What's the truthful reason(s) for the GPU shortage?

Well, honestly GPUs never really recovered from the shortage that started after the launch of Pascal. They were just getting started, and then there was a silicon shortage, supply chain disruptions of various kinds, plus demand went up because people were indoors more. On top of that, I imagine yields are worse this generation because they have less experience manufacturing it, and it's probably a more demanding part to make that can't tolerate as many defects.

I've been gaming on my PS4 for the past 3 years honestly, because I was frustrated with various things. Buggy games that were patched and fixed on PS4 being left in an almost unplayable state on PC, along with the insane graphics card prices made me think I was better off on a console temporarily. It looks like things may not go back to normal, and the term "console peasant" is becoming uncomfortably literal and connected to a lack of wealth for many people.
 
I don’t think I’ll ever win. I wonder if people who have a recent purchase history have a better chance at winning.

I did get a Radeon 6700XT today at Microcenter, but it was for my brother. I want an nVidia 3080 or above. I can possibly trade a 5950x and some cash for a card. :D

Lucky you. My local Microcenter had 0 available on Sat. I mean, the vga section was wiped out. Not a single low end vga was available. The store was packed with geeks, even girls were buying cpu coolers. Looks like we aren't going to see new gen cards anytime soon and by the time we see them, the new gen will be out and OOS with a blink of an eye.
 
Lucky you. My local Microcenter had 0 available on Sat. I mean, the vga section was wiped out. Not a single low end vga was available. The store was packed with geeks, even girls were buying cpu coolers. Looks like we aren't going to see new gen cards anytime soon and by the time we see them, the new gen will be out and OOS with a blink of an eye.

The Radeon wasn’t in any of the display cases, but there were lots of low-end crap cards available. My brother saw they had stock of the Radeon online and texted me (6 cards when I was about 90 minutes away) and when I asked the guy about my 5950x (those also were not in the AMD case), I asked if they had any 6700XTs left and he radioed someone in the back and they had one. He went to the back and pulled the 5950x, the motherboard, and the video card and took them up front for me.
 
Well, honestly GPUs never really recovered from the shortage that started after the launch of Pascal. They were just getting started, and then there was a silicon shortage, supply chain disruptions of various kinds, plus demand went up because people were indoors more. On top of that, I imagine yields are worse this generation because they have less experience manufacturing it, and it's probably a more demanding part to make that can't tolerate as many defects.

I've been gaming on my PS4 for the past 3 years honestly, because I was frustrated with various things. Buggy games that were patched and fixed on PS4 being left in an almost unplayable state on PC, along with the insane graphics card prices made me think I was better off on a console temporarily. It looks like things may not go back to normal, and the term "console peasant" is becoming uncomfortably literal and connected to a lack of wealth for many people.
Console Peasant? That's a new one for me. When did that term come into use?
 
The Radeon wasn’t in any of the display cases, but there were lots of low-end crap cards available. My brother saw they had stock of the Radeon online and texted me (6 cards when I was about 90 minutes away) and when I asked the guy about my 5950x (those also were not in the AMD case), I asked if they had any 6700XTs left and he radioed someone in the back and they had one. He went to the back and pulled the 5950x, the motherboard, and the video card and took them up front for me.
Lucky you about the store clerk in MC. I live, oh, 400 miles from the nearest one.
 
"As you probably already know if you're visiting this article, there's a huge worldwide shortage of graphic cards right now due to a myriad of supply and demand issues. "

What exactly are the "myriad of supply issues, who created them, Trump's tax on Chinese imports, etc. Anyone know what's really causing this? I am 63 years of age and never ever saw Corporations that failed to pump out a product like we're seeing with Nvidia and AMD, Samsung, and the rest of them
Linus Tech Tips did a really good video on this a few weeks ago. The truth of the matter is that they are pumping out cards pretty close to on schedule. However, COVID created an unprecedented demand for PCs. PC sales the last few years have been flat, at best. The last 18 months has seen a 20% increase in sales, on top of ~30% increase in demand for chips. Being that the NVidias and AMDs and Sony's predecated their sales projectections on past numbers and put their orders in over a year ago, we are seeing the 2 foundries that produce these chips running at max capacity. They literally can't make them faster. There are plans to build more plants, but they won't open until 2023 at the earliest. Add to that the bot problem of people trying to scalp a hot item and crypto mining...

