SOURCE: PIXABAY
I know currently everyone is familiar with the graphics card shortage and their high prices. This has really affected many. Not just the gamer's even the video editors are effected by this crisis of graphics card. Earlier it was very easy to procure graphics card for any purpose. The manufacturers had to lure buyers with offers. They used to offer a lot of free perks, but a lot has changed now. The graphics card manufacturing companies no longer have to worry about the costumer and pricing. Because people are now buying any of their product without any advertising and all.
For this crisis Miners are being blamed. It is being said that they are buying up all graphics card in return raising prices of GPU by creating a low supply and high demand situation. Many claim that retailers are responsible for increasing the prices and it is only them who is profiting out of increased pricing. But is it true? Are retailers increasing prices? What if the story itself is something else? I will tell you my personal observation in this post.
So it all started in the end of November 2017. The price of BTC suddenly skyrocketed. It started creating interest among people. Many started buying all kinds of crypto currencies. Many started to look at mining option and started buying GPU's. It was at this very time i decided to upgrade my pc. I decided to buy a pair of new GPU's for my video editing rig. Since i am AMD loyalist i finalized to buy a pair of AMD Rx Vega 56. They were priced at 400$ in the start. In my country they are always priced a little high. This is always a case with every graphics card. Both NVIDIA and AMD price their GPU's high in my country since as long as i am buying cards from them. I checked the possible mrp of rx vega 56 in my country and could not find the msrp. Checking different websites it became clear that the price of rx vega 56 could be 750$. I know this is almost double the original price. Even then i was willing to pay the extra price since it was always like that. They were always priced high like i have said earlier.
SOURCE: NEWEGG
I live in a very small town. Except for keyboard and mouse no computer parts are sold here. Because of this many buyer's from my town travel to a neighboring state. Thus i finalized a date on which i was free and went to the computer market. The date was 18 December. This date is important please remember this. My cousin also accompanied me. He had to buy a laptop. So, i assisted him in buying laptop. After he was finished buying i asked the retailer about my PC upgrade. He looked at pc configuration and asked me what i wanted to upgrade. I told him i need to change my computers motherboard and add a pair of AMD Rx Vega 56. To this he replied to me that the said gpu's are out of stock. When i asked him when these gpu's will be available he said the gpu's are out of stock since last 25 days and he doesn't know when they will be available. While returning i saw my friend's brother working there. I met him and told him about the things i needed. He took my number and i came back to my town.
A couple of days later he called me and told that the graphics card that i need has been long out of stock and asked me to choose NVIDIA 1080 TI instead. Since, i am a long time AMD loyalist it was hard for me to easily take the decision to buy nvidia. I asked him to give me time to think. This was my big mistake. He called me again on 25 Dec and told me that even the 1080 TI has gone out of stock. Only 4 units were there when he had asked me to buy. He later added that apart from 1050 ti and rx 560 every other graphics card is out of stock since last one month.
SOURCE: NVIDIA.COM
NVIDIA 1050 TI IMAGE
SOURCE: NEWEGG
Thinking that the graphics card will come back in stock soon, i started waiting. I called him once every week to check if they have come back to stock. Unfortunately the reply was always a no. Frustrated i called other retailers. There response was also same. Every retailer said the same thing that they have not seen the face of these graphics cards since last 2 months. They were never restocked neither distributor's sold them to retailers. What does this mean? what does it mean when the graphics card are not available even with retailer since last 2 months? This clearly means that the problem is at the top itself. Graphics card are manufactured daily. There should atleast be one graphics card in stock daily. But no. For last 60 days no retailer saw the face of these high end graphics card. So if retailers themselves don't have the graphics card then where are these cards going. The clear answer is that the companies themselves are selling these card to the cloud mining companies or the bulk orders. Even the Miners who buy 6 graphics card at a time are not able to buy them. If only the prices were high then that was a different story but that is not the case. The graphics are not available even for the retailers.
Yes, this is also true that some retailers have a pair or two of graphics but since they are 3 times overpriced no one's buying them not even Miners. With the crypto price crash and increased difficulty miners have no reason to buy those cards. Even with MSRP the cards ROI in 13 months. Which is way too much. When BTC went to 6000$, i was losing 50% to power cost.
So, unless the factories are shut down completely atleast some new graphics card should be in stock every now and then. So either the retailers are lying and hoarding the cards or manufacturers are directly selling to cloud mining companies instead of distributors. Apart from this i cannot think of any other reason.
So, Yes sir, but sir the graphics card are out of stock since last two months even with the retailers.