While many had hoped that the graphics card supply situation would improve over Q1 2021, it seems that things actually got worse. During a recent investor conference call, ASUS confirmed that it received less shipments of Nvidia GPUs in Q1 than it did in the previous quarter.
As reported by Tom's Hardware, an ASUS executive confirmed the quarter-over-quarter decrease in supply, stating: “The most pressing issue for GPUs right now is the shortage of Nvidia's GPUs. There was a quarter-over-quarter decrease in shipments. Because of that shortage, we are seeing price hikes.”
According to the analysts at Jon Peddie Research, Nvidia shipped just over nine million GPUs for desktop graphics cards in Q4 2020. However, this was not enough to meet the strong demand and as a result, prices are creeping up. Currently, many retailers are still trying to get enough supply to fulfil pre-orders of Nvidia RTX 30 series GPUs.
Of course, cryptocurrency miners have also had an impact on supply, but ASUS does not know what percentage of its graphics cards went to the mining market versus the gaming market. However, the company does estimate that the yield rate for GPUs produced at Samsung's foundry are lower than expected, which exacerbates the supply situation.
Despite these supply issues, Nvidia is apparently working on new GPUs, with the latest rumours indicating that we'll see the RTX 3080 Ti next month, followed by an RTX 3070 Ti in May.
KitGuru Says: Are any of you still waiting to get your hands on a current generation graphics card? Will you upgrade when supply improves, or are you planning on waiting for the next generation of GPUs instead?