Several articles I've read over the last two weeks say that until supply and demand level out this will continue to be the case. As of now, we're looking at about another year before we'll actually see product on store shelves.
 
The truth of the matter is that they are pumping out cards pretty close to on schedule.

There's no way that that can be the truth.
I waited outside Microcenter on launch day, and they only had 14 in stock.
And it was the same every day after that too. There's no way that this is normal.
You can't launch a product with just 15 or so per store.

No, this was either calculated, or the shortage is much worse than we think.
 
There's no way that that can be the truth.
I waited outside Microcenter on launch day, and they only had 14 in stock.
And it was the same every day after that too. There's no way that this is normal.
You can't launch a product with just 15 or so per store.

No, this was either calculated, or the shortage is much worse than we think.

Even when everything returns to normal, I wonder if there will be a new inflated normal price?
 
Even when everything returns to normal, I wonder if there will be a new inflated normal price?

Yeah, the only issue with that idea is that Nvidia did indeed position the RTX 3000 series as a better value than the RTX 2000 series.
Plus the refinement with Raytracing is a massive bonus, as well as its absolute mastery in the 1080p and even 1440p area. It can't really be beat, if you can get one for MSRP.
So it's very possible that Nvidia will play that sort of angle, where it positions itself as a friendly company with good prices, but "oh no, they're not in stock at MSRP."

So the real price becomes obvious, which will likely prove you correct.
 
I am starting to hear rumbles of miners talking about selling off GPUs because the difficulty of mining Ethereum is growing exponentially right now. HOWEVER, they may just switch to other altcoins that are more profitable.
 
There's no way that that can be the truth.
I waited outside Microcenter on launch day, and they only had 14 in stock.
And it was the same every day after that too. There's no way that this is normal.
You can't launch a product with just 15 or so per store.

No, this was either calculated, or the shortage is much worse than we think.
Don't forget best buy, other retailers, the etailers, the OEMs (who are able to get cards pretty regularly, especially the larger ones - Dell and HP have a 1-2 week lead on 30XX cards in built systems), etc. Just because we're not seeing them doesn't mean they're not showing up elsewhere steadily and in big numbers. Working for one of the big OEMs, we're shipping stuff at a rate unseen since, well, the early 2000s. Hell, I've personally bought 3 pre-mades for family/friends that were getting "back into gaming" after ... 10 years of not playing? That's not even discussing crypto/etc. Was easier than trying to build one - when you order in bulk, you get first call on parts.

TBH, I wonder if this could herald a return to the old days, where hte best way to get parts was to order from Falcon NW/Dell/HP/Digital Storm/etc. Just because they could get them, while finding a retailer (before the internet order was ubiquitous) was harder than just calling a big vendor. That's somewhat terrifying.
Even when everything returns to normal, I wonder if there will be a new inflated normal price?
Eh. No, thank god. Accounting/budgeting/etc doesn't quite work that way. You have a target margin at the top of the stack (Nvidia/AMD). If you start raising that margin level, your stockholders expect you to KEEP it there - which eventually won't be possible (and just because you see something like 70% margin doesn't mean that's the actual margin - you need contribution margin, which includes a lot more coming out of it). That's a high-risk move because once the appropriate costing is factored in (not just the manufacturing cost, but R&D/marketing/wear/etc), you add that margin to set your selling price. If you increase that margin, you can't ever decrease it without making the stockholders REALLY really twitchy and killing your stock price. Between the complexity of the R&D and the manufacturing of the Turing generation, the 2k series was expensive - a lot of that has been amortized already, so Ampere isn't as expensive - and that includes the margin.

