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

x509 said:
So I have to wonder. If B&H Photo, https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Graphic-Cards/ci/6567/N/3668461602, can do waitlists for products, why can't Newegg or Amazon sellers do that also? Because they would rather gouge us by feeding the beast?
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Shopblt does waitlists. What happens is you end up with thousands of people in line, for cards that only ship a couple hundred per month. The end result is clear, only the very first run of people get their cards and no one else ever gets a thing (I am in that category.)
 
The simple fact of it is, for those in the US, the only hope of getting a GPU at anything resembling a sane price is if you live relatively near a Micro Center and are willing to camp the place. The nearest store location to me is a 3.5 hour drive away. That's not too far to travel if you were certain to score a GPU, but it's way too much for only the chance of getting one.
 
Shortages in the manufacturing sector due to covid, too much demand driven by people who discovered gaming, water restrictions for production facilities.
The list goes on and on....
What is weird, is hearing the steps people will take to get one.
Christ! this has become an addiction for some.
Why the heck would anybody drive for hundreds of miles or camp out in front of a store (with no guarantee...sometimes in freezing weather...and for days) for a videocard.
The whole thing is very strange to me.
It is truly like a drug addiction.
 
Saabjock said:
Shortages in the manufacturing sector due to covid, too much demand driven by people who discovered gaming, water restrictions for production facilities.
The list goes on and on....
What is weird, is hearing the steps people will take to get one.
Christ! this has become an addiction for some.
Why the heck would anybody drive for hundreds of miles or camp out in front of a store (with no guarantee...sometimes in freezing weather...and for days) for a videocard.
The whole thing is very strange to me.
It is truly like a drug addiction.
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It wasn't just manufacturing that got hit by COVID, shipping got knocked out worse. They couldn't crew the cargo ships, those ships are insanely expensive to maintain so many companies simply went under. That's going to take years to fix.
x509 said:
So I have to wonder. If B&H Photo, https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Graphic-Cards/ci/6567/N/3668461602, can do waitlists for products, why can't Newegg or Amazon sellers do that also? Because they would rather gouge us by feeding the beast?
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One is a real official company the others are just vendors. Doing waitlists is passing up profits for small retailers that need them, that's capitalism!
 
arnemetis said:
Shopblt does waitlists. What happens is you end up with thousands of people in line, for cards that only ship a couple hundred per month. The end result is clear, only the very first run of people get their cards and no one else ever gets a thing (I am in that category.)
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I can verify this. I've been on a ShopBLT waitlist for months and they keep pushing out the date claiming manufacturer availability. It would keep creeping out another month and then another and then another. Last update it said it would be in October. I might just cancel it.
 
x509 said:
So I have to wonder. If B&H Photo, https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Graphic-Cards/ci/6567/N/3668461602, can do waitlists for products, why can't Newegg or Amazon sellers do that also? Because they would rather gouge us by feeding the beast?
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Because the list are too long and to make matters even worse everyone is going to go on every list. According to a recent jayz2cents vid some unnamed company has a waitlist of over 1.5 miliion people, you do the tmath when you will get one in that case.
 
The only true fix is a reduction in demand and/or an increase in supply. When that happens is guesswork at this point. Hold onto your hats.
 
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Riptide_NVN said:
The only true fix is a reduction in demand and/or an increase in supply. When that happens is guesswork at this point. Hold onto your hats.
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Yeah, I've reduced my personal demand. I found out that you can change some of those "ultra" settings to "very high" and games still look fine! Who knew!
 
Everything down 20%+
Could be very soon where ETH drops below $1k
 
The crash started with his tweets. In any case, if it does hit the basement floor, you'll find out soon enough if the whole shortage was really due to everyone's favorite scapegoat or if there is more to it.

And if it does hit the basement floor then let this be yet another lesson for everyone here that these boom/busts are a cycle and demand driven from them is not a permanent state of affairs.
 
Riptide_NVN said:
The crash started with his tweets. In any case, if it does hit the basement floor, you'll find out soon enough if the whole shortage was really due to everyone's favorite scapegoat or if there is more to it.

