# Why are high end GPU's out of Stock?



## Outback Bronze (Nov 27, 2020)

Hi guys,

I'm just trying to understand/figure out why all recently released high end GPU's are out of stock?

Has it got something to do with COVID, supply & demand, not enough production numbers, more PC gamers or something else?

I cant remember the last time recently released GPU's were this hard to find from both camps. Its driving prices up too. Is this going to be the norm for latest released high end GPU's?

Was looking at getting myself an Xmas present but not sure it gonna happen : (

Please enlighten me...


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## Khonjel (Nov 27, 2020)

Whatever they may officially say, it's just supply issue. Nvidia because they are using Samsung fab which reportefly has worse yields and an exotic memory called GDDR6X of which Samsung is the only supplier.

AMD because they're supplying the Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS5, Ryzen 5000 CPU, Ryzen 3000 CPU, EPYC server CPU, MI professional GPU, Threadripper 3000 CPU and now Radeon 6000 series from one fab, TSMC. And it isn't as if AMD is the only one using TSMC's 7nm production. Qualcomm, Huawei, Apple are still eating some of TSMC's total 7nm output.


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## Mussels (Nov 27, 2020)

W1zzard got given them all by santa, for being such a good boy.


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## R-T-B (Nov 27, 2020)

Khonjel said:


> and an exotic memory called GDDR6X of which Samsung is the only supplier.



Micron.  Micron is the only supplier.

At any rate, this is a global crisis due to COVID.  Anyone telling you otherwise is a fool, and will be in for a shock come future launches as well.  We'd all best prepare for the worst.


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## Mussels (Nov 27, 2020)

Higher demand (more people at home)
Lower supply (less air travel = slower supply of components, meaning slower production)


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## Hugis (Nov 27, 2020)

dunno how true this is ?

Can't buy a new Ampere GPU? That's because NVIDIA sold them to miners | TweakTown


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## TheLostSwede (Nov 27, 2020)

No shortage of high-end cards here.
At least nine RTX 3090 cards in stock in just one online shop.




__





						PChome 線上購物
					






					24h.pchome.com.tw
				




This one has at least seven RTX 3080 cards in stock.





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					www.sinya.com.tw
				




All at the proper retail pricing too.

I guess part of the reason for that is that 3090's cost more than a lot of people's monthly wages here...


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## aQi (Nov 27, 2020)

From where I understand its due to too many scalpers.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 27, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> Micron.  Micron is the only supplier.
> 
> At any rate, this is a global crisis due to COVID.  Anyone telling you otherwise is a fool, and will be in for a shock come future launches as well.  We'd all best prepare for the worst.




I think it would be interesting to see how silicon wafers are made, and the raw resources where it is all mined, the entire process before the wafer hits the factory at TSMC, etc.  I have a strong feeling this process is going to cost a ton more to accomplish in the future, either from shortages, lack of quality control, workers, or climate change issues. This may very well be the last console generation for one of those reasons alone, I don't know, we will see.  They already announced wafer prices going up 21% next year. It's only going to keep increasing.


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## Rei (Nov 27, 2020)

At first it was scalpers combined with low initial supply. After the restock, aggressive consumer demand gobbled them all up. Now there should still be some in stock if you know where to find them.


lynx29 said:


> This may very well be the last console generation for one of those reasons alone, I don't know, we will see.


I dunno if that will be the case. The next "next" gen is still some years away. Shortly before that time, economic pressure along with other related issue could have recover... Hopefully anyway....


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## birdie (Nov 27, 2020)

> For the quarter in review, Nvidia sold at least $175 million worth of new generation GPUs to ethereum miners, helping the outperformance, according to a note from RBC Capital Markets analyst Mitch Steves. The analyst had guided sales to miners to come in at $150 million for the quarter.
> 
> Steves noted that the upcoming network upgrade of the Ethereum blockchain, also known as Ethereum 2.0, which is scheduled to take place sometime in December, demands that miners switch over to more efficient mining hardware. Nvidia’s new Ampere GPU chips are thought to meet that need.



