Nvidia is one of the largest technology companies in the world, and back in September last year many people stunned when it launched its new RTX 30 series graphics cards. This is because the new graphics cards delivered unprecedented performance for gaming. Actually, a RTX 3070 delivers up to twice the graphics horsepower as older, popular cards like the GTX 970, making the new cards a hot item for many PC gamers.
The thing is, it has been nigh on impossible to get hold of Nvidia’s new RTX cards. Last year, COVID-19 struck and Chinese factories ground to a halt, impacting production of PC-related components like video cards. And early this year, an international retailer said that scarcity of raw materials (a semiconductor shortage is making life tough for manufacturers this year) amongst other things would make getting graphics card difficult.
Also, Nvidia’s boss Jensen Huang mentioned last year how unprecedented demand for Nvidia’s hot new graphics card was having an impact too, while more recently the US-based company revealed that buying a graphics card would be a difficult task in the first half of 2021.
And it seems this now applies to the whole of 2021 – a year in which the COVID-19 epidemic has been going from bad to worse, and now a year in which gamers stuck at home will also have trouble getting hold of Nvidia’s latest graphics cards.
Speaking at the company’s annual Investor Day (via PC Gamer), the company’s chief financial officer Colette Kress said that demand will “exceed supply for much of this year”.
“Overall demand remains very strong and continues to exceed supply while our channel inventories remain quite lean. We expect demand to continue to exceed supply for much of this year. We believe we will have sufficient supply to support sequential growth beyond Q1”, said Kress.
Which is something that does not paint a rosy picture for gamers who were hoping to buy cards like the GeForce RTX 3080 this year, and they will likely have to wait longer or pay exorbitant prices on websites such as eBay. This is because scalpers have been using automated bots to get hold of stock as soon as it hits places like Amazon or Newegg (the greedy morons) in order to sell these at prices much higher than the MSRP.
There’s also the matter of Bitcoin’s renewed popularity: the cryptocurrency’s price has skyrocketed this year, and Nvidia’s graphics cards (especially the more powerful ones) are used by Bitcoin miners in their mining rigs.
Patience, then, will be a virtue for PC enthusiasts and gamers wanting to upgrade their machine with one of Nvidia’s new RTX 30 series cards, so it would be a great thing if the supply situation gets better sooner rather than later.
GeForce series 30 graphics card (Nvidia Corporation)