The microprocessor shortage has ensured that Graphics cards have been a hot topic in the gaming community for almost 2 years. And as if being completely unavailable or selling for more than double their MSRP wasn't enough, things have taken an even darker turn, thanks to Nvidia.
If you're reading this, its unlikely to be a surprise that Graphics Cards are the core around which gaming PCs are built. What may not be so obvious is that the GPU's used in gaming are at the bottom of a pretty long list of priorities for the microprocessors they rely on to work.
I mean, sure, the microprocessor shortage was primarily caused by a manufacturing shortfall. But it was made so much worse by a whole bunch of factors completely outside of anyone's control.
The US car market bounced back far quicker than anyone anticipated, and they can require upwards of 100 processors per vehicle. The sheer purchasing power of these companies will always leave Nvidia and the like waiting for their place at the proverbial processor bowl.
Whilst this may not be well known, it is old news. GPU prices have been approaching normal for a while, and it's now possible to find every variation of 30 series card in stock somewhere.
And then there's the whole Ethereum - currency mining thing. Ethereum, second largest crypto currency after Bitcoin, has moved away from using mining as a way to unlock the currency. This has flooded the market with second-hand, questionable-quality cards. So we could be forgiven for thinking that the GPU crisis is winding down.
Yet Nvidia's intended pricing for the new 40 series cards shows complete disregard for gamers. The unspoken message is clear: Nvidia has been shown how much they can price gouge and they intend to continue doing so.
GPU | MSRP |
4090 | $1599 - confirmed |
4080 (12Gb/16Gb) | $899/1199 - confirmed |
4070 | $599 - estimated |
The 4080 12Gb pricing is very much like the cost the top-tier cards used to command before all this madness started. And yet Nvidia stand defiant. CEO Jensen Huang told press that "Moore's Law is dead" as part of a statement that can best be summarised as "this is how much cards cost now. The end."
Declaring that Moore's law is dead seems pretty self-defeating for a company whose graphics cards seem to have doubled in power, well, every year. They seem to be suggesting that not only is processing power imminently about to slow down in terms of progress, but also that Nvidia's cards after the 40 series are likely to offer much less in terms of performance increases. It seems oddly self-defeating, at best.
Why boast that the 40 series has such a performance increase over the 30 series, then blame the increased pricing on the fact that we can't get big performance jumps anymore? Obviously I'm not stating that there can be no other reason - it just seems that another reason would have been Nvidia's official party line.
This next bit comes as a prediction, rather than a statement of fact. If you're looking to buy a new GPU and want the option of both the 30 and 40 series, you'll need to act fast.
When the processor shortage hit, the first thing Nvidia did was to cease production of any cards that could have been a cheaper alternative to the 30 series. The cynic in me thinks that Nvidia will stop production of the 30 series before the 40's hit the shelves, if they haven't done so already. They may have already done so. The cynic in me is proved right more times than wrong.
Price gouging isn't the only thing Nvidia proved they had no problem with during the shortage. They also proved that dispensing with their competing models drives demand that much higher. Unfortunately, Nvidia's financials bear this out - their most recent financials show revenues from graphics that far exceeded the trends of the previous few years.
PC gaming is already an order of magnitude more expensive than consoles. And for now, the shift in pricing seems to have made pre-built rigs a more economical option than building one ourselves. Only time will tell us if that remains the case. But either way, GPU's look set to stay firmly in the limelight. I hope I'm wrong, but I fear I am not.
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