Figuring out when supply equals demand

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Just wondering again. Is there a way to calculate when supply catches up with demand. Here is what I mean.

How many "serious" gamers are out there? I'm defining this as someone who upgrades the GPU often.
How many of these serious gamers have already upgraded?
What is the total number of 3000 GPUs produced so far by Nvidia and 6000 series GPUs produced by AMD?
What is the current (and projected) volume of GPUs produced each week or month by both vendors?
How many GPUs have been bought by miners?

With this information it should be possible to predict when total manufacturing volumes are sufficient so that all serious gamers have been able to upgrade. Work backwards a bit,and maybe it's possible to guess when prices will come back down to earth.

OK, I'm just wondering. I AM NOT trolling.

Even if the numbers are just educated guesses, we might be able to derive dates to maybe a calendar quarter.

Did I leave out anything important?
 
Yes, the crypto boom. The gpus will continue to be sold out or scalped at ridiculous prices until they aren't useful for turning electricity into cash.
ACtually I did mention miners. I think that's the crypto boom crowd.
 
I don't think all that information is publicly available, but supposedly it's going to take more than a year.


Which is why I'm suggesting educated guesses. Sort of back of the envelope calculations.

Are there GPU card market gurus who could make such "guesstimates?" Of course if the numbers are rough enough, then maybe all we can get a year or maybe a quarter.
 
My best guess is sometime in the middle of next year if we're lucky. As long as mining remains profitable and the return on investment time is short, miners will buy all available cards. Newer cards are great at mining and it would take a big change to see them become unprofitable.

In the July/August timeframe if ethereum implements EIP 1559 then maybe mining will become slightly less profitable and the pressure will ease a bit. On the other hand, crypto prices have remained high, there are other profitable coins to mine, and the fed is printing trillions of dollars so inflation might keep those crypto prices high. So I wouldn't bank on this.

Also, we need to keep tariffs in mind. The 25% tariffs on Chinese electronics are definitely being felt now and they don't look to be going away anytime soon.

Overall I don't think the future outlook is very bright because of these reason so if you can get a card at MSRP I wouldn't be too picky about it.
 
Just wondering again. Is there a way to calculate when supply catches up with demand. Here is what I mean.

How many "serious" gamers are out there? I'm defining this as someone who upgrades the GPU often.
How many of these serious gamers have already upgraded?
What is the total number of 3000 GPUs produced so far by Nvidia and 6000 series GPUs produced by AMD?
What is the current (and projected) volume of GPUs produced each week or month by both vendors?
How many GPUs have been bought by miners?

With this information it should be possible to predict when total manufacturing volumes are sufficient so that all serious gamers have been able to upgrade. Work backwards a bit,and maybe it's possible to guess when prices will come back down to earth.

OK, I'm just wondering. I AM NOT trolling.

Even if the numbers are just educated guesses, we might be able to derive dates to maybe a calendar quarter.

Did I leave out anything important?
Is see you have entered the bargaining stage...


This won't right itself for another year or two.
 
Is see you have entered the bargaining stage...


This won't right itself for another year or two.
Does that mean that Nvidia and AMD might release a new generation of cards before this is over? Or would they hold off?
 
Does that mean that Nvidia and AMD might release a new generation of cards before this is over? Or would they hold off?
Rumor has it that Nvidia is going to release the 3080ti in mid May. Haven't heard anything about AMD, maybe a 6600 model.
 
Let see:
  • Chinese New Year, about 16 Days of non production
  • About 80% of AMD wafers are going for Console support (multiple millions of Consoles already shipped) APUs, 8 core CPUs with 56 CU's (52 active) for XBox Series X and 36 CU's for the PS5
    • Just think if AMD put half of those wafers for GPUs for desktop (millions of graphics cards)
  • A miner has about the same chance of getting a card as a gamer unless you are a very big player with a lot of cash, still miscue compared to the number of gamers. Miners contribute to the issue but is not the big part of the issue as far as I can tell
    • Many gamers now also mine as well, almost stupid not to if one is strapped for cash, that is not taking away from gamers when gamers use their payed cards to mine when not doing something else with them
Biggest reason I see, besides Pandemic, extra cash folks have not going out to eat, movies, vacations, motels, cruises is the allocation of around 80% of the wafers from AMD to Consoles which is also not able to keep up with demand. Put 2-4 million more Radeons on the shelves and I believe the shortage would have been short lived, I would blame most of the problem on the pandemic and economic impact shift and then AMD choices for having Consoles as #1 on their priority list.
 
