The Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti graphics card is shockingly available to purchase in the UK
At £1049 it's expensive, but at least it's available at RRP - a rarity.
The Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti is currently available for purchase at its recommended retail price, a headline that would have ludicrous to write a few years ago but now constitutes major news. Scan in the UK have stock of the high-end card at its £1049 RRP, stock that has seemingly persisted for a few hours - one of only a handful of times that an Nvidia RTX graphics card at RRP hasn't sold out immediately. If you're building a high-end rig, I'd say this is a great option - as long as you can't find an RTX 3080, at least.
For the record, Katharine wasn't so keen on the card when she tested it for the official RPS RTX 3080 Ti review - but I have a slightly different opinion. It's my view that pretty much any Founders Edition card sold at RRP is a reasonable value, given that third-party RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3090 cards are selling for anywhere from £1500 to £2000 or more. So, getting a nigh-identical level of performance at a bit over £1000 will make sense for a small subset of people that have a significant PC budget but haven't been able to find stock of a high-end GPU at a sane price before now.
In terms of performance, the card is pretty much identical to the RTX 3090 in all but a handful of games, making it a good value compared to that £1399 flagship. It only really loses out in terms of its VRAM count, which is halved from 24GB to 12GB, but this will only be a limiting factor in professional workloads like video edition. The 3080 Ti is also only around 10% faster than the RTX 3080, making that card the best value high-end option... but one that's been near-impossible to find due to the ongoing silicon shortage and high demand from gamers and cryptocurrency miners alike.
If you're building a high-end rig, do take a look at some reviews and consider the 3080 Ti at RRP. Supply shortages are likely to continue into next year, and this is an extremely quick graphics card - but whether it makes sense for you is something you'll have to decide!
We'll be back with another deal for UK folk later tonight, but for now thanks for reading and take care!