As expected there is more bad news for gamers this year as well. We all know by now how the covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the whole economy of the world, and it has been nearly impossible to buy any gaming GPU or CPU at least at the minimum MSRP rate set by companies.
We also know by now that Scalping has become one of the most frustrating things to happen lately, which in turn has affected and disrupted the whole PC hardware and the console gaming market as well. Scalpers had the opportunity to buy a product for the sole purpose of just making a profit out of it, and more specifically for selling it at a much higher price than the initial MSRP.
Due to the Covid-19 global pandemic, many customers, gamers, enthusiasts and others have been forced to stay indoors, work/play from home, and so because of this, the demand for the latest gaming and other hardware accessories has seen an unprecedented growth recently.
On top of that, the astronomical rise in the price of cryptocurrency has started another “Mining craze” resulting in severe GPU shortages and price hikes lately. Sadly, this whole situation is not going to improve anytime soon, because according to a latest report coming via one European hardware retailer Alternate, Nvidia RTX gaming cards will be even more difficult to grab.
The retailer which operates in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, recently spoke with Nvidia about the GPU availability and they have confirmed that throughout the first quarter of this year, the GPU availability and the stock situation isn’t going to improve.
The demand continues to outstrip supply thus leading to a global shortage of these gaming cards. This is going to get worse by Q1 2021, which certainly is bad news for gamers.
As reported by Tom’s Hardware, the European hardware retailer Alternate spoke with Nvidia about these cards, with the following situations being outlined by them:
- RTX 3090: Very few deliveries, but only a few open orders
- RTX 3080: Very few cards coming with many open orders
- RTX 3070: Few cards incoming, but few open orders
- RTX 3060 Ti: Very few cards coming, and a moderately high amount of open orders
As you can see from the above data, due to a high number of open orders and very few card deliveries from distributors, the RTX 3080 and RTX 3060 Ti GPUs are going to be even more difficult to grab. You might have to wait in a queue in order to grab one of these cards.
The RTX 3070 and RTX 3090 cards on the other hand might have a shorter waiting list, given these are not that popular or in high demand among gamers. But apart from the demand outstripping supply, the Chinese New Year, and very limited availability of raw materials for making these new cards are the two other major factors for the shortage of these GPUs.
Nvidia has been simply unable to procure enough raw materials for the GPU production, mainly because of the shortages further up the whole supply chain. As you may already know, both the GDDR6 and GDDR6X memory types are in very high demand, however, other components like VRMs, capacitors, and PCBs, can also impact the supply of finished GPUs.
Some factories are also going to be closed for one or two weeks, when the Chinese New Year will start on February 12th. This will further contribute to manufacturing shortages.
Even though we are talking about a European retailer here, the situation in the US and even other countries is going to be the same, since most of them have the same production line, if not all.
Lastly, as Tom’s Hardware reported, “one Dutch retailer Megekko is also filtering open orders and canceling and crediting those with multiple GPUs per order to try and weed out scalpers.”
So there you have it. The whole GPU availability/stock situation isn’t going to improve at least in Q1 2021, which will further increase the price of these cards, making it nearly impossible to buy them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this trend also applies to AMD’s RDNA 2 GPU lineup as well, and it further continues to Q2 and Q3 as well. Sad times to be a gamer more like? But I digress.
Stay tuned for more tech news!
Hello, my name is NICK Richardson. I’m an avid PC and tech fan since the good old days of RIVA TNT2, and 3DFX interactive “Voodoo” gaming cards. I love playing mostly First-person shooters, and I’m a die-hard fan of this FPS genre, since the good ‘old Doom and Wolfenstein days.
MUSIC has always been my passion/roots, but I started gaming “casually” when I was young on Nvidia’s GeForce3 series of cards. I’m by no means an avid or a hardcore gamer though, but I just love stuff related to the PC, Games, and technology in general. I’ve been involved with many indie Metal bands worldwide, and have helped them promote their albums in record labels. I’m a very broad-minded down to earth guy. MUSIC is my inner expression, and soul.
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