Nvidia apologizes in advance for 'limited supply' of RTX 3090s for Thursday's launch

(Image credit: Nvidia)

If you thought the RTX 3090 might be easy to snatch up because it costs $1,499 (£1,399), today's blog post from Nvidia suggests a different reality for Thursday's launch. The post lays out the basic specs and performance of the RTX 3090, trying to make it clear that the audience for the high-end card is creative professionals and researchers, not most gamers. And with that comes a preemptive sorry: "Since we built GeForce RTX 3090 for a unique group of users, like the Titan RTX before it, we want to apologise upfront that this will be in limited supply on launch day," says Nvidia.

Reviews and sales for the RTX 3090 both go live Thursday, September 24, but Nvidia really seems to be trying to temper expectations beforehand. Along with movie editors and AI researchers, it suggests the RTX 3090 is "ideal for extreme gamers" who want to play at 8K, which is where the 24GB of GDDR6X will come in handy. But for 4K and below, it doesn't make much sense.

Nvidia says the RTX 3090 is "10-15% faster on average" than the RTX 3080 at 4K. That's not much of a bump for double the price. Our own review will be able to dive into the 3090's performance differences in various games, but unless you're rocking an 8K monitor, you're probably better off waiting for more RTX 3080 stock to show up.

Even with Nvidia all but recommending most buyers avoid the RTX 3090, the "limited supply" seems destined to sell out instantly. "We know this is frustrating, and we’re working with our partners to increase the supply in the weeks to come," Nvidia says.

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).