Let's say for the sake of simplicity that for example in Europe 1 million people want to buy a new graphics card this generation, from the rumours around, AMD had a couple thousand 6700XT cards for the whole of Europe.

Now obviously not everyone wants that card if they had a choice, but at this point a lot of people will buy what they can get their hands on, and around where I live msrp went out the door a while ago, 800€ msrp cards in the shops go for 1400 and more and they still sell out in record time.

I don't know for sure but I would not be surprised if demand in certain cases is 10x higher then the supply
 
Just wondering again. Is there a way to calculate when supply catches up with demand. Here is what I mean.

How many "serious" gamers are out there? I'm defining this as someone who upgrades the GPU often.
How many of these serious gamers have already upgraded?
What is the total number of 3000 GPUs produced so far by Nvidia and 6000 series GPUs produced by AMD?
What is the current (and projected) volume of GPUs produced each week or month by both vendors?
How many GPUs have been bought by miners?

With this information it should be possible to predict when total manufacturing volumes are sufficient so that all serious gamers have been able to upgrade. Work backwards a bit,and maybe it's possible to guess when prices will come back down to earth.

OK, I'm just wondering. I AM NOT trolling.

Even if the numbers are just educated guesses, we might be able to derive dates to maybe a calendar quarter.

Did I leave out anything important?
Don't think we will ever really know that info to come up with a realistic number. I still game a decent bit and want to buy a card but I refuse to pay scalper prices, run bots, or wait in lines. So it might be a while before I get one. Our best hope is another crypto crash tbh.
 
Probably won't be enough because digital currency mining is just one of many factors that are involved. As far as that goes in July there may be a reduction in profitability with ethereum which could cause some people to stop and sell their graphics cards. I wouldn't get my hopes up that it would make much of a difference though.

If you can find a decent backorder price then I suggest hopping on that and just waiting your turn.
 
Just wondering again. Is there a way to calculate when supply catches up with demand. Here is what I mean.

How many "serious" gamers are out there? I'm defining this as someone who upgrades the GPU often.
How many of these serious gamers have already upgraded?
What is the total number of 3000 GPUs produced so far by Nvidia and 6000 series GPUs produced by AMD?
What is the current (and projected) volume of GPUs produced each week or month by both vendors?
How many GPUs have been bought by miners?

With this information it should be possible to predict when total manufacturing volumes are sufficient so that all serious gamers have been able to upgrade. Work backwards a bit,and maybe it's possible to guess when prices will come back down to earth.

OK, I'm just wondering. I AM NOT trolling.

Even if the numbers are just educated guesses, we might be able to derive dates to maybe a calendar quarter.

Did I leave out anything important?

There is no way to know for sure. People who played that stupid farming game on Facespace or whatever the hell that's called get counted as gamers. So do people who play Candy Crush on their phones.
Again, there is no way to know. I read somewhere that it was well over 500,000 from NVIDIA, but that's tough to verify. There is no central way to tally the cards sold through retailers or distributors.
No one knows.
No one knows.
No one knows.
 
The best way to tell is going to be when the ebay prices start dropping. Look at the current AMD CPU prices. The 5950x which is still hard to come by has sold listings in the $1000 range instead of $1200+. After ebay takes their cut, they are only making $50 or so. 5600x are selling at $300 or less. I'm thinking in a month or so, supply will have caught up with demand for all AMD CPUs.

Obviously GPUs are more in demand, but as the general population is able to get them, the number of people willing to pay scalper pricing is going to drop and the prices on ebay will fall to reasonable levels. Gamers looking for a single card for their system only have to win a Newegg shuffle once and then they won't pay inflated pricing, or if they pay a scalper, they are only doing it once.

If GPU mining profits tank (think July Ethereum upgrade), there will be plenty of used cards on the market. No one is going to be paying $2000+ for a 3080.
 
[[ ... ]]. Gamers looking for a single card for their system only have to win a Newegg shuffle once and then they won't pay inflated pricing, or if they pay a scalper, they are only doing it once.

If GPU mining profits tank (think July Ethereum upgrade), there will be plenty of used cards on the market. No one is going to be paying $2000+ for a 3080.
I tried the Newegg Shuffle, but they don't carry the card(s) I'm interested in.

