THE NEWS

the beginning of the magazine, where the articles are small

8 MAXIMU MPC FEB 2022

quickstart

No relief until the end of 2022

Where are our

graphics cards?

aimed at relieving pressure

on the market. It uses a 12nm

GPU so doesn’t compete

with the newer cards. It was

launched with no fanfare and

was immediately sold out. It

was thought the elderly 2060

wouldn’t be an attractive

crypto mining card too,

although it transpires it isn’t

so bad at it after all.

Of course, what we need

now is another expensive

graphics card you can’t get.

Nvidia is reportedly readying

the RTX 3090 Ti, which

employs the GA102 GPU to

full effect, this means 10,

CUDA cores coupled to 24GB

of 21Gb/s memory. It was due

to appear before the holidays

but looks likely for February.

It will be horribly expensive if

you can even find one.

Are supplies really so tight?

According to industry analysts,

Jon Peddie Research, there

were 12.7 million graphics

cards shipped in the third

quarter, up from 11.5 million

in the previous three months.

That’s a year-on-year growth

of over 25 percent. So where

are all the cards going? One

culprit that regularly gets

the blame are those pesky

miners. Nvidia’s CFO, Colette

Kress, claims that most of its

Ampere cards are Lite Hash

Rate (although there are

ways around this), and it has

been selling huge numbers of

dedicated mining processors,

CMPs which have protected

the discrete graphics card

market. AMD’s CEO, Lisa

Su, went a step further and

claimed in November that it’s

“a different market than it was

a few years ago with crypto”,

and that “we don’t believe it’s

a meaningful driver”. Forgive

us if we are skeptical of this.

Crypto mining chews through

hardware, and both Bitcoin

and Ethereum are currently

strong, especially the latter.

We’ve had a perfect storm

of demand. The market for

high-end GPUs jumped in

PCs, consoles, and servers.

The pandemic added more

pressure, as people looked

around for new kit. It also

helped squeeze supplies, as

the various lockdowns around

the world hit key components.

The supply chain is fragile, it is

near-impossible to suddenly

increase production of high-

end silicon. There are only

so many chip fabrication

plants and demand made an

unpredictable jump just as

production faltered.

Low supply also means the

more important customers

get the best treatment, and

that isn’t the graphics card

makers. Meanwhile, this has

been sweet for AMD and Nvidia,

both of whom had profitable

third quarters, reaching year-

on-year revenue growth of

over 50 percent.

How much longer must we

endure this drought? Colette

Kress and Lisa Su agree: it

won’t be until the end of 2022

that supplies improve enough

so you can expect to be able

to source a card and pay the

recommended retail price.

Some pundits have suggested

there may even be a nice kicker

at the end of all this: over-

supply in 2023 as the artificial

demand eases, we shall see.

Intel’s entry into the market

can’t come soon enough, let us

hope it has earmarked decent

manufacturing capacity

because it will sell everything

it makes for a while yet. But

the reality is that you need

to pay big and search hard

because the hard times will be

with us for a while. –CL

THE GRAPHICS CARD market

is in a mess. and that won’t

change any time soon.

Supplies are tight, and every

available card is sold the

moment it appears. Scalpers

scour outlets for stock, and

buy everything, only to resell

them at inflated prices. And

crypto miners are bagging

GPUs in bulk. Things have

calmed down a little since

the summer, but markups of

150-200 percent still sting.

According to Nvidia’s website

prices for a GeForce RTX

3090 should start at $1,399.

Currently, the average on

auction sites is $1,000 more

than that. Finding anybody

with stock is another matter.

The latest graphics card

launch was a refreshed

Nvidia RTX 2060 12GB and

Sorry folks, but the card

drought looks likely to last

a good few months yet.