Now, that's for AMD/Nvidia. The AIBs don't have the same issues; their margin over COGS doesn't have the same detail/complexity (since they're buying GPUs and just designing/integrating a board) - we may see them set higher margin targets, especially as their business is far more diversified and they could try to make up margin elsewhere if they had to cut it on one line of business, but we'll see. I don't see permanent price increases from this - just because the CFOs would have a bloody conniption worrying about what would happen later when they had to cut margins back to normal. If you listen to manufacturing 10k calls and the like, you'll see a LOT of discussion of margin for this reason. That's what determines free cash flow, NPV of the company, and terminal value - which ties (ish) to stock price (current bubble aside, where it's all going insane again).
Yeah, the only issue with that idea is that Nvidia did indeed position the RTX 3000 series as a better value than the RTX 2000 series.
Plus the refinement with Raytracing is a massive bonus, as well as its absolute mastery in the 1080p and even 1440p area. It can't really be beat, if you can get one for MSRP.
So it's very possible that Nvidia will play that sort of angle, where it positions itself as a friendly company with good prices, but "oh no, they're not in stock at MSRP."

So the real price becomes obvious, which will likely prove you correct.
That'll be the AIBs playing games, if they choose to (or the retailers, which yes, could happen also - their accounting is even simpler than the AIBs, never mind Nvidia/AMD). I don't see the others doing it too much, other than short-term (and not AMD/Nvidia), because of the above. The business side of all this is WAY more complex than I even realized till I got into it, and it's... yeah. Not like we thought it would be.
 
Don't forget best buy, other retailers, the etailers, the OEMs (who are able to get cards pretty regularly, especially the larger ones - Dell and HP have a 1-2 week lead on 30XX cards in built systems), etc. Just because we're not seeing them doesn't mean they're not showing up elsewhere steadily and in big numbers. Working for one of the big OEMs, we're shipping stuff at a rate unseen since, well, the early 2000s. Hell, I've personally bought 3 pre-mades for family/friends that were getting "back into gaming" after ... 10 years of not playing? That's not even discussing crypto/etc. Was easier than trying to build one - when you order in bulk, you get first call on parts.

TBH, I wonder if this could herald a return to the old days, where hte best way to get parts was to order from Falcon NW/Dell/HP/Digital Storm/etc. Just because they could get them, while finding a retailer (before the internet order was ubiquitous) was harder than just calling a big vendor. That's somewhat terrifying.

Eh. No, thank god. Accounting/budgeting/etc doesn't quite work that way. You have a target margin at the top of the stack (Nvidia/AMD). If you start raising that margin level, your stockholders expect you to KEEP it there - which eventually won't be possible (and just because you see something like 70% margin doesn't mean that's the actual margin - you need contribution margin, which includes a lot more coming out of it). That's a high-risk move because once the appropriate costing is factored in (not just the manufacturing cost, but R&D/marketing/wear/etc), you add that margin to set your selling price. If you increase that margin, you can't ever decrease it without making the stockholders REALLY really twitchy and killing your stock price. Between the complexity of the R&D and the manufacturing of the Turing generation, the 2k series was expensive - a lot of that has been amortized already, so Ampere isn't as expensive - and that includes the margin.

Now, that's for AMD/Nvidia. The AIBs don't have the same issues; their margin over COGS doesn't have the same detail/complexity (since they're buying GPUs and just designing/integrating a board) - we may see them set higher margin targets, especially as their business is far more diversified and they could try to make up margin elsewhere if they had to cut it on one line of business, but we'll see. I don't see permanent price increases from this - just because the CFOs would have a bloody conniption worrying about what would happen later when they had to cut margins back to normal. If you listen to manufacturing 10k calls and the like, you'll see a LOT of discussion of margin for this reason. That's what determines free cash flow, NPV of the company, and terminal value - which ties (ish) to stock price (current bubble aside, where it's all going insane again).

That'll be the AIBs playing games, if they choose to (or the retailers, which yes, could happen also - their accounting is even simpler than the AIBs, never mind Nvidia/AMD). I don't see the others doing it too much, other than short-term (and not AMD/Nvidia), because of the above. The business side of all this is WAY more complex than I even realized till I got into it, and it's... yeah. Not like we thought it would be.

