There’s an old, increasingly unfunny joke among PC builders that pokes fun at the infamously volatile pricing of new parts: “When’s the best time to build a PC? The week after you do it.” Now it’s looking like the best time might not be for another few months. The good news for stateside friends that this hasn’t immediately resulted in on-the-shelf prices shooting up as well, but it wouldn’t be a surprise as manufacturers start feeling the squeeze. President’s 25% tax on goods imported from China no longer gives an exemption to graphics cards and motherboards. This won’t affect me as I’m in the UK, but the outgoing U.S. In short, we could be seeing a repeat of the 2017 graphics card shortage, when a sustained cryptocurrency goldrush - for those mining operations that still benefit from GPU power - depleted stocks and sent prices skyrocketing. Gaming graphics cards are instrumental in crypto mining, so when Bitcoin and other such digital money recently boomed, the already-strained supply lines for new GPUs were overwhelmed completely, as prospective miners looked to snap up both old and new models to mine as much as possible. One of the biggest driving forces looks to be that old nemesis of affordable PC hardware: cryptocurrency mining. The mining boom and rising pricesĪnother reason to take comfort in my loss of $1,499 is that GPU prices are likely headed upward anyway. But there isn’t, and he won’t, no matter how much fanart I draw of it. Is it so bad to spend some extra cash just to end this exhausting cycle of checking, missing out, checking, missing out? Maybe if there was some hope that any day now, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang would ride over the hill on a mighty green-and-grey stallion, a million RTX 3080s lined up behind him. But when you hear these kinds of timeframes, which are surely best-case scenarios anyway, it would be a cold-blooded PC owner who wouldn’t lose heart. Obviously, no-one truly needs a new graphics card right this instant, and my inability to get more 60 frames per second in Horizon Zero Dawn is not an actual ailment. Whatever the cause, don’t expect a fix anytime soon: The Verge reported that supply won’t meaningfully increase until late April.ĪMD’s Dr Lisa Su, meanwhile, has said that the Radeon line’s own component shortages will continue their knock-off effect on the cards themselves for the entire first half of 2021. Nvidia has blamed the slow production of RTX 30 models on numerous constraints, including the low yield of the 8nm Samsung nodes and a shortage of GDDR6 memory used for its latest graphics cards. First, some specifics on those AMD and Nvidia developments.
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