Source.


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## Outback Bronze (Nov 27, 2020)

Mussels said:


> W1zzard got given them all by santa



Well this is the problem isn't it. All these reviews and not one card to be had. A bit frustrating. 

I remember the days when a card came out and I could actually go purchase the thing. 

Can anybody here remember any releases like this? Pretty sure I've never had this problem.

Its been six weeks now and not a 3080 in sight @ RRP.  I hope the 6800's don't suffer the same fate but I'm not liking my chances.

I'm generally putting this problem down to covid. Seems things aren't normal..


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## Sovsefanden (Nov 27, 2020)

Demand is way higher than Supply (and this wont change anytime soon)

Covid19 means millions of people are staying at home, they are bored and wants to play games, so many are upgrading their rigs.
- Covid19 means that shipping is absolute hell

GPU Mining is relevant again with Ethereum 2.0, Ampere is good perf/value for this, espeially 3060 Ti and 3070 will be (best perf per watt) - PROBABLY AMD 6800/6700 too (undervolted and underclocked).

Cyberpunk is coming, biggest game release in years, people are upgrading

Sadly this probably will continue deep into 2021, according to several retailers

Many of this affects ALL HARDWARE, including TV's, headsets/headphones, consoles (next-gen sold out and most people won't recieve before next year).


Soooooooooo glad I got a 3080 4 days after release for 699 right now!! Some people can expect to wait MONTHS and MONTHS for a new GPU (REGARDLESS of model)

The popular custom cards will be almost IMPOSSIBLE to get, because thousands and thousands are waiting for these.

I know a guy who recieved a 3080 EAGLE from Gigabyte last night, ordered on release, one of the lesser popular cards. Imagine the waiting time on the popular ones then...


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## authorized (Nov 27, 2020)

Aqeel Shahzad said:


> From where I understand its due to too many scalpers.


Scalpers are just an awful consequence of vastly insufficient supply.


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## Jetster (Nov 27, 2020)

All the above

People that insist on paying the inflated price also part of the problem


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## mb194dc (Nov 27, 2020)

Multiple reasons, covid pandemic, console release taking fab capacity, manufacturers trying to clear stock of older cards, mining. Probably the worst time ever to upgrade at the moment. Personally sitting on 1080p and will wait 12 months before even thinking about moving up. 

Very good chance the situation is radically different by mid next year. AMD likely to go for market share and drive prices down, eventually. Very uncertain what happens with global economy generally. Lots of hope around vaccines though that doesn't necessarily get realised. 

Which could mean a massive further crash and / or lockdowns. So quite uncertain outlook to put it mildly.


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## Rei (Nov 27, 2020)

authorized said:


> Scalpers are just an awful consequence of vastly insufficient supply.


While that could be true, I doubt that even scalpers knew of limited supply in stock. If anything, they are the primary reason for stock shortage at the start, as I've mentioned before.


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## FinneousPJ (Nov 27, 2020)

Outback Bronze said:


> Hi guys,
> 
> I'm just trying to understand/figure out why all recently released high end GPU's are out of stock?
> 
> Has it got something to do with COVID, supply & demand, not enough production numbers, more PC gamers or something else?


All of the above!


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## xrobwx71 (Nov 27, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> All at the proper retail pricing too.


Is that 22000 yuan?



Outback Bronze said:


> Hi guys,
> 
> I'm just trying to understand/figure out why all recently released high end GPU's are out of stock?
> 
> ...






There are plenty in stock on ebay for 2x 3x 4x the retail price. (USD)  You can even buy an image (picture) of the card for $850.00.


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## Arctucas (Nov 27, 2020)

Greed.


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## TheLostSwede (Nov 27, 2020)

xrobwx71 said:


> Is that 22000 yuan?


Yes, if you read it as money, not RMB. It's NTD, New Taiwan Dollars. Taiwan is not China and doesn't use RMB.


