The Geforce GTX 1050 Ti, based on Nvidia’s “Pascal” architecture in 14 nm, came onto the market in October 2016 and was already considered written off, given the two successor generations that have now been made.
The current undersupply due to the renewed crypto mining boom and the scarcity of resources in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and scalper trade is helping the aged entry-level model to make a comeback on the graphics card market is currently in high demand.
As initially reported by the Australian YouTube channel “Tech Yes City,” citing various dealers Down Under, the GTX 1050 Ti is currently being delivered again after it is said to have been unavailable (wholesale) for almost two years.
It was rumored back in January that Nvidia also wants to revive the slightly newer RTX 2060 (Super), but according to videocardz.com, there has been no increased presence on the market since then.
In line with this, Nvidia launched the GTX 1650 with new GDDR6 memory in the middle of last year. Still, the demand for the GDDR6 chips is said to be so high at the moment that the demand for these “Turing” cards can no longer be satisfied, especially the GTX 1660 (Super) models, which not only have said memory but also require six modules for each card.
The manufacturer would instead focus on “Pascal” models with little graphics memory, which was never available with GDDR6 memory.
Cushioning demand and excluding mining
The new offer also makes sense given the low-end graphics cards that are also unavailable because the global pandemic has significantly increased the demand for consumer electronics. Not all customers will spend hundreds of dollars or euros on a new graphics card.
A wider availability of the RTX 2060, GTX 1660, and GTX 1050 Ti would take some of the pressure off the supply chain and also cushion the release of the RTX 3060, which should be on the market in around two weeks.
In addition, cards with 4 GiByte graphics memory are no longer attractive for GPU miners since Ethereum mining now requires more VRAM, which should also bring many Radeon RX 470 and RX 570 from AMD back onto the market.
GTX 1050 Ti: Nvidia takes a stand
PC World has received a statement from Nvidia that the entry-level graphics card has never been at the end of its life cycle: “The products we refer to here were never EOLed, so ‘revival’ seems to be the wrong terminology,” according to an Nvidia executive Speaker. “It’s more of an ebb and flow. We’re just fulfilling market demand, which you’ve noticed remains extremely high.”
Meanwhile, UK retailer Scan has told PC Gamer that it has recently been made available for some stock of the GTX 1050 Ti but is still expected to be “strictly controlled and limited even for the aging Pascal GPU.”
In the PCGH price comparison, the GTX 1050 Ti is currently listed at around 165 euros, but in the past, it was also in the price range of 120 euros, depending on the model. Since there is no wide availability, the restocking of stocks could still be imminent.
