The GPU Market: A Modern Wild West
Sigh.
I know the feeling, so do the rest of the tech enthusiasts all over the world - why the actual hell are graphic cards so unbelievably expensive, and so hard to obtain nowadays. If you have dwelled a little deeper into this issue, you know what’s up – global chip shortages, vital supply crunches, and the infamous crypto mining race, all leads up to the fact that GPUs nowadays are overpriced, and hard to come by.
 |
| This is crazy! |
Common things people would do to combat this, includes buying 2nd hand parts (Which I definitely recommend, check out an upcoming blog about how to secure parts for a budget rig) purchasing GPUs at cheaper prices, during discounts and promotions (Please do not take advantage of this, and resell them at higher prices, that is the absolute worst thing you could do to aggravate the problem) and finally, purchasing older generation GPUs that are away from the hungry hands of crypto miners.
So we got two things to talk about here, one I'll be addressing here, and the other one, in a future blog (Just so that this is easier to read, definitely not trying to up the views per page). GPU prices are purposely higher, and this is on part with both the supplier and the consumer. There are just 2 dominant firms in the GPU market, Nvidia, and AMD, and it is entirely up to them to regulate the supply, and so the demand. It is important to note the severe shortage of valuable materials necessary for GPUs, and the supply problem due to Covid-19, primarily. GPU manufacturers have overlooked this, and with every new and upcoming GPU, they do not stock up on these materials, but rather release them at low MSRPs (Basically the off-the-shelf price of a good), only for demand to catch up with low supply - and soon both sides begin to scalp the products.
Companies like Samsung and Apple, have products that depend on similar materials (Special emphasis on the phones they manufacture), but we've never heard of supply shortages for the new iPhone 13, or the those flip phones by Samsung. Why? Because they have decisively built up a stock of these resources, that are easily accessible, and so they got enough supply to meet demand. No problem. So why didn't the GPU manufacturers do this as well?
Well, its not entirely thier fault. Nvidia and AMD have the entire GPU market at thier grasp, there is practically no one else making these PC parts - and that is important to keep in mind. It is near impossible for these two companies to stock up in resources, when they are competing so vigorously with each other. With the case of phones, there are dozens of companies that manufacture them, and so there isn't much of a barrier, as faced with Nvidia or AMD.
| Possible future blog topic? |
But its not the supplier's fault entirely, no way - Nvidia and AMD are doing the best they can do solve this issue, such as making certain GPU models incompatible with crypto mining by decreasing the hash rate (Stay tuned for a crypto mining explanation blog), and by creating specially tailored cards for miners themselves. AMD feels especially optimistic in the fact that they believe these issues could be resolved within the year. I certainly hope so.
The true fault, lies within the hands of the miners themselves. Within days of the Nvidia's RTX 3090 rolling off the shelves, crypto miners brought them by the hundreds - in the effort to mine the heck out of them. The demand was crazy, and I'd go as far as to say that it was artificial demand - as the actual number of people actually buying the products were far little, than the quantity of products purchased - and heck, which PC gamer would buy 100 cards? Let alone 3?
It is for certain the fault of these miners, who literally steal cards away from people who need it more. And what good are the miners doing, apart from boosting the crypto industry, they are doing little to nothing, to help the struggling GPU manufacturers cope with the issue. There has been a drop in the value of leading cryptos like Bitcoin, and Ethereum, and this has for sure limited the enthusiasm associated with mining, as the incentive to do so has dropped by a little margin. To couple with this, more and more crypto currencies are moving from the Proof of Work method (Basically using processing power to validate transactions) to the Proof of Stake method, (Far too complicated to explain here, recommend checking out this). What this means is that in future, cryptos will soon phase out of utilizing ridiculous amounts of processing power, thus lowering the demand on the side of crypto miners. But this would happen in a few years, give or take. However, there is hope that prices are slowly stabilizing, check out this graph below:
 |
| A 3090 went as high as $3600!? |
As crazy as it sounds, even though I've heard people repeat it past 2 years, 2022 might see the end of this issue - and for once, Intel has got a new surprise up thier sleeve that I'm greatly excited for. Intel is set to release a new line of GPUs this year, the Intel Arc. An extremely ambitious project undertaken by Intel - in the effort of making an Nvidia / AMD level GPU - a hallmark for Intel for sure. It is rumored that Intel Arc would be the equivalent to Nvidia's 3000 series, and, AND, for once Intel is utilizing materials that won't see shortages anytime soon. Yeah, some people have 2nd thoughts about this, and whether or not this really is worth all the hype - but in my books, if Intel can manage to create GPU's that are at least within Nvidia's 2000 series, and for much cheaper prices that are not prone to scalping, and if they could reduce the hash rate by a ton - I'd pour all my cash left in purchasing one, once it releases.
Aight, what do you think? Any thoughts, please do mention them below - I'd love to read them. I know that this quite the long read, but I'm trying to say as much possible here to provide as much content for you guys; so I hope its worth it! Until next time...
Cheers!
- Vascal
Comments
Post a Comment