It looks as though Nvidia is removing the option of a 1080 Ti graphics card from the market as a way of pushing the more recent and more expensive RTX cards instead. If you want a 1080 Ti card, don’t hang around buying one.
It’s always difficult choosing a new graphics card. Nobody really needs the latest and greatest card to play games, but that extra performance does mean the card will serve you well for longer. However, with the launch of Nvidia’s latest RTX cards, high prices and malfunctioning chips make the last-gen GTX 1080 Ti look tempting, but it won’t be for much longer.
As Gamers Nexus reports, stock of GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards are dwindling fast, and it is thought to be because Nvidia has stopped producing the 1080 Ti Pascal GPU. No new GPUs means that once card manufacturers have used up their existing stock they will have to end production.
This wouldn’t normally be a problem and it’s common for one high-end graphics card to disappear when a replacement, and higher performing card is already on the market. The problem is, the RTX 2080 Ti is failing at abnormally high rates. So not only is it more expensive than the 1080 Ti, you could end up buying a faulty card.
If that didn’t put enough pressure on the remaining stock of 1080 Ti cards, there’s another factor to consider. As we enter 2019, tariff increases come into affect, which will push up the prices of cards even higher. Manufacturers are getting as much stock as they can into the US before January to avoid the price increase, but it does mean if you want a 1080 Ti card, you’re battling against two problems: dwindling stock and the threat of a price rise in a couple of months.
When PCMag reviewed the Founders Edition of the RTX 2080 Ti we concluded it set a new bar for single-GPU performance, but commanded a $200 premium to get it. Add to that games taking a while to catch up with the ray-tracing and DLSS features offered, and you have a very expensive card it’s hard to take full advantage of at the moment. It was a similar story with the cheaper RTX 2080. It offers roughly one-third better gaming performance than a GTX 1080, but the $800 price point is high and again, not enough games aren’t taking full advantage of the features yet.
If you’re in the market for a new graphics card then the 1080 cards are still great options if you can find them. If you can wait, then the RTX cards should come into their own with better support and Nvidia will fix the card failures. Also keep in mind that used graphics cards are still great.
