Buying a GPU now can be a real challenge. But apparently, if you RMA your old GPU, you can get a brand new 2021 Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti. Yes, a new version of a four-year-old Pascal graphics card has been discovered, a card that was thought to be no longer in production, having been replaced by the RTX 2080 and others.

Times are tough in the era of the GPU Great Recession, and it seems that any attempts by manufacturers to alleviate the GPU inventory crunch have been met with either backlash or complete failure. Thanks to cryptocurrency profitability gains and parts shortages, as well as a very high demand for the technology during the pandemic, the dream of getting a GPU at close to MSRP this year has taken a backseat for the majority of prospective buyers.

But there may be light at the end of the tunnel: as suggested in a forum post on Quasar Zone (via NotebookCheck), Nvidia may indeed bring back the GTX 1080 Ti. the GTX 1650 is making a comeback in desktop is expected, but the GTX 1080 Ti, as a four-year-old GPU, is a more attractive prospect, albeit one that is quite damning of the current state of the graphics card industry.

The original post outlines the story of a user who returned a GTX 1080 Ti EVGA SC that was still under warranty and received a newly manufactured one instead. After the post was discovered, harukaze5719 tweeted that he had confirmed that the serial number sent by the OP pointed to a 2021 model card.

We had thought that EVGA might have just left extra stock before discontinuing the cards, but it appears that EVGA is back in production. If true, this is definitely good news.

We are talking about GPUs that perform slightly less well than the Turing-based GeForce RTX 2080 and the more recent GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, with an average 3DMark Timespy score of 10009 points (11117 for the RTX 2080 and 11857 points), the GTX 1080 Ti is still a very well-known card; you may have to forgo the DLSS and ray tracing bubbles, but with a base clock of 1.56 GHz and the possibility to tune up to 1.67 GHz, these cards are capable of taking on today's heaviest They will be able to take on even today's heaviest AAA games.

While full settings may not be possible, and 1440p would be the best option, this little refresh could still bring serious benefits to the market.

There is still no concrete evidence that the actual GP102 GPU itself is still in production, and harukaze5719 has been waiting 4 days for photo evidence since the forum post OP, but no update has come yet. Sass. However, the glimmer of hope for the revival of these classic GPUs still holds firm.

And yes, we use "hope" in the loosest possible terms. It just feels so strange and wrong that we have to go back three generations to revive an old card just so people can see it.