July can't come soon enough.
 
I just need a GPU to finish this 5600x build. It's nice to see AMD CPU easier to get. Also, very nice to see people stop scalping the 5600x.
 
The best way to tell is going to be when the ebay prices start dropping. Look at the current AMD CPU prices. The 5950x which is still hard to come by has sold listings in the $1000 range instead of $1200+. After ebay takes their cut, they are only making $50 or so. 5600x are selling at $300 or less. I'm thinking in a month or so, supply will have caught up with demand for all AMD CPUs.

Obviously GPUs are more in demand, but as the general population is able to get them, the number of people willing to pay scalper pricing is going to drop and the prices on ebay will fall to reasonable levels. Gamers looking for a single card for their system only have to win a Newegg shuffle once and then they won't pay inflated pricing, or if they pay a scalper, they are only doing it once.

If GPU mining profits tank (think July Ethereum upgrade), there will be plenty of used cards on the market. No one is going to be paying $2000+ for a 3080.
Indeed the used market reacts faster than the new market, especially when it comes to scalper prices. When supply increases on Ebay, prices will trend down literally within a few hours. We saw this happen with the last 2 crypto crashes and it always takes much longer for changes to kick in at retail.

The most efficient way would be to use some kind of real-time 'Sold' price tracker, or to monitor the daily active listings of a particular card. Any improvement trend will be easily noticable. But it's going to be months from now at the earliest.
 
I'm t
Indeed the used market reacts faster than the new market, especially when it comes to scalper prices. When supply increases on Ebay, prices will trend down literally within a few hours. We saw this happen with the last 2 crypto crashes and it always takes much longer for changes to kick in at retail.

The most efficient way would be to use some kind of real-time 'Sold' price tracker, or to monitor the daily active listings of a particular card. Any improvement trend will be easily noticable. But it's going to be months from now at the earliest.
I'm the OP on this thread. I was hoping that there are people out there who are far more knowledgeable than I am. But it seems that nobody really knows. That said, the wisdom of the group seems to be that prices aren't coming down any time soon.
 
I was hoping that there are people out there who are far more knowledgeable than I am. But it seems that nobody really knows. That said, the wisdom of the group seems to be that prices aren't coming down any time soon.
Yup. Whatever anyone says here, it's pure conjecture, no matter how well informed. My advice: stop trying to buy a GPU, live with what you have - if it's newer than 2016, you're "fine" for a bit longer! I've stopped looking for GPUs and I've moved on to get a new monitor. I use a 95hz Pixio Px275hz IPS that I really enjoy, and a decade old 22" 1080p Dell. Looking to replace the latter (been my trusty backup monitor for so many years now!) with either 1) a 27" 144hz VA (the Gigabyte G27FC is so tempting at $210), 2) a 29" 200hz ultrawide (all gone, way overpriced currently) or 3) a 27" FALD/MiniLED whenever they come out later this year. 1 is most likely, because 2 so far don't have very good color (I'd rather keep it at %95 DCI-P3 like my Pixio, once you have good color it's hard to go back to sRGB) and 3 is very likely going to be crazy expensive until at least 2023.

Once that's figured out in the next few months (unless my very trigger happy finger clicks BUY on that Gigabyte, since I haven't really purchased anything for my PC in 12 months and it's starting to annoy me) then I can go back to GPU-land and see what the aftermath looks like. Especially exciting will be the ETH 2.0 platform upgrades, I'm hoping a bunch of cards will drop in price like crazy - don't need a 6000/3000 series, I'd happily get a 2000 series for cheap, the benefit of gaming at 1080p! And if that doesn't happen, Ampere at MSPR is still an acceptable option.

Meanwhile... no one knows, and we just keep each other entertained in this forum with our musings and theories :)
 
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When people go back outside, start to travel and work from the office. All digital financial markets will lose steam and demand for PC parts, stocks, housing etc. will fall.
People are just pumping cash into digital because there's nothing else to do i.e. NFTs.
 
Yup. Whatever anyone says here, it's pure conjecture, no matter how well informed. My advice: stop trying to buy a GPU, live with what you have - if it's newer than 2016, you're "fine" for a bit longer!

