The Truth Behind NVIDIA's 3070 Ti Founder's Edition Card: A Speculative Analysis

I'm going to give you my take on what might have happened with the 3070 Ti Founder's Edition card, and this is all speculative information. This isn't from NVIDIA, but rather my own analysis of the situation. I believe that the cards were retooled again due to some sort of issue or change in production. Perhaps the full production run was delayed, and a new sample set was created with a thicker fin array. This would explain why the AIBs (Add-in Board Manufacturers) were able to launch their own versions of the card on time.

The reason for this is that the AIBs didn't take the whole cooler and other components off the card; they only took the core itself, the socket, and integrated them onto their own board designs. This allowed them to release their cards before NVIDIA's full production run began. I believe that there might be a conspiracy theory behind the pricing of these cards, with some manufacturers taking advantage of the situation to raise prices. However, in my opinion, this is simply the nature of the free market and profit.

Profit is what drives businesses, and if a manufacturer can advertise a card at a lower price but sell it for more, that's just how it goes. Unfortunately, I believe we're starting to see a downward trend in scalper pricing, which seems to be correlated with Bitcoin and Ethereum prices. When those cryptocurrencies drop, card prices tend to rise, and when they increase, card prices seem to fall.

It's possible that there's some combination of both factors at play – the lack of availability and the wild west nature of the market. However, I also think there might be a manufacturing defect with the current design of the 3070 Ti's fins. My own experience with review cards has taught me that sometimes, components can be faulty or not meet expected standards. In this case, the fins on top of the card don't seem to meet the typical FE quality we've come to expect from NVIDIA.

If you're interested in seeing some examples of the pricing for 3070 Ti cards, I recommend checking out eBay and Craigslist. You'll find that prices are anywhere between $900 and $1,300, which is significantly higher than the MSRP of $599. However, one Founder's Edition card has been found on sale in France for a price that seems suspiciously high. It's possible that this is a review card that was sold by someone looking to make some extra money.

Looking closer at this particular card, you might be able to tell if it's a retail unit or not by checking the serial number and sending it over to VideoCardz for verification. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever know for certain why NVIDIA didn't release the Founder's Edition card on time or why AIBs were able to launch their own versions first.

One thing is clear, though: the situation with GPU pricing has not improved significantly since last year, and it seems that we might not see any major changes in 2021. However, there are some glimmers of hope for improvement by the end of next year. If more manufacturers can take on chip manufacturing orders from TSMC and other facilities, it could help alleviate the pressure on smaller companies like Samsung and ARM.

This increased demand might lead to lower prices across the board as well. We're already seeing this trend in Bitcoin mining, where cryptocurrency miners are able to find lower prices for their equipment due to increased competition. If we can get similar trends in GPU pricing, it could be a significant improvement for consumers who want to upgrade their systems.

Overall, I believe that there's still some mystery surrounding the 3070 Ti Founder's Edition card and why it never made it to retailers. However, by understanding the current market trends and factors at play, we can start to see where things might go from here. Whether it's a conspiracy theory or simply the nature of the free market, one thing is clear: change is coming, and it's worth keeping an eye on.

