Here are the first Nvidia RTX 3080 cards available to preorder today (Update: No longer available)

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The GeForce RTX 3080 releases on September 17, but you can order one now if you're willing to pay a premium for a custom model.

(Image credit: Asus)

Update: B&H Photo is now showing 'Notify When Available' on both Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 models that were previously available to preorder on the site. It's possible the vendor ran out of preorder inventory (the 3080 is anticipated to be in high demand, as well as the 3070), or it could have jumped the gun on accepting orders.

Original story:

The wait is on for new Nvidia Ampere cards to land on retail shelves, starting with the 'flagship' GeForce RTX 3080. That GPU gets released next Thursday, September 17, but if you want to order one right now, however, you can.

The more expensive of the two is presumably an overclocked model, though curiously Asus does not list the specifications on its product page (and neither do any of the vendors that have the part listed).

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For reference, Nvidia's blueprint for a 3080 calls for a 1.44GHz base clock and 1.71GHz boost clock. It also features 8,704 CUDA cores and 10GB of GDDR6X memory at 19Gbps on a 320-bit bus, which yields 760.3GB/s of memory bandwidth.

Nvidia considers the 3080 its flagship consumer GPU, with the higher spec'd 3090 primarily intended for creators.

The Founders Edition variant with Nvidia's fancy cooler runs $699. Looking solely at B&H Photo's listings (because they include pricing information), custom models currently range from $720 on up to $905.

I'd suggest hanging tight, as there will inevitably be overclocked models priced closer to Nvidia's MSRP. For example, Gigabyte's Eagle OC model is listed at $730, it's just not available to preorder.

Paul Lilly
Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).