Once that's figured out in the next few months (unless my very trigger happy finger clicks BUY on that Gigabyte, since I haven't really purchased anything for my PC in 12 months and it's starting to annoy me) then I can go back to GPU-land and see what the aftermath looks like. Especially exciting will be the ETH 2.0 platform upgrades, I'm hoping a bunch of cards will drop in price like crazy - don't need a 6000/3000 series, I'd happily get a 2000 series for cheap, the benefit of gaming at 1080p! And if that doesn't happen, Ampere at MSPR is still an acceptable option.

Meanwhile... no one knows, and we just keep each other entertained in this forum with our musings and theories :)
My current GPU dates from about 2012.:cry:

Yes, it's all conjecture and we do keep each other entertained, but there is something to be said for "imformed conjecture." In the 1960s the RAND Corporation had to answer questions like, "Will the Russkies start a nuclear war?" They got panels of experts to discuss the issue and then vote. Look up "Delphi Method." See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_method
 
My current GPU dates from about 2012.:cry:

Yes, it's all conjecture and we do keep each other entertained, but there is something to be said for "imformed conjecture."
Oh ouch, I did not see that 660 in your signature. My advice, buy a GPU every 2 architectures (so, 3-4 years), even if it's not a fantastic deal.

And don't get me wrong, I love informed speculation! I mean, is there anything else we do on the [H]? It's a good way to keep informed, learn new things, and pass the time :)

It'll be curious to see what availability there is when the RTX 3050 TI comes out, considering those chips will be "tiny" in comparison to others. Perhaps it's even a respectable upgrade "spiritual successor" to the traditional x60 line. There's 0 question it'll be an upgrade for you, we'll see how much it improves on my 1060.
 
Oh ouch, I did not see that 660 in your signature. My advice, buy a GPU every 2 architectures (so, 3-4 years), even if it's not a fantastic deal.

And don't get me wrong, I love informed speculation! I mean, is there anything else we do on the [H]? It's a good way to keep informed, learn new things, and pass the time :)

It'll be curious to see what availability there is when the RTX 3050 TI comes out, considering those chips will be "tiny" in comparison to others. Perhaps it's even a respectable upgrade "spiritual successor" to the traditional x60 line. There's 0 question it'll be an upgrade for you, we'll see how much it improves on my 1060.
I’d expect it’s pricing to reflect the current market at the time it launches. It’s availability would also probably be the same as it is now unless all shortage issues are resolved by the time it launches.
 
Just wondering again. Is there a way to calculate when supply catches up with demand. Here is what I mean.

How many "serious" gamers are out there? I'm defining this as someone who upgrades the GPU often.
How many of these serious gamers have already upgraded?
What is the total number of 3000 GPUs produced so far by Nvidia and 6000 series GPUs produced by AMD?
What is the current (and projected) volume of GPUs produced each week or month by both vendors?
How many GPUs have been bought by miners?

With this information it should be possible to predict when total manufacturing volumes are sufficient so that all serious gamers have been able to upgrade. Work backwards a bit,and maybe it's possible to guess when prices will come back down to earth.

OK, I'm just wondering. I AM NOT trolling.

Even if the numbers are just educated guesses, we might be able to derive dates to maybe a calendar quarter.

Did I leave out anything important?
The pandemic causing an increase in electronics sales plus the industry was already on the verge of not being able to produce enough GPUs and CPUs anyway and AMD releasing so many products on the leftovers of 7nm at TSMC (Apple eating up the largest chunk of manufacturing capacity) has lead to the, I'm going to say it, "unprecedented times" of electronics shortages that won't get resolved overnight. AMD and Apple put in orders in advance, they couldn't have predicted this kind of demand when they negotiated their orders with TSMC. I don't expect the shortage or the prices to get better any time soon. Only when TSMC or other such wafer manufacturers build new fabs for increased production will anything change. TSMC is talking about building a fab in Nevada I think, and Samsung I think is looking at building a fab in Texas. Might be some hope in 2022...
 