If you're looking for more information on GPU upgrades and PC builds, be sure to check out our giveaway in the comments section below. We're giving away pretty much everything you need to build your dream PC, and it's a worldwide giveaway that won't disappoint.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou guys growing up ever had that friend or that classmate that just couldn't seem to stop getting themselves in trouble where every now and then they just keep acting up and you're like hey just stop it that's in video these days we got work to do yeah i'm playing world of warships world of warships is the free-to-play naval strategy game where you command the most iconic and famous warships from world war one and world war ii recreate it with stunning detail and accuracy build your fleet while participating in various game types while upgrading your ship's arsenal along the way new players who sign up using my link below will receive an exclusive starter pack to get you up and running quickly by receiving seven days premium time one million credits 300 dubloons and the tier v premium ship the exeter so what are you guys waiting for start sinking ships with world of warships by hitting the description below and getting your freebies all right so this is the talking headpiece we're going to talk about the 3070 ti founders edition and kind of a little bit of a conspiracy theory that the internet's come up with on their own i have my own take on what's going on here uh and this is also because many of you reached out to me saying jay what do you think about this you haven't said anything about this linus talked about it and a bunch of other people did and i like to kind of sit back and absorb as much information as i can before i really go out and then just start shotgun you know bird shotting theories into the air like at least try and come up with some sort of a real approach as to my thoughts on the way some of this goes so what i'm referring to if you're just like what the heck is jay talking about is the fact that the rtx 3070 ti founders edition card which is only available at best buy and micro center in the united states um and best buy and i think maybe one other retailer in canada best buy for sure but i'm not sure about the other one had absolutely zero allocation people right now are probably already going so that was the case for every other phone position card not true every other single founder's edition card although lower allocation than demand did have allocation available we you'd see people lining up at best buy a day or two before you see people lining up at micro center uh and you know those people that wanted the founder's edition card knew they had to go to one of those two retailers here in the united states and then you would inevitably go and find them on ebay the same day or at least the same morning or maybe even at the time of lunch you know guaranteed reservation means they have a card coming but you know what's suspiciously absent is a single 30-70 ti founder's edition card anywhere on the internet folks that were watching or had stock alerts or whatever other method of trying to get their hands on a graphics card noticed that at best buy and micro center and any other retailer that potentially has founders edition cards like i said in canada and whatnot noticed that they went from coming soon to sold out instantly now here's the difference between that scenario and the past yes everything else kind of went out of stock within minutes in the past the difference is this one literally the website rolled over to out of stock what that means is and and the thing is like plenty of people kind of spoke up and i think phil's actually looking on the line right now to see if you can find a 30-70 ti founders edition card spoiler alert he's not going to find one because they didn't actually sell a single one because there's rumors and theories as to why that is folks that were camping outside of best buy have spoken up especially in linus's wan show where he talked about this particular subject and he even put out a little call to action like if any of you anyone scored a 30-70 ti founders edition please speak up and let us know a bunch of people spoke up and showed them pictures of their non-founders edition cards but that's just about the well that's about the quality as sometimes you can expect when you put out a little public blast but i digress not a single person had one to show now people who are camped out at best buy and micro center said not a single one was available best buy basically said sorry we don't have any so that leads the internet to start to come up with its own reasonings as to why that is now the internet being what the internet is is going to come to their own conclusions and that's nvidia's fault because on nvidia unfortunately i almost said on video which should be unfortunately right on video import the same thing adopted a certain mentality a long time ago in that don't talk about acknowledge or respond to anything on the internet period they put out their little public pr blasts they put out their little 3d rendering videos and their teasers and jen's son you know holding it like this on stage and stuff but they never ever ever respond to anyone they've apple's the other company i can think of that also adopted this particular mentality the problem with the say nothing acknowledge nothing mentality is you then make yourself open game for open interpretation as to what the silence means there's an old adage that silence equals guilt now i don't believe in that adage for everything but there are times when you invite the negativity that's going to come your way when you refuse to give people information now i don't know if it's just because this is a is an order that comes from the commander-in-chief himself genson maybe you know some when you're when you're large publicly traded company in the billions of dollars like nvidia is i can understand why they kind of want to say nothing because the last thing you want to happen is you go oh yeah we don't actually have any to sell and that makes its way back to your stockholders and the stockholders are ultimately who they answer to not you as gamers not me