I am seriously considering ordering an Alienware just for the GPU and selling off the rest of the system. That seemed to be the cheapest prebuilt I could find with a 3080 or 3090 with a reasonable (4-6 weeks) delivery timeframe. If I hadn't already bought my 5950x and Dark Hero, I would've considered just using whatever system I bought from them and I feel dirty even saying that.
 
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I am seriously considering ordering an Alienware just for the GPU and selling off the rest of the system. That seemed to be the cheapest prebuilt I could find with a 3080 or 3090 with a reasonable (4-6 weeks) delivery timeframe. If I hadn't already bought my 5950x and Dark Hero, I would've considered just using whatever system I bought from them.
YGPM.
 
I am seriously considering ordering an Alienware just for the GPU and selling off the rest of the system. That seemed to be the cheapest prebuilt I could find with a 3080 or 3090 with a reasonable (4-6 weeks) delivery timeframe. If I hadn't already bought my 5950x and Dark Hero, I would've considered just using whatever system I bought from them and I feel dirty even saying that.
I've recommended some friends to do this -- that Alienware R12 desktop you can buy for $2,000 and it has a 3080 and an 11th gen i5 in it. Although the ram and hdd are garbo -- you can upgrade those at lower cost and your rig will still cost less than buying a 3080 at scalper prices above $2300 after tax... Prebuilts are definitely the way to go at this point unless you can wave a wand and get a card at price right now.
 
hey, i got laughed at for suggesting that around here...
edited speeling
 
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hey, i got laughed at for suggestion that around here...
If people are really desperate for a GPU they should absolutely get a prebuilt and then sell the rest off and it'll be cheaper than getting a GPU alone. That's my feeling on it. Or just be okay with the prebuilt specs. Dell is a very solid company for buying products.
Otherwise go get a Razer laptop like me to play with on the side hahah :D
 
If people are really desperate for a GPU they should absolutely get a prebuilt and then sell the rest off and it'll be cheaper than getting a GPU alone. That's my feeling on it. Or just be okay with the prebuilt specs. Dell is a very solid company for buying products.
Otherwise go get a Razer laptop like me to play with on the side hahah :D

Yeah, I was looking at the Ryzen edition of the Alienware. I can get it with the 5800 (non-X) and a 3090 and be under $3K. I'm going to see if my brother wants the rest of the system but if not, I could reuse it for a portable gaming system if we ever actually have another LAN party. I've got other components (RAM, drives, GPUs) I could put in it - like my current 1080 Ti! :D
 
I believe it’s majority crypto mining related.

Pent up demand by gamers doesn’t go far enough to explain the current demand nor the ridiculous prices the cards sell for on the seconday markets. You think gads of gamers are lining up to buy their one card at 3x MSRP on eBay by the thousands every day? No. Gamers won’t spend $2K on a 3080, but crypto miners will, and they’ll buy them all for months and months on end to this point.

Nvidia says it’s not a supply issue, they say it’s a demand issue. They have officially said they have sold more cards than both Turing (20 series) and Pascal (10 series) to the same point in time on the market from their respective launch, and their financial statements indicate that truth.

Thus the shortage is primarily crypto mining related. Where your consumer isn’t just buying one card and walking away from the marketplace for two years, but is buying as many as they possibly can, because the cards have basically been a license to print money for four months now. All the other reasons are ancillary. I’d buy three dozen 3080 or 3060TI right now if I could find them around MSRP, (not to flip, to mine with) and you can bet 10% of the people on this forum would do the same. Without crypto profitability, I’d only buy one card and be out of the market.

3080s have had about a two-three month (worstcase) ROI at MSRP since Jan 2021. Same for 3060ti. General crypto conservative guidance is buy anything that ROIs in six months or less. All Ampere 30 series does that twice as fast. 3090 is the least valuable to miners and even it has ROI’ed in 4-5 months during this time.

