AMD and Nvidia are struggling to keep up with their Ryzen 5000, Radeon RX 6000 and GeForce RTX 30 processors. The market needs a lot more. It's not just about ordinary buyers, but business companies that assemble ready-made gaming computers also suffer greatly. Representatives of PCWorld spoke
with employees of several dozen companies . And the majority of market players described the shortage situation not just as terrible, but as “possibly the worst of all possible.” If any of the suppliers have new video cards, they are taken apart like hot cakes during the famine. At any price - much higher than MSRP.
Almost none of the assemblers of ready-made systems managed to agree on the supply of AMD Ryzen 5000, especially the older models, the 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X and the 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X. Business representatives say the shortage is so severe that these processors have never entered the market at all.
“We don't even have the opportunity to negotiate the cost of supplying new video cards. You can buy graphics accelerators at prices that are significantly higher than those that were announced as recommended by AMD itself. In general, the situation with the supply of components this fall was very ugly, ” said one of the PC builders.
PC vendors simply use older processors, such as the Ryzen 3000. As a result, even for them, demand has grown dramatically. Now demand for these processors is twice as high as a couple of months ago. A screenshot of Ryzen 5 3600XT is circulating over the network at a price of $ 599. That's fifty more than the 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X. The latter is an extremely rare artifact of the game world.
As far as can be understood, the manufacturers of chips and video cards were simply not ready for such a shortage. AMD and Nvidia say their new systems are extremely popular. For example, demand for the GeForce RTX 30 is about 40% higher than the company's other card models in the last quarter and last year.
The rarest visitors to store shelves are the GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is slightly more common, but it is now sold at a price that is twice the manufacturer's stated $ 399.
What is the problem?
PC builders can't figure out the reasons. There are some not very large factors, but they are not strong enough to increase demand in such a way. But Nvidia, as far as we know, even apologized to buyers, explaining that it cannot yet fully meet demand in its new systems.
This company, in particular, accuses Samsung of slowness in the production of the required volume of silicon wafers based on Ampere graphics processors. But the problem with GDDR6 has been discussed for a long time, so manufacturers may well have had time to prepare.
Other market players believe that Nvidia itself is to blame, which stopped production of GeForce RTX 20 models even before it was able to make sure that there were sufficient volumes of video cards supplied to the market. The company claims that it needs at least a couple of months to expand production to the required level.
Another problem is that due to the pandemic, many industries in different countries of the world are now only recovering or trying to recover.
Next comes the reason for the conflict between China and the United States. Container ships, which once transported thousands of tons of goods in both directions, now remain empty due to a dramatic decline in export volumes. The volume of deliveries of goods by air has also been reduced: commercial air transportation has decreased by about 50%.
However, it seems that the real reason is the explosive growth in demand for gaming computers. The factor that increases demand is a pandemic. People, being at home for many hours, play computer games. Well, modern games also require modern gaming hardware.
According to the suppliers of such systems, the demand for gaming PCs has grown by 300-400%. Yes, that's right, it's not a typo, just a few hundred percent. Accordingly, the manufacturers of processors and video cards were counting on one supply volume, but it turned out to be completely different.
Interestingly, there are no problems with Intel chips. The Core i9-9900K is now available in the US for as little as $ 320, and the Intel Core i9-10850K for $ 489. According to most vendors, the reason is that this company was able to maintain the supply chain, providing for increased demand.
Nvidia promises that in the fourth quarter the production of cards will exceed supply, so the situation will be corrected very soon.
What about 2021?
Let's be realistic: even if AMD and Nvidia quickly increase production, all these systems will not reach the market overnight.
As long as the deficit persists, prices will rise. Remember that gaming PC vendors are already buying gaming cards at over MSRP? This trend will continue in the near future.
All this will lead to the fact that the cost of gaming PCs will increase - by about $ 100-150 by next year.