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## droopyRO (Nov 27, 2020)

Maybe those cards getting replaced will find their way on to the second hand market.


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## EarthDog (Nov 27, 2020)

lol, and someone said only 9,999 cards were out or something... If these sold at $999 each, that's 175,000 units right here.


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## kruk (Nov 27, 2020)

Outback Bronze said:


> Can anybody here remember any releases like this? Pretty sure I've never had this problem.



There were other high end GPU shortages in the past (not counting the mining craze). For example the high end card shortage in 2004 (source1, source2). Back then, nVidia launched the Geforce 6800 Ultra prematurely, and ATI followed with Radeon X800XT PE. Both cards had availability issues for a long time ... It looks like the history repeats itself, as the situation now is very similar ...


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## JustAnEngineer (Nov 27, 2020)

There was pent-up demand  because of people doing more gaming at home, "mining" schemes to support cryptocurrencies required by the hugely increased demands of ransomware criminals, etc. but there is also a demand effect because the new GPUs are just that good.  The current generation of GPUs offers an improvement in performance, capability and especially bang-for-the-buck compared to previous generations.  This makes demand for the newest GPUs higher and reduces demand for previous generations.  NVidia and its board partners anticipated a drop in demand for Turing and quit producing those cards months ago, but they did not succeed in ramping up Ampere GPU production to satisfy demand.

We got new hardware generations from NVidia and AMD at the same time.  AMD is competitive with NVidia at the high end for the first time in several years, causing NVidia to lower list prices that they had set extremely high in the previous two generations in the absence of high-end competition.  NVidia also moved to Samsung's new 8 nm fabrication process node, allowing significant performance improvement for Ampere vs. Turing.  AMD was already on TSMC's efficient 7 nm node with their Radeon RX 5000 series, but Radeon RX 6000 is a massive step up in performance and offers ray-tracing for the first time.

Thus, everyone wants GeForce RTX 3000 or Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards and doesn't want a previous generation.

Honestly, if either side could get their house in order and ramp up graphics card production, they could probably take a lot of market share, since many folks would be willing to buy whichever latest-generation card was actually available in stores.  I got an offer from EVGA to purchase an RTX 3080 six weeks after placing a notification request on their site.


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## xrobwx71 (Nov 27, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> Yes, if you read it as money, not RMB. It's NTD, New Taiwan Dollars. Taiwan is not China and doesn't use RMB.


Thanks, I have zero experience in foreign exchange.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Nov 27, 2020)

Wonder how far down the list AMD is, there are a fair few vying for TSMC's wafers


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## P4-630 (Nov 27, 2020)

New financial analysis suggests the Nvidia RTX 3000 ongoing shortages could be pinned on crypto miners
					

All those scalpers we have been hearing about may actually turn out to be crypto miners hoarding the new RTX 3000 cards for Ethereum mining farms. Analysts somehow discovered that Nvidia has already sold $175 million worth of RTX 3000 cards and most of these sales were made directly to crypto...




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## R-T-B (Nov 27, 2020)

Hugis said:


> dunno how true this is ?
> 
> Can't buy a new Ampere GPU? That's because NVIDIA sold them to miners | TweakTown



Considering GPU mining is dead, almost 100% certainly untrue.  Disappointed in TweakTown in particular, it used to be reputable.

I have no idea why those news stories are circulating, but all one needs to do is figure out GPU mining loses money now to know they are untrue.

The articles don't even list believable currencies, either.  Ethereum has had ASICs for ages now.


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## dirtyferret (Nov 27, 2020)

Mussels said:


> Higher demand (more people at home)
> Lower supply (less air travel = slower supply of components, meaning slower production)


This plus a large back order of production.  We typically have all our holiday stuff in the states by end of August, this year it's end of October.


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## R-T-B (Nov 27, 2020)

Sovsefanden said:


> GPU Mining is relevant again with Ethereum 2.0,



Maybe this is what I am missing.  What's different about Ethereum 2.0?


