety issues under certain conditions.” According to The Verge, Nvidia is now investigating these cases.

In a statement to Kotaku, Nvidia said it is “in contact with the first owner and will be reaching out to the other for additional information.”

With the increased power draw of these new graphics cards and new ATX power standards that have raised eyebrows, this might not be so much of a surprise. Indeed, YouTube channels like JayzTwoCents are doing a bit of an “I told you so” victory lap.

The 12VHPWR cable is DANGEROUS! But NVIDIA doesn’t agree…

As mentioned in JayzTwoCents’ video, Brandon Bell, senior technical marketing manager for Geforce at Nvidia dismissed early fears over unsafe power cables as “issues that don’t exist” and that “it all just works, man.” While the results of Nvidia’s investigation have yet to determine if the initial Reddit post that sparked alarm is an outlier, there’s certainly cause for concern.

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Nvidia’s competitor, AMD, also responded to reggie_gakill’s melted-cable story. AMD Radeon’s senior vice president replied to a Tweet staying that “the Radeon RX 6000 series and upcoming RDNA 3 GPUs will not use [the 12VHPWR] connector.”



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Technology

EVGA, Big Graphics Card Maker, Has Messy Breakup With Nvidia

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Times have been tough.
Image: Kotaku / San Francisco Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers (Getty Images)

And now for something that no one saw coming: EVGA, one of the most prominent third-party PC graphics card manufacturers, and a favorite brand among PC gamers for quality parts and reliable warranties backed by solid customer service, is terminating its longtime relationship with Nvidia. What’s more, the company reportedly said that it won’t be pursuing partnerships with competing silicon giants like AMD or Intel, either. It seems like EVGA is just done with GPUs.

Kotaku has reached out to EVGA for comment.

News of EVGA’s seemingly sudden decision to stop manufacturing GPUs broke via the popular YouTubers GamersNexus and Jayztwocents. Personalities from both channels say that they were invited to a private meeting with EVGA staff, including CEO Andrew Han. In the meeting, EVGA reportedly laid out its desire and intention to break away from Nvidia, citing multiple frustrations with the partnership.

These sore spots mostly concern what Han describes as Nvidia’s reluctance to share essential information about its products with partners until that same information is made available to the public, often onstage at a press conference; that it believes Nvidia is undercutting partners like EVGA by selling its own “Founders’ Edition” cards at a lower price; and a sense among partners that Nvidia just doesn’t value their patronage.

GamersNexus has a very thorough breakdown of the meeting and this news in its video.

GamersNexus

EVGA’s most senior management made its decision to break away from Nvidia back in April, but kept the decision strictly confidential. Though EVGA, a company that is so often known and valued for great GPUs and reliable customer service, is leaving the GPU market, the company reportedly intends to stay in business. However, it won’t be expanding into new product categories, GamersNexus reports. And while the company does make and sell other PC components such as motherboards, cases, and power supplies, the loss of the GPU side of its business is likely to pose challenges for its 280 worldwide staffers.

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GamersNexus’ Steve Burke reports that EVGA is looking to reallocate staff to different projects to keep everyone employed. The company laid off 20 percent of its Taiwan employees earlier this year, and now several people whose jobs solely revolved around GPU manufacturing and development don’t have an obvious job to perform.

While EVGA will continue to sell RTX 30-series cards, it expects to run out of stock by the end of the year, and will be hanging on to an additional stock to service warranties and repairs. EVGA’s pledging to honor warranties for existing customers of those cards.

Today is a bittersweet day for PC gamers, as EVGA’s presence in the GPU arena will be sorely missed. On the flip side, the crypto-mining craze that has plagued the industry by buying up countless cards for mining rigs seems to be coming to an end. The prominent crypto Ethereum has finally, finally moved away from the GPU-hungry “proof of work” algorithms that contributed to the virtual decimation of available GPU stock over the last two years. As you’ve probably noticed, GPUs are once again available to buy and pricing has finally started to fall back to Earth. With the Ethereum switch, hopefully that trend will only accelerate.

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Technology

Cryptocurrency Miners Are Selling Off GPUs For Cheaper

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Photo: Joby Sessions / PC Gamer Magazine/ Future (Getty Images)

The crypto market is continuing to fall, which has led a ton of miners to exit the market or to downscale their operations, thus finding themselves in possession of valuable computer components that they now no longer need. Some such miners, many from China and South Asia (where electricity is cheaper), are now taking that hardware and dumping it on e-commerce websites. As a result, GPUs that usually go for $500 to $600 are selling for around half that price on the secondhand market.

