I suppose I could concede a vague figure like it having a "large" impact (it most certainly is a major factor) but my point was merely it is not alone, or possibly even the majority. I haven't seen any good evidence to indicate otherwise. I feel it's at best, like quarter of the issue we are dealing with, but I fully admit that's just something I'm guessing at.
But that quarter is the quarter that was already missing in the regular marketplace, and the reason everything explodes quite a bit more than it should. You see, gamer demand was foreseen and yes you can have supply chain issues, but what we had lately was not that. It is a
production capacity issue. Covid has its impact. But let's not forget either the fact that Ampere is built on Samsung, Samsung reportedly has pretty shitty yields... and AMD's RX line is produced on a highly contested TSMC node... it really is/was a perfect storm. Production numbers however, were at or quite close to regular levels, if we look at yearly units sold.
It all piles on, but I would certainly say mining is a big one in all of these issues. Not in the least because we already saw heavy price increases prior to the pandemic and global supply issues. Mining surges and dies all the time. Its completely unpredictable so capacity isn't bought to meet that demand.
My take on this is we will see improvement, and a big factor here is whether mining surges again or whether it won't, which is again related to global issues, such as the price of energy, inflation, and subsequently consumer buying power. That's not improving, and all GPU mfgrs will have to adjust towards that anyway. So will we see MSRP? We just might. The economy of 'up and up' is a fairy tale. What goes up must come down or it will implode. Perhaps down with a long term slow trend of up, sure, but that trend must keep pace with regular growth of economies. And guess what... projected economic growth is taking serious hits the world over. Still growth, but nothing major, and we have yet to see the full effects of Putin's war.
Consider even just the inflation we're going into now. 10% and more. That's enough to remove luxury items from the 'must buy' list in many households. In the Netherlands, we're likely going to be looking at an energy bill that doubles or triples this year. That's 3K euro's right there, if not more - a literal 10% of modal yearly incomes.
Holy shit free shipping I'm ordering five.
j/k