I've been buying GPUs since a 3dfx V2 circa 1997/8. At no time have I ever seen "shortages" like this--even during past mining crazes the situation was not ever that you couldn't find the GPUs to buy no matter the price--it was that they were at most $200-$400 over MSRP. I thought that was robbery even then and waited on pricing to stabilize. Today we're seeing asking prices of $1500-$3500 for GPUs costing at MSRP $649-$1200/$1500--often 2x and 3x the total MSRPs, and many of these are not cheap at all even at MSRP! I have never seen it this bad.
All I know is that the shortages must have little to do with demand--because I've been looking for a 6800XT I could buy at any price for the past four months--I haven't found a single one available. Even those on Amazon priced by scalpers are obviously not in stock as they say about two weeks is the fastest they can ship it to you! That means they don't actually have any in stock but are hoping they will have one to send the customer in another couple of weeks! The AMD store should be bursting at the seams with Zen3 and RX6k's. It's not. Why not? Sell 1 to a customer, and then sell what's left to the scalpers and miners. A few 5800X's come in every few days and are gone quickly. If 6800XTs come in I always seem to miss them, somehow.
Zen2, taking upwards of 80%+ of all commercial retail CPU sales on Earth for the past 19 months or more, has never been in short supply. Zen 3 CPUs are being supplied in a spotty fashion, however, even though Zen2 has handily outsold Zen3. So why isn't Zen 3 available at the same or similar numbers to Zen 2? Furthermore, Zen 3 CPUs are more expensive, which also hurts the demand argument relative to Zen 2. Fact is, the supply of Zen 3 CPUs should be far more plentiful than it is atm. If supply was at the normal levels we saw last year.
I don't know, but one thing seems crystal clear to me and that is that these GPU and CPU shortages--for months, now--must be artificial. There just isn't that much demand for $579-$1500 GPUs--at MSRP--demand in those price ranges has never been high. These GPUs are not "sold out" because of high demand--something is artificially constricting the flow of GPUs right now--and to a lesser extent, CPUs.
I don't know what the political situation is in China, but what I do know is that under the past Washington administration supply was never this bad even though demand was actually higher because the GPUs and CPUs cost less! I don't agree with this analyst. There is no way it should take a year--because the problem is a supply shortage--not this gigantic demand. Hell, no--I've been "demanding" a 6800XT and I haven't found one yet I could drop into a cart and buy. Not one, anywhere--although I've looked every day 3-5 times a day from every source I know of. Trust me, not every person who plays 3d games wants to spend thousands on a GPU--not even half of that! The GPU sweet spot has always been $200-$300 for GPUs, and I very much doubt that has changed much if at all.
Look, if it takes a year to be able to stock enough product so that people can actually buy them--I don't see good tidings in store for either nVidia or AMD--over the next few quarters. It's not just a question of not meeting demand--the supply of GPUs and CPUs right now is far, far lower than any extant demand, even though that demand is lower than it was for the AMD 5K series GPUs and the nVidia RTX-2k series of GPU.
The last Washington administration was trying to bring chip production into the US so that we'd never have to experience these kinds of shortages--shortages that I believe have the Chinese government (and I do not mean Taiwan) behind them. It's clear something artificial is going on right now, and if any "analyst" disagrees I'd stipulate he doesn't know what he's talking about.
I didn't mean to go on about this--but honestly it's really beginning to piss me off. There's no point in advertising products for sale if you cannot supply them.
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