Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080, GTX 1070 latest news: Supply issues hound release; TSMC causing delay?

Jackie Villegas Thursday, June 30, 2016

Avid gamers may have been impressed by Nvidia's new GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 graphics cards, but a recent supply issue has left many frustrated and disappointed.

According to Morning News USA, many who have been waiting to get their hands on the latest Nvidia GPUs have been voicing out their frustrations because the video cards are still unavailable online and in stores. Worse, many have taken advantage of the supply issue, putting their own recently purchased GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 video cards up for sale online at exorbitant prices.

While reports initially indicated that the dearth in supply may be due to Nvidia's inability to cope with the unusually high demand for the new products, Mobipicker has said that the issue could actually stem from the production of the Pascal-based graphic cards. According to the website, TSMC, one of the companies supplying Nvidia, is reportedly having trouble meeting the increased demand for the 16nm chips that are essential to the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 GPUs.

Mobipicker indicated that this could be the reason Nvidia has been unable to supply retailers with the hotly anticipated new graphics cards.

Until Nvidia and TSMC work out the supply issue, gamers will continue to have difficulty getting their hands on the in-demand cards. As of writing, both the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080 are out of stock on the GeForce website.

It remains to be seen how Nvidia's production issue will be affected by the release of the new AMD RX 480, which is said to offer superb graphic performance at a budget price. The new line of AMD Polaris-based graphics cards is expected to give Nvidia a run for its money in the coming weeks.

The Nvidia GTX 1080 hit store shelves on May 27, while its less pricey counterpart, the GTX 1070, became available on June 10. Both are aimed at high-performance gaming PCs and are based on Nvidia's latest Pascal architecture, which the company touts as "the world's most advanced GPU architecture."