The pandemic causing an increase in electronics sales plus the industry was already on the verge of not being able to produce enough GPUs and CPUs anyway and AMD releasing so many products on the leftovers of 7nm at TSMC (Apple eating up the largest chunk of manufacturing capacity) has lead to the, I'm going to say it, "unprecedented times" of electronics shortages that won't get resolved overnight. AMD and Apple put in orders in advance, they couldn't have predicted this kind of demand when they negotiated their orders with TSMC. I don't expect the shortage or the prices to get better any time soon. Only when TSMC or other such wafer manufacturers build new fabs for increased production will anything change. TSMC is talking about building a fab in Nevada I think, and Samsung I think is looking at building a fab in Texas. Might be some hope in 2022...
Arizona for TSMC, I think it is now - and the problem is that one (IIRC again) is slated for 5nm - and will take several years to build. This isn't something we can fix "fast"
 
Nvidia and AMD and Intel will continue to release new video cards. They ARE selling them. We just aren't getting them where we want them in our own hands.

R&D and the development cycle can not stop or be substantially delayed just because their target audience isn't getting the product. It's selling. Tech marches on and improvements are made.

The bizarro land situation is that most GAMERS who would have liked to have owned one of the current gen cards may have to skip this gen and maybe even NEXT get because they can't buy one at all. That's the bizarre part.

But new cards? You bet they'll keep designing and releasing new cards.
 
Nvidia and AMD and Intel will continue to release new video cards. They ARE selling them. We just aren't getting them where we want them in our own hands.

R&D and the development cycle can not stop or be substantially delayed just because their target audience isn't getting the product. It's selling. Tech marches on and improvements are made.

The bizarro land situation is that most GAMERS who would have liked to have owned one of the current gen cards may have to skip this gen and maybe even NEXT get because they can't buy one at all. That's the bizarre part.

But new cards? You bet they'll keep designing and releasing new cards.
Agree with what you said,with one exception. If the cards are selling to some market segment other than gaming (which appears to be the case), then that market segment can be considered the target audience.

Out of curiosity, how many design cycles from now will a 5 mm process be required? And will TSMC have their 5 mm fab ready in time?
 
I've basically been waiting around for prices to fall on the parts I want for 5 years. The situation really never got back to normal after Pascal, at least not for *70 or *80 cards. There were good deals on the 1060 and 2060 cards at times, but I wanted something a little less cut down and was hesitant to pay the $600+ price tag for anything much better than a 1060 seeing it as still somewhat inflated.

My practical advice is pretty much avoid buying a GPU if you can help it, and pay what it takes to get one if you absolutely need one. Run what you have into the ground, use integrated graphics if you can get away with it on PCs you won't use for gaming much, etc. Maybe even consider buying a console, or at least a prebuilt PC.

I think you might see the prices go back towards normal if another GPU launches, the problem is that you won't be able to trust the used market because a lot of people are trying to unload GPUs that have been "used up," so you would basically have to buy a new last-gen card very quickly after there's a price drop due to a next-gen card launch to get a reasonable price, and resist the temptation to get the newer card at that point because chances are the demand will be too high.

I do think things will get more reasonable very slowly over time, but I expect $900+ pricing for high-end graphics cards to remain a thing for a long time, especially on anything that doesn't have cut-down memory bandwidth. I would say that prices will probably be as good as they're going to get by the end of 2022, assuming there are no more "surprises" like in 2020, otherwise pricing could even get worse than it is now. A part of me is pessimistic enough that I'm wondering if people won't be paying $5000 for a GPU soon... I mean, look at how the pricing has always been on nVidia's Quadro lines. With Ampere, I heard they're starting to phase out the Quadro branding and are planning to call their professional cards RTX as well, and that blurring of the lines makes me nervous about them moving all their GPUs up into the workstation price points in the future. I've been anxious that companies would start charging anyone who wants to build a PC workstation prices for a long time now, and just quietly phase out the consumer/gamer-grade stuff over time. We may be on the verge of that with graphics cards.

I hope I'm wrong and that my predictions prove to be somewhat paranoid/pessimistic. But if I'm right, people might find themselves having to subscribe to cloud gaming services out of desperation and frustration with graphics card supply, as basically a few centralized server farms will have all the GPU power, and we'll be using thin clients with 5G and integrated graphics. It's basically the reverse of what happened when people moved away from mainframes to PCs... everything is going back to being centralized and subscription-based, with all the good hardware owned by a few entities that rent us access. Once that gets entrenched, the whole idea of an individual owning a graphics card will probably start to fade away. You just pay your monthly fee and someone else worries about it for you, and a lot of people will cheer it after all these years of frustration trying to buy overpriced graphics cards.
 
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until FTL tech is out cloud gaming wont be a thing. i would love for someone to explain how massive input lag would takeover gaming
 
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