as an influencer not gamers not cryptocurrency miners the all mighty investor is who they respond to that is who they care about that is their first and foremost priority so not saying anything means we all get to come up with our own reasons as to why that is so let's talk about public conspiracy number one and that's that nvidia never intended to actually sell the rtx 3070 ti founders edition card i don't i'm not going to kind of just start by saying i don't believe in that theory because of the fact that they have a founder's edition card that definitely made its way into the public and is being scalped as we speak of every other founder's edition card we're talking 30 60 30 60 ti 30 70 30 80 30 80 ti and 30 90. they're founders edition of every single one of those cards so why would they not make a founder's edition 3070 ti now the reason why that one's gaining traction is because things have obviously changed since the other founders edition cards came out prior to the 37 dti 3080ti combo launch and that's obviously the high demand and low availability now we are not privy to what the costs of components are for the aibs from nvidia we don't know if nvidia has increased the cost because remember nvidia cannot get as many made as they want either from samsung samsung is not able to supply the demand that nvidia is requesting of them so we don't know if nvidia has actually increased the component cost of the aibs that would be total speculation that would be alleged information i'm not even going to go out there and spread that but what i can say is that we have definitely seen based on retailers that have come forward saying what the aibs or many of them are charging them because remember the retailers buy the product from the aib or the manufacturer as well and then they mark it up again so the double middleman to make a profit now we all know that the retailers have been increasing the cost but a lot of the retailers and a lot of the sis the system integrators have said they cost more the aibs are charging more that's supply and demand it sucks to be what it is but that is the way supply and demand works especially in a free market of a commodity this is a commodity for no matter how much you want to maybe disagree with that this is a commodity product you don't need this to live most people don't it depends on your work i guess but i digress again the theory is that by nvidia not selling the founders edition card which is the msrp card and remember best buy and micro center all them did sell them for msrp which is controlled pricing because nvidia says this is what we charge this is what you can charge do not mark it up which was in an agreement with best buy and micro center and whatever other retailer had them by not selling them at that price or having them to sell at all means that the aibs still kind of have that wild west mentality going to be able to charge whatever they want because if you go into a store and you have an opportunity to buy this in msrp or a custom card next to it for 200 more obviously there's more profit to be had on the 200 more card unless nvidia is actually selling the components more expensive to the aibs which nvidia then wins anyway i don't necessarily believe that theory either and let me explain why many of you don't realize that these fe cards that we receive are not production run cards these are final pre-production test runs that usually are in the hundreds not thousands or tens of thousands which yes tens of thousands of them were produced it's just that many more people want them they are not sellable because they are they they don't have the hell they don't even have a warranty behind them if you want to know the truth so these are the final test runs where they then take them out look at them and say okay looking for blemishes looking for quality controls this is the final test that says this is the way they will come off the production assembly line do you want to proceed with the order nvidia takes them looks them over has you know does their own qc on them and then sends them to the reviewers like us so this is not the exact same card that you might get from best buy or whatnot i noticed with the 3070 ti versus every other founder's edition card that we have is just rife with blemishes this card although it looks great on camera has bent fins it has fins that are not aligned it has fins that if you breathe on them the wrong way will bend you have a fan that when i first spun it and it came out of the box it was rubbing on a fin until i bent it out of the way this is a complete redesign of the cooler they have no other cooler like this this cooler was kind of like an in between of the 3070 and the 3080 where they brought in the blow through style but because it's not as dense of a core as hot it didn't go with this thin of a fin on here or as thick of a fin on here the 3080 has a much thicker fin array and because of that i have a feeling that they realized that there needed to be some sort of a fix or a change which delayed the full production run of the cards which means they would make those tooling changes again this is all this is all speculatory information this is not from nvidia this is just my take on the situation i believe that the cards then were retooled another sample set to nvidia for them to inspect and if they agree to it then the full production run happens but the reason why the aibs were able to launch on time is because they don't take the whole cooler and stuff they only take the core itself the core and the socket and then those get integrated onto their own board designs do i believe that there's a conspiracy theory to raise prices i believe that this is a free market and that profit is profit and they're in the business to sell stuff and if the circumstances allowed them to advertise at a price but sell for more it absolutely sucks it's unfair it is taking advantage of the situation or profiteering if you will but that's just unfortunately i believe the way it is we are starting to see a downward trend on the scalp pricing of cards as a whole and it definitely seems to be in correlation with bitcoin and ethereum pricing as those drop card prices go down as those increase card