When NVIDIA launched the GTX 1050 Ti in October 2016, Obama was still president, and Samsung’s fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 was the biggest tech news. Now it looks like this relatively old GPU is coming back due to acute GPU shortage, computer world has reported.
NVIDIA confirmed that it was “meeting the still extremely high market demand” by re-releasing older GPUs, including the RTX 2060 and GTX 1050 Ti, to its board partners. NVIDIA pointed out that neither product was technically at the end of its life, “so ‘reviving’ seems like the wrong terminology to use here,” he said. That may be the case, but the GTX 1050 Ti is of course almost outdated compared to modern GPUs.
Engadget
Still, the GTX 1050 Ti offers buyers a low-cost option for undemanding games. NVIDIA could also sell it without using its GDDR6 memory as the GPU uses older GDDR5 chips. Since the card doesn’t work for certain types of cryptocurrency mining, releasing new shares can keep prices low for gamers, too.
The GTX 1050 Ti launched for just $ 139 but is currently selling well above that, with prices ranging from $ 190 to $ 800. Meanwhile, the RTX 2060 launched in the market in early 2019 for $ 350, but can be found on NewEgg from $ 800 to $ 1,644, not exactly an affordable price for most gamers.
New NVIDIA 3000 series GPUs are next to impossible to find simply because NVIDIA (and rival AMD) can’t get enough GPUs to keep up with demand. NVIDIA and AMD both use TSMC to manufacture their chips, and that company can’t make enough of it right now to keep up – though it’s spending up to $ 28 billion this year alone to change that. Meanwhile, President Biden has pledged to address the issue with executive orders, but it will likely take years for that to change.