A new leak suggests Nvidia hopes to dominate the GPU market in early 2022 as its RTX 3050 may be releasing as soon as January. All the while, both Intel and AMD plan to launch products around the same time. Perhaps the graphics card drought could finally take a turn for the better next year.
Semiconductor shortages have plagued the graphics card market for the majority of the pandemic, making it nearly impossible for gamers to get their hands on one for a reasonable price. Shortages have caused prices to skyrocket for GPUs. Although tech companies are not quite out of the woods on the semiconductor shortage, many still plan to release a whole range of new products. Including, Nvidia’s much anticipated entry-level RTX 3050.
A recent tweet from leaker @hongxing2020 suggests Nvidia may be planning to release its RTX 3050 non-Ti with 8GB of VRAM on January 27, 2022. The leaker doesn’t provide a lot of information but simply states the GPU will be “on-shelf” on “2022.1.27.” This is huge as the GPU hasn’t even been officially announced, despite the laptop variant already being in devices, and yet this tweet suggests it will be in stores in a little over a month. @hongxing2020 may be a fairly new leaker but has already divulged several details concerning upcoming products which have since been corroborated.
Reports in November said Nvidia’s roadmap included a tentative release for the RTX 3050 in Q2 2022. This new date suggests the tech company was able to push up its release. It’s possible Nvidia decided to release the GPU sooner rather than later in order for it to directly compete with Intel’s soon-to-be-released “Alchemist” graphics cards.
Nvidia has several GPUs on its 2022 roadmap. There are rumored plans for the company to bring back its RTX 2060 with 12GB of VRAM instead of its original 6GB and a rumored RTX 3090 Ti could be coming as well. Additionally, gamers will be excited to hear Nvidia is also gearing up to launch its 4000 series with a possible release timeframe of mid-2022. If reports are correct, it could be an exciting year for PC gamers. Assuming gamers can get their hands on any of these cards, that is.