prices go up so there is definitely a correlation between bitcoin mining uh excuse me cryptocurrency mining i keep putting it all in the in the bucket of bitcoin but whatever cryptocurrency mining and card pricing but i do believe that this is probably a little bit of both i think it's a little bit of hey our cards aren't available but still a wild west when it comes to you know whatever you guys want to charge for it i guess if you will nod nod wink wink but i also feel like there's probably some sort of a manufacturing defect just by the way our our fins look on the top right here alone to me doesn't meet that typical fe quality that we saw in the past and i believe that that might have something to do with it but you guys can look for yourself go on ebay right now go on craigslist and look up 30 70 ti ones that are for sale you'll get mad at the prices obviously they're anywhere between 900 to 1300 for a card that's 599 msrp but phil is able to find one one founder's edition card for sale in france and i have a sneaky suspicion it's one of these review cards that somehow got sold you know some of the reviewers do like to hey you know i need a few extra bucks i'll sell you my review card and then that got passed around and maybe scalped more than once and now is on the market again easy way to tell would be to if they show the serial number send that over to someone in video and be like can you see if this is a retail card i bet you they're not i bet you their pre-production sample but the reason why you're not finding them i think is for the reasons that i just explained i mean these fins are bad but a lot of you guys asked me for my comments and my two cents on this particular situation i think the situation sucks i've said it a million times it's going to improve it probably won't improve in 2021 we're halfway through the year already and it's really not gotten tangibly any better so you can probably expect maybe 2022 maybe halfway through that year when the other manufacturing facilities for tsmc and and why not get online because here's the thing if you can alleviate you know if you tsmc can take more orders then it kind of alleviates the other people like samsung and arm and all of them that have to take on chip manufacturing orders as well then you start to see everything kind of lift across the board anyway what are your thoughts why do you think the 3070 ti founders edition card never made it to retailers was it a paper launch no it's it's delayed at least the founder's edition card but why do you think it is do you think it's because it's a it's a back room nod or a wink to the aibs to allow them to keep the prices increased or do you think there was a physical reason why they never launched anyway guys thanks for watching don't forget about our gpu and pc upgrade giveaway a lot of you guys are like what giveaway what are you talking about check the comments or the description down below you guys will find our link to our giveaway where we're giving away pretty much everything you need to build your dream pc that is a worldwide giveaway not a paper giveaway and well i guess there might be only there's only one of our giveaways available so there is that all right guys thanks for watching as always we'll see in the next oneyou guys growing up ever had that friend or that classmate that just couldn't seem to stop getting themselves in trouble where every now and then they just keep acting up and you're like hey just stop it that's in video these days we got work to do yeah i'm playing world of warships world of warships is the free-to-play naval strategy game where you command the most iconic and famous warships from world war one and world war ii recreate it with stunning detail and accuracy build your fleet while participating in various game types while upgrading your ship's arsenal along the way new players who sign up using my link below will receive an exclusive starter pack to get you up and running quickly by receiving seven days premium time one million credits 300 dubloons and the tier v premium ship the exeter so what are you guys waiting for start sinking ships with world of warships by hitting the description below and getting your freebies all right so this is the talking headpiece we're going to talk about the 3070 ti founders edition and kind of a little bit of a conspiracy theory that the internet's come up with on their own i have my own take on what's going on here uh and this is also because many of you reached out to me saying jay what do you think about this you haven't said anything about this linus talked about it and a bunch of other people did and i like to kind of sit back and absorb as much information as i can before i really go out and then just start shotgun you know bird shotting theories into the air like at least try and come up with some sort of a real approach as to my thoughts on the way some of this goes so what i'm referring to if you're just like what the heck is jay talking about is the fact that the rtx 3070 ti founders edition card which is only available at best buy and micro center in the united states um and best buy and i think maybe one other retailer in canada best buy for sure but i'm not sure about the other one had absolutely zero allocation people right now are probably already going so that was the case for every other phone position card not true every other single founder's edition card although lower allocation than demand did have allocation available we you'd see people lining up at best buy a day or two before you see people lining up at micro center uh and you know those people that wanted the founder's edition card knew they had to go to one of those two retailers here in the united states and then you would inevitably go and find them on ebay the same day or at least the same morning or maybe even at the time of lunch you know guaranteed reservation means they have a card coming but you know what's suspiciously absent is a single 30-70 ti founder's edition card anywhere on the internet folks that were watching or had stock alerts or whatever other method of trying to get their hands on a graphics card noticed that at best buy and micro center and any other retailer that potentially has