If crypto profitability dries up, a deluge of cards will become available within a couple months...Until it does, there will be no cards except those well above that approximate six month ROI target. (Which is what eBay prices reflect).
I highly doubt you will see a bunch of cards on the secondary market if crypto prices drop. People may stop buying new cards, but mining crypto is an investment. You expect the prices to rise again later even if they are currently low. The only way miners dump all their cards is if they can't actually use them to mine anything which isn't going to happen.
 
I highly doubt you will see a bunch of cards on the secondary market if crypto prices drop. People may stop buying new cards, but mining crypto is an investment. You expect the prices to rise again later even if they are currently low. The only way miners dump all their cards is if they can't actually use them to mine anything which isn't going to happen.
Historically they will absolutely sell off some stuff. When btc dropped from 20k to 5k there was a big supply increase and prices dropped precipitously on the secondary market.
 
I highly doubt you will see a bunch of cards on the secondary market if crypto prices drop. People may stop buying new cards, but mining crypto is an investment. You expect the prices to rise again later even if they are currently low. The only way miners dump all their cards is if they can't actually use them to mine anything which isn't going to happen.

If crypto drops precipitously, I think you will. We've seen that in the past and I think it will happen again if we see that drop (which remains to be seen).

There are also a lot of people who camp the Best Buy drops or use bots extensively and buy every card they can - not because they mine or need the card, but they know they can scalp them. I've got the fixit discord running, but I am extremely busy at work and even the rare times when I have it open and a drop notification appears, I'm too late. There have been a couple of times I clicked on 3070 notifications, went to Amazon, and the cards were "available" until I added it them to my cart.

Newegg and others have yet to come up with a good defense against these scalpers and miners. I've seen lots of people saying they won the shuffle many times including a guy here who showed evidence he won it something like 20 times - I mean, IMO, that shouldn't be possible. If you win a shuffle, Newegg should push you back to the end of the line for that particular product IMO. Given that my brothers and I have entered dozens of times between us and none of us have sniffed victory, that tells me that 1) Newegg is getting less and less supply to put on the shuffle and I suspect 2) If you have recent purchase history with Newegg, you have a better chance of winning. Microcenter has the most sensible approach but 1) it's only available in-store 2) there are ways around it. The bottom line - if vendors like Newegg would just let folks preorder (1) card at a time and fulfill those orders, maybe more could get them.
 

The bottom line - if vendors like Newegg would just let folks preorder (1) card at a time and fulfill those orders, maybe more could get them.
IndyColtsFan You are so right. The first vendor who implements a pre-order system is going to get a lot of business. And maybe more than just GPU cards. B&H has a notification service and I keep getting emails from them that the Gigabyte 3070 I am watching is still out of stock. But notification doesn't guarantee a successful order.
 
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IndyColtsFan You are so right. The first vendor who implements a pre-order system is going to get a lot of business. And maybe more than just GPU cards. B&H has a notification service and I keep getting emails from them that the Gigabyte 3070 I am watching is still out of stock. But notification doesn't guarantee a successful order.
There is no business case for them to do so. They are already selling out everything they have. The amount of business they get isn't the problem, it's the inventory. And when they have enough inventory, they don't need a preorder system.

People also now know that crypto is here to stay. In 2018 sure, the price skyrocketed, but there wasn't widespread acceptance. That isn't the case anymore. I do think it will be easier to get new cards but I don't think there will be a ton of used cards available.
 
IndyColtsFan You are so right. The first vendor who implements a pre-order system is going to get a lot of business. And maybe more than just GPU cards. B&H has a notification service and I keep getting emails from them that the Gigabyte 3070 I am watching is still out of stock. But notification doesn't guarantee a successful order.
Not true. Shopblt has such a service, I'm in line with thousands of others for a motherboard and gpus. I think they are not getting priority for shipments, ETAs have been pushed back repeatedly for months now. One gpu has an eta of today right now, but I fully expect tomorrow to get an email saying the eta has been pushed to 5/12 or later. If all the major retailers did this back in November, then maybe there would be a chance, but now there is no point. We do not matter, there's no incentive for the stores to try. Gamer, scalper, miner - it doesn't matter as they can't keep stock for more than a second.
 