And if it does hit the basement floor then let this be yet another lesson for everyone here that these boom/busts are a cycle and demand driven from them is not a permanent state of affairs.
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Crypto mining profits are still way too good to affect card scarcity right now. It usually takes 3 weeks or more before any dips start being reflected on the used graphics card marketplace in my experience, and we are nowhere near that in anyway. This setup costs about $4 in electricity per day.
Here are my eight ampere cards right now on nicehash.
3, 3060ti
2, 3070
3, 3080
1621425716885.png


Even if they were only making $60 per day as whattomine stats relays is more expected for dedicated ETH mining- there is a whole lot of room to play before only hitting the $4 cost of electricity - which is where I fully stopped mining in 2019 (when my GPU mining was just in parity with expense I bailed). My ampere cards paid themselves off in less than three months of mining. You can wager demand will still remain high until July’s ETH EIP 1559 and then we’ll see from there. The EIP 1559 effects will take a month or two to settle out. My gut says by late August/Sept timeframe the used GPU market will be seeing more reasonably priced ampere cards, and new cards will start becoming more available on the store shelf. I suspect when EIP 1559 hits in July, ETH mining profits will probably half. And the other coins besides ETH will have to relieve some of that surplus ETH hashing power. There isn’t another coin financial market/ecosystem currently that can support that influx of hash rate. Mining profits will further fall throughout the crypto space due to more competition across the whole board. At current pricing, half profitability will still be reasonably profitable against electricity, but no longer the current “scoop up any ampere card you can find” up to 2x-3x MSRP level profitable.

As you mentioned BTC price is the tide that controls a lot of this speculation. If BTC nosedives, so traditionally will everything else in the crypto space. If BTC shoots up again, it’ll drag everything with it, and we may not see a downturn on mining interest or card availability at all until Nvidia and AMD intentionally cripple mining performance - or asics come back into high availability and comparable pricing. In 2017 Bitmain offered a dozen different ASICs. Now they offer one at their website. ASIC options have declined, and haven't had the time to spin production back up again. They will be back if Crypto prices stay high and create the market demand. ASICs would also help lessen the demand for gaming GPUs.
 
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oldmanbal said:
Note to self: Never update drivers for my 3090 ever again. . .just in case. . .
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It shouldn't effect the current GPUs. They are "LHR" cards. It would open them up to class action lawsuits if they did it for all cards.
 
From an article I read a few min ago:

"(Bloomberg) -- Shortages in the semiconductor industry, which have already slammed automakers and consumer electronics companies, are getting even worse, complicating the global economy’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Chip lead times, the gap between ordering a chip and taking delivery, increased to 17 weeks in April, indicating users are getting more desperate to secure supply, according to research by Susquehanna Financial Group. That is the longest wait since the firm began tracking the data in 2017, in what it describes as the “danger zone.”

Sam
 
kirbyrj said:
I can verify this. I've been on a ShopBLT waitlist for months and they keep pushing out the date claiming manufacturer availability. It would keep creeping out another month and then another and then another. Last update it said it would be in October. I might just cancel it.
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Same here. been on the shopblt list for months. Eventually they even cancelled two of my orders due to the card being discontinued :(
 
dthree said:
Same here. been on the shopblt list for months. Eventually they even cancelled two of my orders due to the card being discontinued :(
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Yeah, that's what I think is going to happen. They are going to change out all of the 3080's for the LHR variant and stop making the OG 3080, and then the part number I ordered won't exist.
 
kirbyrj said:
Yeah, that's what I think is going to happen. They are going to change out all of the 3080's for the LHR variant and stop making the OG 3080, and then the part number I ordered won't exist.
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It seems like the thing to do would be to e-mail the customer and give them the option to change or cancel their order.
 
JSHamlet234 said:
It seems like the thing to do would be to e-mail the customer and give them the option to change or cancel their order.
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Not going to happen with ShopBLT though. They will sell whatever cards they get in, so they don't need to waste the time and manpower on small frys buying single cards like me.
 
jlbenedict said:
Is this just another drop from Musk Tweeting again lol
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That may have been the catalyst, hopefully it continues trending downward. I'll see if I have any better luck getting one next time Best Buy stock drops which will probably be Wednesday or Thursday of next week.
 
madpistol said:
The chip shortage is real. It's also hit the automotive industry as well.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/07/chip-shortage-is-starting-to-have-major-real-world-consequences.html
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The automotive industry is a little different.
1. They cancelled their orders at the beginning of the pandemic and are at the back of the queue, trying to climb back up.
2. They are on older process nodes that aren't the same as gpus.
3. Their volumes are smaller than consumer electronics companies and have less buying power as far as fabs are concerned.

