RECENTLY there have been a lot of lovely new graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD, each with new GPU architectures setting performance records. The trouble is actually getting hold of one. The “unexpectedly” high demand (really?), coupled with production problems have made this a frustrating time to build a gaming rig. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 cards are all over the media but not the shelves, even online. Speculators bought everything they could to resell at a profit. The RTX 3090 is officially $1,499, but the average resale price is $2,250. This isn’t helped by the ending of production of RTX 2000 series cards, the supply of which seems to have dried up.
Samsung, which makes the 8nm GPUs for Nvidia, has been having “issues” with yield (the number of usable chips from a wafer), and is struggling to make reliable die. There are rumors of some production being moved to TSMC to compensate.
Supply of AMD’s new RX 6000-series cards isn’t much better. It uses 7nm wafers from TSMC, which has its hands full making Ryzen processors, console chips, phone chips, and much more. The profit margins on the processors are higher, and each card uses a lot of silicon. Tight supply of GDDR6 memory doesn’t help either company, given how much the high-end cards need.