NVIDIA believes that the long-standing GPU shortage might start to ease by the second half of 2022. The news comes as somewhat of a relief amidst the ongoing global chip shortage that has resulted in the unavailability of graphics cards in the market. While the situation is unlikely to change for the better right away, many gamers and DIY PC-building enthusiasts might be somewhat comforted by the thought of light at the end of the tunnel.
The chip shortage has resulted in gamers not being able to buy new GPUs for their gaming rigs and has also incentivized scalping and price gouging by unscrupulous sellers. What's worse is that most chipmakers and semiconductor companies have been unable to offer a time frame for when supply constraints will ease. Consumers will once again be able to get their hands on graphics cards as usual. Amid that frustrating scenario, the new report will likely be music to the years of millions of gamers and DIY enthusiasts around the world.
Speaking at the UBS Global TMT conference earlier this week, NVIDIA's Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said that the company expects its graphics card supplies to improve by the second half of next year. Kress also claimed that in the meantime, the company would continue to try and procure more supply to help it maintain its growth trajectory in the final quarter of the current fiscal. As pointed out by PC Mag, NVIDIA is expected to launch its next-generation GPU lineup next year. Hopefully, the increased supplies will help consumers find those products more easily than the current-gen RTX 3000-series cards. As of now, graphics cards from both NVIDIA and AMD remain challenging to find, especially at reasonable prices.
NVIDIA Would Love To Bring Down GPU Prices
With prices of GPUs reaching astronomic levels because of rampant scalping, Kress also addressed the pricing issue for the company's current GPU lineup. She said that NVIDIA would "love to bring [GPU prices] back down," but pricing would only rationalize when the manufacturers can increase supply. Unfortunately, Kress said that she was unsure when manufacturers would be able to fully meet demand, which means the situation may not completely normalize even a year from now. As of 2021, GPUs are currently in short supply for several reasons, including the boom in cryptocurrencies, which has led to increased mining activities.
NVIDIA has taken steps to limit its cards' crypto mining abilities to make its graphics cards a little more easily accessible to gamers. It has done so by introducing the Ethereum hash limiter that reduces the mining performance of its 3000-series graphics cards by up to 50-percent. The company also launched several CMP-series cards aimed explicitly at crypto miners, including the top-of-the-line CMP 170HX. However, new GPUs remain MIA for most gamers, which will hopefully change by this time next year.
Source: PC Mag