When NVIDIA launched the GTX 1050 Ti in October 2016, Obama was still president and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 was the biggest tech breakthrough. Now it looks like this relatively old GPU is coming back due to an acute shortage of GPUs, PC World reported.
NVIDIA confirmed that it was “meeting market demand, which remains extremely high”, by relaunching older GPUs, including the RTX 2060 and GTX 1050 Ti for its card partners. NVIDIA pointed out that none of the products were technically at the end of their useful life, “so ‘reviving’ seems like the wrong terminology to use here,” he said. It may be the case, but it is clear that the GTX 1050 Ti is almost obsolete compared to modern GPUs.
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Still, the GTX 1050 Ti will give buyers a cheap option for undemanding games. NVIDIA could also sell it without using its GDDR6 memory source, as the GPU uses older GDDR5 chips. Since the card does not work for certain types of cryptocurrency mining, the launch of new stocks can keep prices low for players as well.
The GTX 1050 Ti was launched for just $ 139, but is currently selling for much more than that, with prices ranging from $ 190 to $ 800. Meanwhile, the RTX 2060 was launched on the market in early 2019 for $ 350, but can be found on NewEgg for $ 800 to $ 1,644, not exactly affordable for most players.
The new NVIDIA 3000 series GPUs are practically impossible to find, simply because NVIDIA (and rival AMD) cannot get enough GPUs to meet demand. NVIDIA and AMD use TSMC to make their chips, and the company is currently unable to do enough to maintain them – although it is spending up to $ 28 billion this year alone to change that. In the meantime, President Biden has promised to resolve the issue with executive orders, but it is likely to take years before that changes anything.