Not true. Shopblt has such a service, I'm in line with thousands of others for a motherboard and gpus. I think they are not getting priority for shipments, ETAs have been pushed back repeatedly for months now. One gpu has an eta of today right now, but I fully expect tomorrow to get an email saying the eta has been pushed to 5/12 or later. If all the major retailers did this back in November, then maybe there would be a chance, but now there is no point. We do not matter, there's no incentive for the stores to try. Gamer, scalper, miner - it doesn't matter as they can't keep stock for more than a second.
Waiting on the LC Hybrid 6800XT? Me too. Original ship date was LAST YEAR for that one.
 
IndyColtsFan You are so right. The first vendor who implements a pre-order system is going to get a lot of business. And maybe more than just GPU cards. B&H has a notification service and I keep getting emails from them that the Gigabyte 3070 I am watching is still out of stock. But notification doesn't guarantee a successful order.

And what are they going to do with that business? EVGA is using a list you can sign up for at thje rate they supply cards RTX 5xxx series will be out b4 they deliver to half the people on that list.

Preorders don't make it so that there are more cards, only that you will eventually get one if you want to wait long enough. (I am already 6 months+ on a list for a PS5 and got 1 mail so far saying "we got some more consoles, but you are too far back on the list to get one this time")
 
If crypto drops precipitously, I think you will. We've seen that in the past and I think it will happen again if we see that drop (which remains to be seen).
Correct. Because once the value per coin drops below the cost of your electricity it doesn't make a lot of sense to continue. When/if that happens again, you can bet there will be a sell off. Only the diehards remain and continue to mine for whatever reason such as hedging against future values which still doesn't make sense in that scenario. Buy the coin instead of mine it. The vast majority leave the gold field as soon as it costs more to mine/recover the gold than the value of the gold itself.

I had six vega 64 cards mining XMR at the end of 2018 and sold my entire setup because the cost of power was getting very close to what I was getting paid to mine. Many others did the same.
 
been giving some serious thought on selling my Vega 64 now that I have a laptop that's totally obsolesced the shitbox desktop the V64 is in. Even selling it bare card (the coolers all hacked up) I think I could get 50% more than I paid 2 years ago but looks like the time is now for cashing in on big used gpu bux, this wave isn't gonna last forever.
 
Correct. Because once the value per coin drops below the cost of your electricity it doesn't make a lot of sense to continue. When/if that happens again, you can bet there will be a sell off. Only the diehards remain and continue to mine for whatever reason such as hedging against future values which still doesn't make sense in that scenario. Buy the coin instead of mine it. The vast majority leave the gold field as soon as it costs more to mine/recover the gold than the value of the gold itself.

I had six vega 64 cards mining XMR at the end of 2018 and sold my entire setup because the cost of power was getting very close to what I was getting paid to mine. Many others did the same.

And if you kept mining the last 2.5 years you would be at least $20k richer (assuming 44Mh/s hashrate mining eth). Well at least before taxes of course.
 
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That is true, and I do regret folding up and selling. I should've continued to mine. However, as electricity costs were getting very close to what I was being paid to mine it made more sense to buy the asset with cash vs. continuing to mine. The real smart decision would've been to ditch the mining rig and sell it, and just buy XMR (or ETH or BTC, etc.).

Since I've realized I enjoy tinkering with a mining rig I've put another one together and this time I'm going to write the initial outlay off and just continue to mine with it for fun.
 
That is true, and I do regret folding up and selling. I should've continued to mine. However, as electricity costs were getting very close to what I was being paid to mine it made more sense to buy the asset with cash vs. continuing to mine. The real smart decision would've been to ditch the mining rig and sell it, and just buy XMR (or ETH or BTC, etc.).

Since I've realized I enjoy tinkering with a mining rig I've put another one together and this time I'm going to write the initial outlay off and just continue to mine with it for fun.
Yea, that's my outlook as well. Once the GPU craze is done, I'll buy a mining rig and just let it run. Investment isn't huge and who knows what crypto will do. Very little risk considering hardware resale value. But right now, if you get a GPU, you're better off selling. And the potential is quite large.
 
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