founders edition cards like i said in canada and whatnot noticed that they went from coming soon to sold out instantly now here's the difference between that scenario and the past yes everything else kind of went out of stock within minutes in the past the difference is this one literally the website rolled over to out of stock what that means is and and the thing is like plenty of people kind of spoke up and i think phil's actually looking on the line right now to see if you can find a 30-70 ti founders edition card spoiler alert he's not going to find one because they didn't actually sell a single one because there's rumors and theories as to why that is folks that were camping outside of best buy have spoken up especially in linus's wan show where he talked about this particular subject and he even put out a little call to action like if any of you anyone scored a 30-70 ti founders edition please speak up and let us know a bunch of people spoke up and showed them pictures of their non-founders edition cards but that's just about the well that's about the quality as sometimes you can expect when you put out a little public blast but i digress not a single person had one to show now people who are camped out at best buy and micro center said not a single one was available best buy basically said sorry we don't have any so that leads the internet to start to come up with its own reasonings as to why that is now the internet being what the internet is is going to come to their own conclusions and that's nvidia's fault because on nvidia unfortunately i almost said on video which should be unfortunately right on video import the same thing adopted a certain mentality a long time ago in that don't talk about acknowledge or respond to anything on the internet period they put out their little public pr blasts they put out their little 3d rendering videos and their teasers and jen's son you know holding it like this on stage and stuff but they never ever ever respond to anyone they've apple's the other company i can think of that also adopted this particular mentality the problem with the say nothing acknowledge nothing mentality is you then make yourself open game for open interpretation as to what the silence means there's an old adage that silence equals guilt now i don't believe in that adage for everything but there are times when you invite the negativity that's going to come your way when you refuse to give people information now i don't know if it's just because this is a is an order that comes from the commander-in-chief himself genson maybe you know some when you're when you're large publicly traded company in the billions of dollars like nvidia is i can understand why they kind of want to say nothing because the last thing you want to happen is you go oh yeah we don't actually have any to sell and that makes its way back to your stockholders and the stockholders are ultimately who they answer to not you as gamers not me as an influencer not gamers not cryptocurrency miners the all mighty investor is who they respond to that is who they care about that is their first and foremost priority so not saying anything means we all get to come up with our own reasons as to why that is so let's talk about public conspiracy number one and that's that nvidia never intended to actually sell the rtx 3070 ti founders edition card i don't i'm not going to kind of just start by saying i don't believe in that theory because of the fact that they have a founder's edition card that definitely made its way into the public and is being scalped as we speak of every other founder's edition card we're talking 30 60 30 60 ti 30 70 30 80 30 80 ti and 30 90. they're founders edition of every single one of those cards so why would they not make a founder's edition 3070 ti now the reason why that one's gaining traction is because things have obviously changed since the other founders edition cards came out prior to the 37 dti 3080ti combo launch and that's obviously the high demand and low availability now we are not privy to what the costs of components are for the aibs from nvidia we don't know if nvidia has increased the cost because remember nvidia cannot get as many made as they want either from samsung samsung is not able to supply the demand that nvidia is requesting of them so we don't know if nvidia has actually increased the component cost of the aibs that would be total speculation that would be alleged information i'm not even going to go out there and spread that but what i can say is that we have definitely seen based on retailers that have come forward saying what the aibs or many of them are charging them because remember the retailers buy the product from the aib or the manufacturer as well and then they mark it up again so the double middleman to make a profit now we all know that the retailers have been increasing the cost but a lot of the retailers and a lot of the sis the system integrators have said they cost more the aibs are charging more that's supply and demand it sucks to be what it is but that is the way supply and demand works especially in a free market of a commodity this is a commodity for no matter how much you want to maybe disagree with that this is a commodity product you don't need this to live most people don't it depends on your work i guess but i digress again the theory is that by nvidia not selling the founders edition card which is the msrp card and remember best buy and micro center all them did sell them for msrp which is controlled pricing because nvidia says this is what we charge this is what you can charge do not mark it up which was in an agreement with best buy and micro center and whatever other retailer had them by not selling them at that price or having them to sell at all means that the aibs still kind of have that wild west mentality going to be able to charge whatever they want because if you go into a store and you have an opportunity to buy this in msrp or a custom card next to it for 200 more obviously there's more profit to be had on the 200 more card unless nvidia is actually selling the components more expensive to the aibs which nvidia then wins anyway i don't necessarily believe that theory either and let me explain