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Businesses Technology

The GPU Shortage is Over. The GPU Surplus Has Arrived (arstechnica.com) 76

A year ago, it was nearly impossible to buy a GeForce GPU for its intended retail price. Now, the company has the opposite problem. From a report: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during the company's Q2 2023 earnings call yesterday that the company is dealing with "excess inventory" of RTX 3000-series GPUs ahead of its next-gen RTX 4000 series release later this year. To deal with this, according to Huang, Nvidia will reduce the number of GPUs it sells to manufacturers of graphics cards and laptops so that those manufacturers can clear out their existing inventory. Huang also says Nvidia has "instituted programs to price position our current products to prepare for next-generation products."

When translated from C-suite to English, this means the company will be cutting the prices of current-generation GPUs to make more room for next-generation ones. Those price cuts should theoretically be passed along to consumers somehow, though that will be up to Nvidia's partners. Nvidia announced earlier this month that it would be missing its quarterly projections by $1.4 billion, mainly due to decreased demand for its gaming GPUs. Huang said that "sell-through" of GPUs, or the number of cards being sold to users, had still "increased 70 percent since pre-COVID," though the company still expects year-over-year revenue from GPUs to decline next quarter.

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The GPU Shortage is Over. The GPU Surplus Has Arrived

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Fuckers who price gouged, it's time for pay-back bitches. Discount that shit.

    • Since they are halting manufacturing, won't it still leave the quantity limited? Low prices don't matter if the scalpers are still buying.

      • Re:hahaha (Score:5, Insightful)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Thursday August 25, 2022 @02:31PM (#62823199)
        Too many cards hitting shelves too quickly, and crypto miners have mostly stopped buying so demand, especially demand willing to pay jacked up prices, has fallen off considerably. Used prices collapsed on ebay starting in June when miners started selling off their hordes. You can find cards in stock all over the place, at least in the US. And "MSRP" has dropped on many of them, some by 25-35%. A $1999 EVGA 3090ti is going for $1299 on Amazon right now, and has been in stock for over a week since I first noticed it. AIB 3070's are going for near FE MSRP of $499, down 20-25%. Some of the sneaker scalpers holding onto cards are getting royally fucked right now. Hopefully it keeps them out of the GPU market in the future.

        If they do sell through then stock will tighten toward the 40 series release but I don't expect it to do much for scalpers. Everyone knows 40 series is coming, rumors are it's a big performance step up, and so people are holding off. I don't think you will see enough demand again for the 30 series to get scalpers interested.
        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          $1300 for graphics card is still insane. $400 for a top end graphics card was already crazy.

          • by EvilSS ( 557649 )

            $1300 for graphics card is still insane. $400 for a top end graphics card was already crazy.

            Well it is the halo tier card with 24GB GDDR6X. The only people who should be using it are people doing more than just gaming and need all that video memory.

            High end cards haven't been under $400 for a while now. The 980ti launched at $649, back in 2015, the 780ti was $699 in 2013, and the 680 was $499 in 2012 (and let's not even talk about the $999 GTX 690 or the various Titan cards over the years). You need to go back to the 6800 ultra from 2004 to get under $400 ($399 launch price).

            • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

              Sounds about right... prior to that they more or less had a pattern of pricing tiers with the new models filling nearly the same price as the old within their respective tier.

              Now they still use the terms (midrange and so on) but the new midrange doesn't weigh in at the old midrange price, there is a nominal discount and the new unit packs an even higher price tag. Gone is the day when someone who knew what they were doing could buy an overpowered varient of the previous generation for the midrange price.

            • by torkus ( 1133985 )

              Pop back to 1997 and grab a Voodoo2 card for just $199

              I miss those days...but less so all the jumpers to set for things to work.

      • by Anonymous Coward
        They are not halting manufacturing. They can't. nVidia pre-reserved wafers at TSMC and have to buy them. All they can do is cut prices and help the board makers blow out their warehouses of inventory. AMD is in a better position because it has multiple sources of demand for its chips (CPU, GPU, XBox and PS).
    • No payback to be found here. If the "fuckers" already price gouged, it's the buyers who ultimately got screwed; but they already knew they were paying ransom prices when they bought. The gougers have already been paid when they played their GPU arbitrage game of buying MSRP and reselling with a ransom markup.

    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Fuckers who price gouged, it's time for pay-back bitches. Discount that shit.

      I can't speak for AMD, but NVIDA was faithful to their core audience, gamers. Both with the FE editions and the LHR (Low Hash Rate) attempts. I was fortunate enough to pick up a 3070 FE last year and even now a new 3070 is still more expensive than what I paid for the FE (Which has been a great card by the way).

      I cant blame the manufacturers for increasing prices. They have a limited amount of product and demand was seriously outstripping supply, if they priced too low it would be a field day for the sca

      • by torkus ( 1133985 )

        Fuckers who price gouged, it's time for pay-back bitches. Discount that shit.

        I can't speak for AMD, but NVIDA was faithful to their core audience, gamers. Both with the FE editions and the LHR (Low Hash Rate) attempts. I was fortunate enough to pick up a 3070 FE last year and even now a new 3070 is still more expensive than what I paid for the FE (Which has been a great card by the way).

        I cant blame the manufacturers for increasing prices. They have a limited amount of product and demand was seriously outstripping supply, if they priced too low it would be a field day for the scalpers... NVIDIA had to control their FE cards end to end, from manufacturing to retail to cut off the scalpers (I.E. to ensure that you could only buy one FE card per person).

