Nvidia was unable to meet the insatiable demand for its latest graphics cards, so the company found a temporary solution: it is bringing back older GPUs, the GTX 1050 Ti and RTX 2060.
Consumers have been spending a lot more money on home entertainment as a result of the pandemic, and new graphics cards that allow innovative graphics rendering in games are in fashion, leading to limited supply and desperate customers. Oh, and it doesn’t help that unscrupulous money changers have capitalized at the moment by pooling stocks to mark them at very high prices.
The RTX 2060 was released in 2019 and still supports ray tracing, although it is not able to render high-resolution games at the same frame rates as the latest RTX 3080. The GTX 1050 Ti, in turn, launched in 2016 and is a little slower, but perhaps the idea is that it will be enough for new PC players who want to play less demanding games.
Capitalism, baby – Nvidia is able to find supplies because the newer plates are built in an 8 nm manufacturing process, while the older plates are in a 12 nm process. The latter can be pumped more easily, since this process was established a long time ago, while the latest 8 nm process is still relatively new and in high demand.
But although these older cards were originally launched at low prices – $ 140 for the GTX 1050 Ti and $ 350 for the RTX 2060 – the high demand for GPUs is now also affecting them. Gizmodo reports that the cards were sold online for up to $ 400 and $ 700, respectively.
Considering that older cards are a performance compromise, you can really just sit back and wait for a newer RTX 3080. Just live with what you have now, or maybe stream some Xbox Game Pass titles. Do not allow Nvidia to profit from your pain.