As noted by PC Gamer, GPUs are suddenly flooding the market, a trend likely driven by several factors. The major one is how cryptocurrency prices have been plummeting since this winter. Now that it seems like the market won’t make a turnaround anytime soon, miners are jumping ship. And these aren’t pristine, out-of-the-box GeForce RTX 3060s that they’re selling. These graphics cards have been used to mine crypto, which uses tons of electricity. Buyers have found that these RTX 3060s were cheap for a reason—many of them are defective after prolonged use. So the common wisdom seems to be that you shouldn’t be too eager to score some used GPUs from an unknown buyer.

However, there’s been some contention in the tech community about how degraded these graphics cards really are. PC World claims that buying a used graphics card from an experienced miner beats buying one from a gamer (who tends to “overclock” their GPUs). Tech YouTuber Linus Sebastian tested some mining GPUs on camera and found that the used graphics cards can still perform well—if they were carefully maintained by their previous owner. So if you must buy a GPU from a miner who wasted a ton of electricity on speculative currency, then you should at least find a reputable seller. Good luck with that, by the way.

If you ask me, I think it’s funnier to let miners languish with a bunch of expensive graphics cards that they can’t even get rid of. It is annoying, though, that Nvidia benefited hugely from the crypto boom, so much so, in fact, that the company got hit by a federal fine for trying to hide how crypto boosted its profits. Hey, at least this crypto nightmare is finally over *knocks on wood* and we’ll all no doubt be seeing far more reasonable graphics card prices very, very soon.

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Technology

PS5 Quietly Gets Nice New Variable Refresh Graphics Feature

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Image: Sony

Any PC gamers among you, or even more serious Xbox owners (who have had this for years), will be familiar with technology called Variable Refresh Rate, or VRR, a feature that allows for “a dynamic display refresh rate that can continuously and seamlessly vary on the fly”. That feature is coming to PS5 consoles later this week.

This is a lot more important than it sounds if you cherish visual fidelity (and consistency) in your games. By syncing your console and display to the same refresh rate there’s less likely to be lags or dips in quality between the two, which means stuff like screen tearing can be cut down or even eliminated

While Sony’s announcement only consisted of words, if you want a video explanation of how it works, with some examples, here’s something Nvidia whipped up for their own G-Sync tech:

Now for the technical details. First, this update is arriving as part of a wider PS5 update later this week, but will only work on TVs and monitors that are HDMI 2.1 VRR-compatible, so you’ll need to check if your display supports it first. Secondly, this won’t just flip a magical switch; games will need to be individually patched to make use of VRR, and so the timing (and ultimate availability) of that support is up to individual studios and publishers.

Sony published a list earlier today showing the games that will be getting patches in “the coming weeks”

  • Astro’s Playroom
  • Call of Duty: Vanguard
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
  • Destiny 2
  • Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition
  • DIRT 5
  • Godfall
  • Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
  • Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
  • Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
  • Resident Evil Village
  • Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
  • Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
  • Tribes of Midgard

Game you play not on that list? Or it is, and you’re wondering when exactly support will arrive? Sony says “These are just a few of the PS5 titles receiving VRR support and we’d like to thank their talented development teams. Please stay tuned to their channels for updates as you’ll have the best experience with VRR once their game patches are live.”

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Technology

Best Buy Totaltech Subscription Doesn’t Actually Get You a GPU

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Photo: Scott Olson/Getty

In case attempting to buy a graphics card at or near retail prices hasn’t been demoralizing enough, Best Buy is here to kick us while we’re down. The retailer is exploiting the ongoing supply shortage and our resulting desperation to force customers into paying another $200 for a shot at buying a graphics card.

We learned of Best Buy’s antics this week when the retailer made in-high-demand RTX 3000 GPUs available at MSRP…to those subscribed to its “Totaltech” program, a “perk” that costs $199 a year to join. If you didn’t pay up in advance, your admittedly slim odds of nabbing one of these components shrunk to zero.

Taking advantage of customers for something they have no control over is, well, an abhorrent business practice, made worse when some of the people who signed up never got a chance to purchase. Customers voiced their displeasure on Twitter, revealing how the Totaltech program didn’t guarantee them a GPU because Best Buy supposedly delayed their membership activation or sold out of cards (they were gone within four hours) before they made it to the front of the line.

If folks who missed out didn’t already regret their subscription purchase, Best Buy decided to sell the full range of RTX 30 graphics cards today to non-Totaltech customers. The odds of scoring one were much lower, but those who did just saved themselves 200 bucks. Perhaps the biggest atrocity is that Best Buy told its subscription members that it had sold out of GPUs, then decided a day later to make them available to non-members. Oh right, and some of those GPUs, like Nvidia’s Founders Edition cards, are exclusive to Best Buy, so it’s not like you can backlist the retailer and try again elsewhere.

