[SOLVED] GPU's Cost

[ScreperisLT]

Will the GPU cost normalize in the future? Are all of them overpriced because of miners? quarantine? or because of material shortage on earth?

 

[WS1995]

Will the GPU cost normalize in the future? Are all of them overpriced because of miners? quarantine? or because of material shortage on earth?

Material shortage, partial effects of COVID-19, and then topped off by greedy scalpers who buy several high end cards for perhaps £500-£700 each, keep one for themselves, and stick the rest on eBay for anywhere from £1,300 to £2,500.

Silicon is in short supply at the moment. I'm waiting on an iPad Pro from my mobile network, the order was placed 3 weeks ago and they've still not given an ETA of stock. All to do with material shortage, for the iPad it's to do with the fact that the hardware used in the LIDAR scanner is in short supply, for the GPU's, it's mainly the silicon that's in short supply. It's not just GPU's though, other things are affected as well.

I ended up buying my PC as a pre-built with a 3070 in, because I couldn't find a 3080 anywhere for less than £1,500. And I didn't want to join the back of a long back order queue and be waiting for months for it.

With the current climate, it's been said that supply levels of current graphics card won't catch up with demand, and prices won't return to anything close to normal, until possibly early to mid 2022.

 

[Newtonius]

All of the above. The price will stabilize but measures need to be taken first - the whole mining, resource shortage, pandemic all of it came at once and extremely quickly. Demand surged 3x for electronics and international trade has changed a little making things even worse. So in time things will stabilize (estimated half way into 2022 to even 2023) but we don't know exactly when and how well it will stabilize. Right now, the main demand for graphics card comes from miners and scalpers. Gamers are an obvious source of demand but not as much. The real issue is the shortage of semi-conductors, which you cna imagine numerous major manufacturing companies that RELY on microprocessors are trying to buy in bulk straining the supply even more. Overall, it's a real mess.

 

[bccorrupt]

Just some interesting extra information. Read an article recently about the microprocessor shortage being so bad that Chevrolet has temporarily stopped putting the system into SUVs and pickups that reduces cylinder use(drops from 8 to 6 or 4 under light highway use) just to save a few chips. The whole chip issue is that bad.

 

[hotaru.hino]

A few factors that exacerbated the problem:

• There was a huge spike in demand for computers, stemming from people who can work from home realizing they need a new computer to people taking up new hobbies in the form of electronic entertainment.
• There's a total of three companies that can produce state-of-the-art chips:
  • Intel: they technically can, they just can't do it in high volume and they only produce their own stuff anyway
  • Samsung: Though they're not as advanced as the others
  • TSMC: Which is the most advanced and thus, all of the computer/tablet/smartphone manufacturers go to them

The whole thing with the chip shortage from say car manufacturers and the like was they anticipated a drop in demand from the pandemic, so they ordered fewer chips. Except demand went up and since their orders were placed way in advanced, everyone else soaked up the capacity they didn't use and they have to wait their turn like everyone else.

Another thing to watch to also get an idea of the situation:

 

[Joseph_138]

It took 2 years the last time this happened, because ASIC mining rigs became more powerful than video cards. ASIC's fell out of favor when more powerful video cards came out again. There is a new generation of ASIC miners in development now that will deliver more hashes than video cards, again. That's when you'll see the market flooded with video cards and prices come back down. The new generation of ASIC miners will be more energy efficient than video cards, so more profitable to operate.