Nvidia on RTX 3000: Shortages Could Last Until 2023
Nvidia has once again dashed hopes for greater availability of new GeForce GPUs. CEO Jensen Huang predicts that supply of the RTX 3000 series GPU is likely to be limited for most of 2022.
Nvidia doesn't believe it can solve GPU shortages anytime soon, During a recent investor call, CEO Jensen Huang said that supply of new GPUs will be "severely limited" for most of 2022. In April, Colette Kress (the company's CFO) made a similar statement, although at the time it was still expected that the lack of deliveries would last "only" at least until the end of 2021.
GPU scarcity has been a problem plaguing the PC market virtually since Nvidia's (and AMD's) new GPU series launched in the fall of 2020. As a result, GeForce's RTX 3000 family models cost well above the MSRP. The situation has improved somewhat in recent months, but models that use Ampere chips remain expensive and scarce.
Interestingly, according to Nvidia, it is difficult to blame crypto miners for this state of affairs. Colette Kress reported that more than 80% of GeForce RTX 3000 series shipped to stores in the second fiscal quarter (i.e. between May 3 and August 1) were the so-called LHR variants with built-in limitations that reduce the effectiveness of these cards in mining Ethereum cryptocurrency. This is to prove that the problems with the availability of these chips are due to the interest of not virtual miners, but gamers.
It's just a pity that barely a week ago information broke that the limiters were partially bypassed by hackers developing software for NBMiner cryptomining rigs (via VideoCardz). Version 39.0 enables us to use about 70% of the GeForce LHR's power when mining virtual coins, with 68% being recommended as a more stable option to start with. According to Tom's Hardware, this would make GeForce RTX 3060Ti have similar mining performance as GeForce RTX 2070 and Radeon RX 5600 XT. As a consolation, we should remind about the changes to Ehtereum's mining process, which - in the shortest terms - are supposed to reduce power consumption by nearly 99.95% and thus discourage miners from using powerful GPUs.
Nvidia is not the only one who is expects longer problems with the availability of chips. The same opinion is held by Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who even before the holidays said that the situation in the market for computer components will not improve earlier than in a few years.