Twitter user @CameronRitz, who tracks the stock of popular products, asked whether those who paid for Totaltech felt cheated. Here is one particularly telling response: “I’ve had total tech for other reasons but if I bought it for yesterday’s drop I’d be pissed. I didn’t stand a chance at getting one, that drop was terrible. Endless verify account loop. Worthless.”

To make matters worse, what might have been an effort to stave off scalpers seems to have only helped them. One scalper claims the paywall assisted them in buying 28 graphics cards, one of each available model: “I bought almost $20,000 in GPUs today,” a user named Bipper claimed in a Discord chat room, PCMag reports.

“I think the fact that it was Totaltech did more to help than anything else. It really limits the number of people that can go after the cards,” Bipper wrote.

Best Buy didn’t respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment when asked if it plans to continue restricting certain products to Totaltech members.

Best Buy’s Totaltech membership comes with “24/7 Geek Squad support,” two-day shipping, and two years of product protection. If there is any reason to sign up for it (assuming you don’t need those other benefits), it’s that paying $200 plus the MSRP of a graphics card could cost less than buying from said scalpers, even if it feels just as grimy.

This isn’t the first time Best Buy has toyed with its customers; it did the same with PS5 and Xbox Series X stock drops, restricting the latest consoles to those who pay up. I’m afraid there are no signs of things getting any better so long as the supply chain is still a mess, so keep joining restock chat rooms, subscribe to supply trackers, and pray for a bit of luck.



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Technology

Nvidia RTX PC GPUs Come Down In Price As Bitcoin, Dogecoin Fall

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Image: EVGA / Kotaku

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card you’ve been after to complete your “Extreme Gaming PC” build is still in short supply but finally getting slightly cheaper. That’s thanks to a drop in crypto mining participation as the value of Bitcoin and other blockchain currencies plummet ahead of what some analysts are calling a new “crypto winter.” Sounds bad for the server farms cooking the planet for short-term gains, but good for anyone looking to play Starfield on ultra settings later this year.

As CNBC reported yesterday, Bitcoin and Ethereum are both down nearly 50% from their peaks just a few months ago. Whether you think it’s just a cooling-off period, a long-overdue market correction, or a “death cross” omen of bad days ahead for crypto, the shift is already manifesting as modest price movement in the supply-constrained world of PC gaming.

Tom’s Hardware recently did a quick survey of graphics card reseller prices on eBay, and found that the prices of most popular models have started to come down from their peak a month ago. In a few cases, the prices have even dropped by double digits. A 4.5 percent discount on a RTX 3080 Ti might not sound like a lot, but given how expensive the cards are to begin with it comes out to be nearly $100 cheaper than it was just a month ago. RTX 3080 10GB cards apparently saw an even more impressive drop, dropping from $1,804 down to $1,595.

While Nvidia GPU supplies are supposed to improve in the second half of 2022, Intel said last fall that overall shortages, and thus inflated prices, could continue well into 2023. Outsized demand, meanwhile, has been driven in part by recent booms in the crypto mining market. At the same time GPUs became scarcer during the pandemic, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and other assets reached unprecedented new heights, leading to windfalls for those with the computing capacity to service the blockchain.

But at least on the crypto -side, the tide finally seems to be turning in favor of cheaper graphics cards. Things started moving in that direction last month after Fed Chair Jerome Powell teased interest rate hikes. In addition to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, meme stocks like GameStop and AMC are also crumbling. Hopefully, more affordable PC gaming doesn’t end up coming at the cost of another economic recession.

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Technology

RTX 3090 Owner Finds Old Glove Inside $1500 GPU

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Image: u/antonyjeweet

Imagine this. You’ve just paid a ton for a new RTX 3090 Founders Edition GPU. You plug the card in, boot everything up and … wait, why is my super-expensive GPU running at 230 degrees?

Reddit user antonyjeweet asked themselves that very same question. Given that GPUs shouldn’t be running above195 degrees fahrenheit/90c well, ever, they figured there was something wrong with the internals.

This sort of thing is pretty rare, but it does happen. Igor’s Lab reported earlier this month how a user received an AMD Radeon 6700 XT with all the thermal pads still installed. The thermal pads are basically small bits of plastic or tape that are supposed to be removed before the GPUs are shipped to users.

And after rolling the dice and taking his GPU apart to replace the thermal pads, antonyjeweet discovered an unwelcome surprise: a finger glove, hidden inside the thermal pads:

Image: u/antonyjeweet

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“Now I know why my memory temps easily hit 110c very very fast. Now they stay at 86c max after 1.5 [hours] of stress testing. Also the core dropped 10c (from 75 to +/-65c after stress testing),” they wrote.

Interestingly, Nvidia at first followed procedure. They refused to honour the card’s warranty because antonyjeweet had taken the GPU apart, which is all pretty standard. However, after discovering someone in the Founders Edition assembly chain had left the little plastic surprise behind, they’ve agreed to help out antonyjeweet if they want it.

