September is slowly drawing to a close but that doesn’t mean the news is slowing down. This week we’ve seen Nvidia launch their RTX 3080 graphics cards (and failing) coupled with announcing that they’ll be acquiring chip manufacturer Arm. Nvidia isn’t the only ones that have been busy though as AMD reveals the design of their Radeon RX 6000 series GPU with a full announcement October 28th. Finally, Facebook seemingly leaked their Oculus Quest 2 through an upload of promotional materials, providing all the juicy details prior to release.
We’ll be discussing all this and more in today’s weekly roundup and if you want to read the full stories, head over to their sole pages to soak up all the information possible!
First, let’s talk about the release of the revolutionary RTX 3080 GPUs. There was a huge buzz in the tech world leading up to the first of the RTX 3000 series GPU release, but that buzz almost instantly turned into anger as soon as the links went live on Nvidia’s website as well as third-party retailers. All the new graphics cards were seemingly gobbled up in an instant thanks to bots and scalpers, who then went onto reselling them on auctions sites such as eBay for up to 3 times more than the original purchase price. This is ultimately a failure on Nvidia’s part not being able to prevent resellers, especially during a time where stock levels are extremely low thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Let’s see if that changes for the RTX 3090 and RTX 3070 releases in the coming weeks.
Next up, is Nvidia’s announcement of the upcoming Arm acquisition from Japan-based SoftBank. This buyout could total $40 billion just 4 years after SoftBank bought Arm for $32 billion, surprising due to Arm being the top dog in recent times, especially since Apple announced they’ll be using proprietary Arm-based chips in the near future for their devices. This could make Nvidia a formidable company and one that Intel will be keeping a close eye on if more and more market share shifts away from them. This deal still needs to be vetted for monopoly purposes but if it does go through it’s huge for Nvidia and could see them skyrocket to the next level.
Now, Nvidia’s close rival AMD has also been revealing some top-notch GPUs of their own by giving prospective buyers a first real look at the new Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card, in Fortnite…
The AMD Radeon Twitter account published a tweet giving us a first look into what many are suggesting is the new 6900XT GPU, alongside a Fortnite Creative Island code (8651-9841-1639) so you can get a full 360 view of the unit itself, allowing you to get into every nook and cranny if you wish. This is definitely a different take on a GPU ‘first look’ but with the number of Fortnite crossovers as of late, it’s not surprising a company like AMD is utilizing the game as a marketing tool.
The full reveal will take place on October 28th, 20 days after another showcase in which we’ll get a first look at the highly anticipated Zen-3 CPUs AMD has up it’s sleeve. Let’s hope any orders that subsequently follow the announcement don’t share the same fate as the RTX 3080 release!
Finally, let’s talk Oculus and Facebook. We all know that Facebook has been doubling down on their VR work since acquiring Oculus with many iterations of VR headsets being released. Now, it seems that the V2 variant of the Oculus Quest has been leaked….by Facebook themselves.
The leaks come from an accidental upload of some Oculus Quest 2 supporting and promotional materials to the Facebook blueprint website, which have since been taken down (but are still accessible if you know where to look), and they give a pretty comprehensive rundown of the still-unannounced Oculus Quest 2 headset itself.
It is good news for us though, as we now have more information on what to expect from Oculus Quest 2 when it launches. First, we can start with the design. As we were all expecting, the brand new Oculus Quest 2 will feature a brand new and more comfortable design – which is no real news, because every single time a VR company looks to update their product catalog, user-friendliness and comfort levels are always near the top of priorities.
Let’s hope all these leaked details are in fact true and the consumer focus of the Oculus Quest 2 will be the top priority come release.
Unfortunately, as we’ve been busy getting all the latest links for you to grab your RTX 3000 series GPUs, we’ve been unable to get any guides or feature pieces out this week but, what we have done is update all of our graphics card pages to include the new 3000 series so you can attempt to get your orders in.
See you next week for a bunch more GTX 3000 series news and the release of the even more anticipated RTX 3090s!