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## Deleted member 24505 (Nov 27, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> Maybe this is what I am missing.  What's different about Ethereum 2.0?


https://consensys.net/knowledge-base/ethereum-2/faq/
This is very interesting too R-T-B

https://cointelegraph.com/news/eth-miners-will-have-little-choice-once-ethereum-20-launches-with-pos

Does seem very possible that ETH miners are/have bought tons on new 3xxxx GPU's


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## yotano211 (Nov 27, 2020)

Sovsefanden said:


> Demand is way higher than Supply (and this wont change anytime soon)
> 
> Covid19 means millions of people are staying at home, they are bored and wants to play games, so many are upgrading their rigs.
> - Covid19 means that shipping is absolute hell
> ...


Mining on GPUs is dead for some years. About ETH 2.0, I dont think anyone knows if ETH 2.0 can be mined on GPUs for ASICs for profit.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Nov 27, 2020)

yotano211 said:


> Mining on GPUs is dead for some years. About ETH 2.0, I dont think anyone knows if ETH 2.0 can be mined on GPUs for ASICs for profit.



Read the links, seems they can use GPU's for eth 2.0


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## yotano211 (Nov 27, 2020)

kruk said:


> There were other high end GPU shortages in the past (not counting the mining craze). For example the high end card shortage in 2004 (source1, source2). Back then, nVidia launched the Geforce 6800 Ultra prematurely, and ATI followed with Radeon X800XT PE. Both cards had availability issues for a long time ... It looks like the history repeats itself, as the situation now is very similar ...


When the Nvidia 8800gt came out, that card was sold out for months. If I remember correctly it came out at $249, this was 12? years ago.


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## R-T-B (Nov 27, 2020)

tigger said:


> https://consensys.net/knowledge-base/ethereum-2/faq/
> This is very interesting too R-T-B
> 
> https://cointelegraph.com/news/eth-miners-will-have-little-choice-once-ethereum-20-launches-with-pos
> ...



Thanks.  Guess my knowledge on this is dated.  I retract my comments re tweaktown.


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## dragontamer5788 (Nov 27, 2020)

Personal Saving Rate
					

Graph and download economic data for Personal Saving Rate (PSAVERT) from Jan 1959 to Nov 2022 about savings, personal, rate, and USA.



					fred.stlouisfed.org
				




At least in the USA, the pandemic has caused a huge pileup of money this year. People are cancelling vacation plans and other large purchases in very large numbers, the likes of which we haven't seen since the fed started tracking the personal-savings rate. The personal-savings rate of Americans is literally the highest it has ever been for over 50+ years (spiking to over 30% when the pandemic started, and even today is holding firm well above 10%).

Ultimately, GPUs and video games (in general) are pandemic-safe ways to play and socialize. So it makes sense to spend the money saved on this.


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## yotano211 (Nov 27, 2020)

dragontamer5788 said:


> Personal Saving Rate
> 
> 
> Graph and download economic data for Personal Saving Rate (PSAVERT) from Jan 1959 to Nov 2022 about savings, personal, rate, and USA.
> ...


For the people that still have jobs. For the few people that have any kind of emergency savings its all used up. Millions of younger people are moving back-in with their parents.


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## dragontamer5788 (Nov 27, 2020)

yotano211 said:


> For the people that still have jobs. For the few people that have any kind of emergency savings its all used up. Millions of younger people are moving back-in with their parents.



That's true. This is an aggregate statistic and doesn't necessarily match anyone's personal situation.

The hospitality sector has been hit hard: without people spending money on flights, vacations, hotels, restaurants, plays, movies, or performances, all of those jobs are doing poorly. The personal savings rate doesn't really see individuals (or even large groups of individuals: like the entire hospitality sector). But that's the fault of any aggregate statistic: you lose the ability to see the trees for the forest, so to speak.


