Graphics card shortage is a thing of the past

GeForce RTX 3080. © Nvidia.

During Nvidia’s second quarter 2023 earnings call, CEO Jensen Huang announced that the company is facing an “excess inventory” of RTX 3000 series graphics cards while anticipating the RTX 4000 series later this year. He also mentioned price cuts to current-generation GPUs to prompt surplus inventory sales. What a difference a year makes; this time last year, it was nearly impossible to get a hold of a GeForce graphics card unless you wanted to tangle with speculators. The tide is turning for those fishing for a graphics card: with the chilling effect that fears of a recession has on buyers’ fervor, and because hardware sales had been so strong at the start of the pandemic, PC sales are plummeting, and GPU manufacturers such as Nvidia are now floating a lot of inventory. They’re also selling fewer GPUs to cryptocurrency miners, both due to a battered market but also because of Ethereum’s long-awaited shift to a new mining process. With much less pressure on the GPU market, new and used cards alike are available again, and at price points that have fallen since the beginning of the year.

⇨ Ars Technica, Andrew Cunningham, “The GPU shortage is over. The GPU surplus has arrived!.”

⇨ The Verge, Sean Hollister, “Nvidia says it built too many GPUs — expect sales while it works on something ‘new’.”

2022-08-24