A chip shortage, but for a few different reasons.
 
rolling_tiger said:
The automotive industry is a little different.
1. They cancelled their orders at the beginning of the pandemic and are at the back of the queue, trying to climb back up.
2. They are on older process nodes that aren't the same as gpus.
3. Their volumes are smaller than consumer electronics companies and have less buying power as far as fabs are concerned.

A chip shortage, but for a few different reasons.
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Definitely different, but I think the point is that chip shortages aren't a phenomenon unique to GPUs.
 
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TaintedSquirrel said:
Total RTX 3080 Ebay listings are up 35% since yesterday morning.
I will keep you posted.
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Interesting. I wonder why people are starting to sell their 3080 already. Still very profitable - and will be for another two months at least!
 
In this context, listings going up means Nvidia has ramped production, miners are selling off, or existing prices have crossed a tolerance threshold. Either way it means prices will trend down (More supply and/or less demand).

However it will take probably a week of monitoring data to know if there's an actual trend. It could just be a handful of panic sellers.
 
Some blame can be given to crypto but overall I don't think people understand how f'ing fast tech is moving these days and there is so much of it too. And it's gonna be moving even more faster this decade than last, get ready for flying cars and buses probably by next decade. Won't be like Back to the Future or Blade Runner, it'll be automated flying. GM already teased flying cars last year. Tesla is involved with automated flying tech too.

This is really an opportunity for new manufactureres to step up and fill the gaps in demand.

https://dronelife.com/2021/01/18/cadillac-flying-car-gm-unveils-evtol-concept/
 
Sir Beregond said:
Definitely different, but I think the point is that chip shortages aren't a phenomenon unique to GPUs.
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This is a weird statement. Shortages aren't unique to toilet paper either. GPU shortages, the topic of the thread, has a much higher demand ceiling than electronic components for automotive. It is beyond issues caused by COVID 19 restrictions and forecasting.
 
F buying a used GPU. GDDR6X is bad enough as it is, the last thing anyone should want is a card that's been mined with its heat issues; let alone 0 warranty for the inevitable red light of death.

Hard pass. Might even wait for the 4xxx personally.. my 1080Ti just needs another year of life. Hope the prices tank, and I hope the miners lose money. $BTC to zero baby!
 
EVGA warranties are transferrable, 3 years from their warehouse ship date. It's worth the risk as long as the prices are good.
 
rolling_tiger said:
The automotive industry is a little different.
1. They cancelled their orders at the beginning of the pandemic and are at the back of the queue, trying to climb back up.
2. They are on older process nodes that aren't the same as gpus.
3. Their volumes are smaller than consumer electronics companies and have less buying power as far as fabs are concerned.

A chip shortage, but for a few different reasons.
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I would suggest to you that substrate supply is the current issue there more than anything else. That and onboard power supply components. You would surprised how many of those are shared with video cards.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
EVGA warranties are transferrable, 3 years from their warehouse ship date. It's worth the risk as long as the prices are good.
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There are caveats. If you buy a used card in warranty, have them print out a receipt of some sort even if it is through Paypal. They won't do warranty work unless there is a receipt in your name.
 
With cars you can just buy an another vehicle if they're holding you out for too long. Second hand market also floats there much more than new. Some companies use the same shifters for instance out of different brand vehicles. Lots of different parts are available there, it's not as similar as computer components. Global economy with the pandemic affected a lot of things though, that goes beyond just cars and graphics cards.
 
Hallyday said:
Some companies use the same shifters for instance out of differene brand vehicles.
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Shifter ain't so bad. Doug Demuro just put out a review of an older Ferrari that used the same center console infotainment system as a Chrysler!
 
FrgMstr said:
I would suggest to you that substrate supply is the current issue there more than anything else. That and onboard power supply components. You would surprised how many of those are shared with video cards.
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I can see it at work. We're seeing a drop in business, but the big dogs in the industry still have their product lines on schedule.
 
They probably get their parts from the same OEMs, which doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. It's the same case with some PC parts as well. Glorious and Ajazz both use the same factory to make the O / AJ390 mice. But Glorious gauges up the price because of the brand recognition. In fact, the Ajazz even comes with a better sensor (3389 instead of 3360).
 
rolling_tiger said:
I can see it at work. We're seeing a drop in business, but the big dogs in the industry still have their product lines on schedule.
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I had word not to long ago that the automakers had bid up some smaller power components up by 25X. Not that big of a deal when the finished product sells for tens of thousands of dollars, however an issue when it sells for $800.
 
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