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## yotano211 (Nov 27, 2020)

dragontamer5788 said:


> That's true. This is an aggregate statistic and doesn't necessarily match anyone's personal situation.
> 
> The hospitality sector has been hit hard: without people spending money on flights, vacations, hotels, restaurants, plays, movies, or performances, all of those jobs are doing poorly. The personal savings rate doesn't really see individuals (or even large groups of individuals: like the entire hospitality sector). But that's the fault of any aggregate statistic: you lose the ability to see the trees for the forest, so to speak.


Some faults are with people. Statistics show that most people dont have enough money for a major car repair of $700-$1000.


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## TheEndIsNear (Nov 28, 2020)

If true selling 179 million dollars worth of GPU's to miners pisses me off.  They are going to get profitable again in mining.  This is a bit extra long for being out of stock all the time.  I'm not buying demand and scalpers.  I wanted a 3090 but I'll probably just wait till the top of the line AMD card gets released.  You can't even find their CPU's anywhere along with their video cards.   Probably doing the same thing or not enough Fab capacity with all of it being taken up by this crap.  Don't market your card as a gaming card if you sell them all to miners.


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## bonehead123 (Nov 28, 2020)

Outback Bronze said:


> Hi guys,
> 
> I'm just trying to understand/figure out why all recently released high end GPU's are out of stock?
> 
> ...



They are *NOT* out of stock, it's just that all of the mfgr's have banned *YOU* from buying one, because they knew it would piss you off and make you come here & ask these silly questions, hehehe 

*Just kidding*.... as already stated, the lack of proper supply build-up prior to release, plus scalping, are the reasons....

Please consider yourself enlightened..... feels great, doesn't it ?

Also, for future reference, please remember Gen. Patton's famous WWII quote:

"history teaches us that history teaches us nuthin"


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## Sovsefanden (Nov 30, 2020)

yotano211 said:


> Mining on GPUs is dead for some years. About ETH 2.0, I dont think anyone knows if ETH 2.0 can be mined on GPUs for ASICs for profit.



You are wrong.

Ethereum 2.0 made GPU mining relevant again and miners are gearing up for the december launch.

Google it. Ampere is actually very good for Eth 2.0 mining, especially 3060 Ti and 3070 with undervolt + underclock.


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## purecain (Dec 1, 2020)

Bots are being used to buy up (scalp) the lot. Then the limited stock is sold on ebay for a premium. Its everything new from cpu's to trainers to the latest consoles. Its a pretty low way of making money if you ask me. A lot of people cant afford the premium. Lets all pray for available stock by February.


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## swirl09 (Dec 1, 2020)

Outback Bronze said:


> Has it got something to do with COVID


It has a lot to do with COVID. Whether its lost production time from lockdowns, or more people WFH needing tech for work/play, or funds that might have been typically used for going on a holiday instead going to things they can use at home. It all connects back to COVID.


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## nguyen (Dec 1, 2020)

Well for my country at least the Ampere launch has way more stock than during Turing. This is my favorite retailer website:





						RTX 3080 10GB - Tân Doanh
					

Mua RTX 3080 10GB tại Tân Doanh ✓ Giá tốt ✓ Nhiều khuyến mãi hấp dẫn ✓ Thanh toán dễ dàng ✓ Đổi trả linh động




					tandoanh.vn
				



Getting myself an Asus TUF 3090 OC with waterblock in a few days...


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## purecain (Dec 1, 2020)

I'd buy which ever is available at the high end.. You can not get anything in the UK atm. CPU's and GPU's are non existent in the usual places at retail prices.
Its sad for the consumer this time around. Hardware launches are something that most of us look forward to. With covid happening everything seems to be slowing down.
I just hope things improve early next year.


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## Outback Bronze (Dec 1, 2020)

purecain said:


> Lets all pray for available stock by February.



I'm was hoping it was gonna be earlier than that dude.

Maybe I was being too optimistic : (


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## Caring1 (Dec 1, 2020)

Outback Bronze said:


> I'm was hoping it was gonna be earlier than that dude.
> 
> Maybe I was being too optimistic : (


I guess a lot of people were hoping for some decent stocking stuffers.


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