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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Sitting here with my 3080 that took months of daily checking. Feels good man.
Guess you never heard of Evga queue.
I’ve been on the EVGA queue since early October and have yet to get the ability to purchase.
which GPU brand is it ?
Got my 30 series card quite exactly after one month of ordering and that order was placed 2 mins after release
3090 Gang
5800x + 3090. Snagged just before Xmas. I watched a Twitch stream listing stock for a month to land these. I was trying for a 5900x + 3080, but more than happy with what I got.
I feel bad for those people still trying to get their hands on parts.
at what resolution you play fam ?
It took to long for me to get a 3080 so now ill just stick with 2 series untill 4 series come out. Not like theres anything im dying to play thats all that demanding anyway.
Luckily I received my RTX 3080 several months ago.
Man, I’m stuck with my Vega 64 and I guess it will be that way for a long time. Had my money ready to go for 6800 XT, but looks like that will never happen. Enjoy
Phew, managed to get an RTX 3080 FE for MSRP just a few weeks ago. Now to sell my old GTX 1080 for way more than it should be worth.
Nice and congrats. My 1080 is now in my arcade cab machine. 🙂
the sotage has nothing to do with covid
Been saying that forever and everyone is buying into the BS. Taiwan never shutdown and neither did China. The only idiots locking down anything is the West because they already sold our a$$e$ out and intend to make the east the primary source of manufacturing, while the idiots in the West gets enticed by stimulus cheques to stay home and pave the way for the destruction of or way of life. The East doesn’t need to close down because communism is already running rampant there. The West is the one that needs to be thought how to behave and that we should accept the new normal. “One of Us, one of us”…
It doesn’t profit Taiwan or China or Japan to manufacture more PC components and consoles if they struggle with shipping. That is a result of the Covid virus and there’s worse on the way due to a new strain of the virus. This strain is even more contagious and deadly.
The UK has curtailed visitors from abroad due to Covid.
“Travellers having to stay in quarantine hotels in England will be charged £1,750 for their stay.”
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has announced.
This seems to be a joke to you from the beginning. Maybe you’ve never lost a loved one due to this virus. Millions are already dead and many millions more will die due to Covid due to the new strain. Do you even wear a mask in public? Did you know that you can get the virus and show little or no symptoms from Covid but still spread it ?
damn…this really sucks. Had the whole world economy not being disrupted, then we won’t be witnessing such a situation.
But of course, not taking into account the Mining craze, which has already affected the GPU market before as well, but due to the global pandemic, this situation just got out of hand.
it has nothing to do with economy or pandemic, it has everything to do with miners buing everything and no company cares that only 10% of gaming cards are used by normal ppl. Blame scumbag miners and NV for not doing anything about it. At least in China they get GPU for mining without any hdmi etc ports, those are cheaper and let normal cards into market…
nv doing nothing about it? even if they did it will be useless. not defending nvidia but that’s how it is. for partners it is very hard to ignore direct deal with miner when they wiling to pay 30% over MSRP from the get go. that is pure profit that will go directly into their pocket instead of nvidia or retailers.
and miner will take everything normal card or not. and did you really think in china those miner only using mining specific card and not taking the normal GPU for their farm? XFX china sell all their RX5700 that mean for china market to miner. they did not care if it was mining specific card or not. they sell them ALL to miner. and then we see how desperate and absurd miner in china when they do thing like this:
https://videocardz.com/newz/hundreds-of-nvidia-geforce-rtx-30-gaming-laptops-spotted-in-a-mining-farm
Scalpers are the scum of the earth. These purchasing bots that use backdoors to gain access to purchasing before normal people can should be outright illegal.
The writing was on the wall well before Christmas that Q1 would become even worse, despite that, many sheeple and corps like AMD themselves insisted that supply would somehow, magically materialize. How rich…
https://youtu.be/lH58gUItQ4Y?t=9
Britbongs are now trying to legislate scalping. LMAO
https://www.techpowerup.com/278299/uk-parliament-members-aim-to-introduce-bill-to-fight-scalping-but-the-problem-is-a-complex-one
I’ve pretty much given up on buying anything tech wise this year as it’s a damn mess of a situation everywhere, and there’s no way in hell i’m going to pay any scalper.
With the ever increasing economic crisis and COVID-19 running rampant it seems like luxurious item such as gaming GPU is the last thing people think about.
People are basically home bound and bored. They are seeking entertainment. That’s one of the reasons for the shortage of PC components and consoles as well.
It is. But you can’t deny corporations wanting to capitalize on that and increase prices by creating false shortages. I seriously doubt the prices on GPUs will ever get to pre-2020 level.
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