“Nvidia told me at first I lost my warranty. But after seeing this they said we will give you warranty (got that on mail). No swap or anything. If it works fine just keep it, if not, contact us and we will fix it,” the Netherlands-based user wrote.

If you’re wondering how something like this even happens, the real answer is there’s a global chip shortage. Customers usually don’t care too much the how’s and why’s, only that they get supply of their flash new consoles, CPUs, GPUs and everything else as soon as possible. That pressure and crushing demand often results in crippling conditions for those working on the factory floor. One factory in Vietnam that’s part of the Samsung and Apple supply chain has around 150,000 workers living at the factory full time, while another major Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer forced some migrants back into shared accommodation despite the intensity of that country’s COVID wave.

On the bright side, everything worked out fine in this instance. But it’s a reminder to everyone that luxury consumer tech isn’t always going to work as advertised. If you’re going to drop thousands for real-time ray-tracing and all the bells and whistles at 4K, you might as well spend a little bit extra time making sure it’s running the way it should.

This story originally appeared on Kotaku Australia.

 

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Technology

EVGA To Replace All Those Expensive GPUs Killed By Amazon’s MMO

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Image: EVGA / Kotaku

Earlier this week, folks who were playing the closed beta for New World using a high-end EVGA RTX 3090 GPU began sharing stories that the expensive cards were getting bricked by the game. Now, it’s been confirmed that EVGA, the GPU maker behind the cards that failed, is going to replace all those 3090s ruined by the MMO.

PC Gamer was told directly by EVGA that it is planning to replace every single RTX 3090 card destroyed by New World. A spokesperson told PC Gamer matter of factly that “Yes, all failed 3090’s are being replaced.”

The site also pointed out that YouTuber JayTwoCentz has reported that his contacts at EVGA say the cards should be shipping out already. According to him, the company had a stock of RTX 3090s on hand for replacements.

New World is an MMORPG being developed and published by Amazon. Unlike Amazon’s other attempts at making video games, this one seems to be popular and successful. (It might even survive longer than a year!) Currently, Amazon is running a closed beta of the game. Earlier this week, some unfortunate folks that jumped in to try the game out before its August 31 launch walked away with completely dead EVGA RTX 3090 GPUs. Luckily, well for everyone else, it seems that only EVGA cards were being destroyed by the New World beta.

Shortly after the beta started bricking cards that can cost upwards of $2,000 (or more if bought on the secondary market) Amazon patched the game to fix the issue. I probably don’t have to tell you, but these high-end GPUs can be nearly impossible to find these days, leading to wild crowds and huge prices on sites like eBay.

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After patching the game, Amazon sent a statement to Kotaku that the beta was “safe to play.” I think a bunch of people with dead EVGA cards would probably disagree with that statement.

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Technology

Rare Gundam Graphics Cards Wasted On Crypto Mining

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I can’t explain it. I can’t justify it. But I do get Gundam fans’ strange attachment to the special-edition GeForce RTX 3080 Gundam graphics cards. They’re beefy but elegant and come in a sleek titanium white. They’re also next to impossible to find, which is why some people might be crestfallen to see them put to work anonymously mining crypto currency.

As first reported by VideoCardz, the expensive GPUs were recently spotted at the Nguyenconpc PC shop in Vietnam being packed in cases like sardines, presumably to be resold as custom crypto mining rigs. Announced last year, Asus’ RTX 3080 Gundam cards are pure fan service, with extremely limited quantities pushing them to resale for $2,000-$3,000 on places like eBay. (The most basic RTX 3080 models have an MSRP of $699, though of course you won’t find them for that little these days.)

The Gundam-edition 3080s don’t have special souped-up specs, but these cards are especially attractive to miners since they were created before Nvidia started artificially limited cards’ mining performance. That’s a bummer for the Gundam fans who would love to get their hands on these great-looking GPUs but now probably won’t get the chance.

While pandemic-related supply chain issues and the crypto boom have put a lot of pressure on the graphics card market over the last year, both of those factors are slowly subsiding. Nvidia, for example, has made moves to silo its crypto mining customers from general PC gaming enthusiasts and reduce the effectiveness of mining with its newest cards. Meanwhile, certain crypto currencies, Ethereum ostensibly being one, are set to move to a much less power-intensive mining system later this year.

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While those changes are good for the environment and for people trying to build or upgrade their gaming PCs, it’s probably too late for this current, limited round of Gundam 3080 GPUs. Of course, it’s not like there’s a shortage of white paint and Gundam decals in the world, so hopefully Asus gets the message and decides to bring back the Gundam RTX line in a much more plentiful fashion at some future date.

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