why many of you don't realize that these fe cards that we receive are not production run cards these are final pre-production test runs that usually are in the hundreds not thousands or tens of thousands which yes tens of thousands of them were produced it's just that many more people want them they are not sellable because they are they they don't have the hell they don't even have a warranty behind them if you want to know the truth so these are the final test runs where they then take them out look at them and say okay looking for blemishes looking for quality controls this is the final test that says this is the way they will come off the production assembly line do you want to proceed with the order nvidia takes them looks them over has you know does their own qc on them and then sends them to the reviewers like us so this is not the exact same card that you might get from best buy or whatnot i noticed with the 3070 ti versus every other founder's edition card that we have is just rife with blemishes this card although it looks great on camera has bent fins it has fins that are not aligned it has fins that if you breathe on them the wrong way will bend you have a fan that when i first spun it and it came out of the box it was rubbing on a fin until i bent it out of the way this is a complete redesign of the cooler they have no other cooler like this this cooler was kind of like an in between of the 3070 and the 3080 where they brought in the blow through style but because it's not as dense of a core as hot it didn't go with this thin of a fin on here or as thick of a fin on here the 3080 has a much thicker fin array and because of that i have a feeling that they realized that there needed to be some sort of a fix or a change which delayed the full production run of the cards which means they would make those tooling changes again this is all this is all speculatory information this is not from nvidia this is just my take on the situation i believe that the cards then were retooled another sample set to nvidia for them to inspect and if they agree to it then the full production run happens but the reason why the aibs were able to launch on time is because they don't take the whole cooler and stuff they only take the core itself the core and the socket and then those get integrated onto their own board designs do i believe that there's a conspiracy theory to raise prices i believe that this is a free market and that profit is profit and they're in the business to sell stuff and if the circumstances allowed them to advertise at a price but sell for more it absolutely sucks it's unfair it is taking advantage of the situation or profiteering if you will but that's just unfortunately i believe the way it is we are starting to see a downward trend on the scalp pricing of cards as a whole and it definitely seems to be in correlation with bitcoin and ethereum pricing as those drop card prices go down as those increase card prices go up so there is definitely a correlation between bitcoin mining uh excuse me cryptocurrency mining i keep putting it all in the in the bucket of bitcoin but whatever cryptocurrency mining and card pricing but i do believe that this is probably a little bit of both i think it's a little bit of hey our cards aren't available but still a wild west when it comes to you know whatever you guys want to charge for it i guess if you will nod nod wink wink but i also feel like there's probably some sort of a manufacturing defect just by the way our our fins look on the top right here alone to me doesn't meet that typical fe quality that we saw in the past and i believe that that might have something to do with it but you guys can look for yourself go on ebay right now go on craigslist and look up 30 70 ti ones that are for sale you'll get mad at the prices obviously they're anywhere between 900 to 1300 for a card that's 599 msrp but phil is able to find one one founder's edition card for sale in france and i have a sneaky suspicion it's one of these review cards that somehow got sold you know some of the reviewers do like to hey you know i need a few extra bucks i'll sell you my review card and then that got passed around and maybe scalped more than once and now is on the market again easy way to tell would be to if they show the serial number send that over to someone in video and be like can you see if this is a retail card i bet you they're not i bet you their pre-production sample but the reason why you're not finding them i think is for the reasons that i just explained i mean these fins are bad but a lot of you guys asked me for my comments and my two cents on this particular situation i think the situation sucks i've said it a million times it's going to improve it probably won't improve in 2021 we're halfway through the year already and it's really not gotten tangibly any better so you can probably expect maybe 2022 maybe halfway through that year when the other manufacturing facilities for tsmc and and why not get online because here's the thing if you can alleviate you know if you tsmc can take more orders then it kind of alleviates the other people like samsung and arm and all of them that have to take on chip manufacturing orders as well then you start to see everything kind of lift across the board anyway what are your thoughts why do you think the 3070 ti founders edition card never made it to retailers was it a paper launch no it's it's delayed at least the founder's edition card but why do you think it is do you think it's because it's a it's a back room nod or a wink to the aibs to allow them to keep the prices increased or do you think there was a physical reason why they never launched anyway guys thanks for watching don't forget about our gpu and pc upgrade giveaway a lot of you guys are like what giveaway what are you talking about check the comments or the description down below you guys will find our link to our giveaway where we're giving away pretty much everything you need to build your dream pc that is a worldwide giveaway not a paper giveaway and well i guess there might be only there's only one of our giveaways available so there is that all right guys thanks for watching as always we'll see in the next one\n"