Nvidia, Newegg Address Nearly Non-Existent RTX 3080 Availability

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And they're trying to prevent bots

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 GPU , one of the best graphics cards, launched today, and it sold out almost instantly. Nvidia has apologized for the situation regarding orders on its own website, and Newegg posted a statement to Twitter to justify the situation.

Nvidia put a statement up on its forum in a locked thread entitled "RTX 3080 Nvidia Store Availability," which, as of this writing, has been downvoted 126 times.

"This morning we saw unprecedented demand for the GeForce RTX 3080 at global retailers, including the NVIDIA online store," the statement says. "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."

It further added that the company is manually reviewing orders in an attempt to thwart scalpers and bots, and that more cards are being shipped daily.

"We apologize to our customers for this morning's experience," it concludes.

Meanwhile, retailer Newegg explained the situation on Twitter:

Newegg claims it got more traffic today than on Black Friday morning, and that it sold out in five minutes, even with bot protection. It encourages those who want an RTX 3080 to use its Auto Notify feature and check in regularly. In response, some Twitter users have claimed that cards had sold out before Auto Notify let them know about stock.

In a follow-up, Newegg added that the card would have sold out even faster if the site didn't have traffic issues, and added that Auto Notify isn't a guarantee.

EVGA, which sells its own cards, thanked followers on Twitter for patience after "overwhelming demand" and also recommended the use of a notify feature.

The cards also sold out almost immediately at Best Buy, B&H, Amazon and Microcenter, the latter of which was featured in photos that went semi-viral on social media with lines outside stores.

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Andrew E. Freedman
Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and Mastodon @FreedmanAE.mastodon.social.

108 Comments Comment from the forums
  • logainofhades
    Pretty expected outcome. A lot of well deserved hype, and limited availability.
    Reply
  • Gurg
    Nvidia shouldn't worry about producing lesser cards than the 3070 as the demand for the higher cards will be tough enough to satisfy.

    As Igor's site stated just use capacity to build the 3070, 3080 and 3090 and let the used market take care of the rest of the market.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    Gurg said:
    Nvidia shouldn't worry about producing lesser cards than the 3070 as the demand for the higher cards will be tough enough to satisfy.
    And not everyone wants to spend $600 on a GPU.
    Reply
  • logainofhades
    Gurg said:
    Nvidia shouldn't worry about producing lesser cards than the 3070 as the demand for the higher cards will be tough enough to satisfy.

    There will probably be lesser cards made with cut down dies, from those that didn't quite make the cut, as a 3080. My Evga 2060 KO Ultra is a prime example of this, as it uses a 2080 die.
    Reply
  • Gurg
    USAFRet said:
    And not everyone wants to spend $600 on a GPU.
    3070 is $499.
    Reply
  • JamesSneed
    New says sold out in 5 minutes :) That is what just longer of the entire checkout process? What did Newegg have like 10 of these cards or what?
    Reply
  • JTWrenn
    I don't believe it for a second. That was not level sell out. Release the number of cards sold and how quickly they went out the door.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    Sale opened at 9AM EST.
    I checked at 08:55, and Newegg had already mostly crashed.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    JamesSneed said:
    New says sold out in 5 minutes :) That is what just longer of the entire checkout process? What did Newegg have like 10 of these cards or what?
    If you need five minutes to check out, you are awfully slow. If you were logged into your NewEgg account with payment and shipping details on file, check-out takes 30 seconds to confirm your payment method and shipping address. (Not counting time wasted on site slow-downs and errors from heavy traffic.)
    Reply
  • floored63
    Seemed to me like they sold out in less then five minutes
    InvalidError said:
    If you need five minutes to check out, you are awfully slow. If you were logged into your NewEgg account with payment and shipping details on file, check-out takes 30 seconds to confirm your payment method and shipping address. (Not counting time wasted on site slow-downs and errors from heavy traffic.)

    they sold out in less then five minutes all while their Web site was in the process of crashing. I managed to get a gigabyte card in the cart and in the two minutes it took the checkout page to load it was gone.
    And they didn't notify at all
    Reply