        So that's who really deserves a kick in the nuts, the scalpers who resold cards at a huge markup and the Bitcoin miners who bough up all the cards. The scalpers are now more or less out of business because Bitcoin isn't worth it any more and so are the bitcoin farms. So they're both sitting on a fuckton of used cards. Let them sit on them, don't be tempted by that cheap card on Ebay, new prices are falling and stock is available. Those ex-miner cards aren't going to be like well cared for Toyota Corolla that'll keep running for years, they are more like a VW Sharan that has been abused, ragged to an inch of its life daily and treated like a rubbish dump without even so much as an oil change in 10 years. Seriously, don't buy used, especially if you're pissed about the scalping that happened over the last few years.

        GPUs haven't been used for bitcoin mining for a /long/ time. Eth and others though, yeah.

        That said, most of the cards are underclocked to lower power consumption for a minor performance hit (thus better cost/profit ratio) ... not "abused, ragged to an inch of it's life" by any means.

        Given how card prices are falling in pace with crypto valuation, buying new is just easier and simpler...and possibly even cheaper.

  • VR (Score:4, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Thursday August 25, 2022 @01:51PM (#62823049)

    VR is the only remedy to the GPU surplus. No other solutions exist. nVidia needs to tell Apple and Meta to make VR headsets that have over 75 ppd resolution.

    • VR is the only remedy to the GPU surplus.

      1) There is no such thing as a GPU surplus. Prices went up because of product scarcity due to covid disruptions.and (Etherum) cryptomining. Those conditions are past, and now there is low demand for NVIDIA's next product series and NVIDIA doesn't want to "hurt" their 3rd party vendors that will have profit margin issues.

      2) Yes, it appears that VR will be the most desirable "remedy" to NVIDIA retail seller's demand issue. VR requires state of the art NVIDIA GPUs, which NVIDIA's RTX 3000 series cards can

      • by quall ( 1441799 )

        Wrong. the term "surplus" describes your supply in relation to demand. When you have more product than what is in demand, that's called a surplus. It's also referred to as overstock. It's not one or the other.

        Manufacturers increased chip orders and production in anticipation that the cards will have a huge demand from minors. Then the crypto bubble blew. So, shops and manufactures are left with a ton of 30XX series chips and low demand, and the 40 series is right around the corner. Nvidia is even being aske

    • I don't think that'll work. For one thing a lot of people just want to sit on their couch or in a comfortable chair to play games because they're playing them at the end of a long day similar to how people would sit in front of the TV back in the day. Also there's people like me whose eyes get confused by focusing on an object that is simultaneously too close but also far away and get headaches from it. That limits the potential audience.
  • the company's Q2 2023 earnings call

    Must be nice to have earnings so locked in that you can talk about how much your earned next year...

    • Re:Time machine (Score:5, Informative)

      by nadass ( 3963991 ) on Thursday August 25, 2022 @02:07PM (#62823105)

      the company's Q2 2023 earnings call

      Must be nice to have earnings so locked in that you can talk about how much your earned next year...

      It's based on their FISCAL YEAR (financial accounting calendar) rather than your personal diary. Many corporations identify their operating quarters based on accounting/fiscal years -- for Microsoft, their FY2023 runs from July 1 2022 until June 30 2023, for examples.

      The summary (and original reporting) should reflect the distinction between FY and CY when discussing such matters, but alas they don't.

      • The article and summary do not distinguish between FY and CY because they generally do not need to when discussing an earnings call. FY is the norm.
    • Must be nice to have earnings so locked in that you can talk about how much your earned next year...

      Someone skipped a few classes in school, no? It's called a FISCAL year calendar.

      • Yeah I guess I understand that you can start your FY at any time. But it still seems bonkers that you can state that you are currently in a quarter that lines up with next year's calendar.

        • No, what in bonkers is thinking you know something about a problem domain you (obviously) have zero experience in. Learn to read the fine print, and when you think you see something crazy... look up the details, don't just presume that whatever wrong thing you thought it sounded like is what was being said.

        • by bws111 ( 1216812 )

          It doesn't 'line up' with next years calendar. Fiscal years are numbered based on the calendar year they END in. Nvidia's fiscal year 2023 will end Jan 31, 2023. When the calendar year 2023 2Q ends (June 30, 2023), Nvidia's 2Q 2024 will still have a month to go.

  • Ahh yes.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blahplusplus ( 757119 ) on Thursday August 25, 2022 @02:10PM (#62823119)

    ... the surplus of near $1000 3070 rtx's are such a steal.

    https://www.newegg.ca/gigabyte... [newegg.ca]

    • Re:Ahh yes.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by muh_freeze_peach ( 9622152 ) on Thursday August 25, 2022 @02:21PM (#62823157)
      Nvidia has the surplus of GPUs, not the retailers. And they are limiting how much of them they are selling to distros.
      • Meant to say nvidia partners/distros
      • Artificial scarcity to keep prices up.
      • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        Everyone has a surplus. AIBs have cut MSRPs on most of their cards, and by significant amounts in a lot of cases. Retail shops, at least in the US, suddenly have tons of stock to get rid of ahead of the 40 series release, which anyone following GPUs knows is coming soon so many are holding off. NV may be letting AIBs off the hook for some of their orders but they are still have a ton of cards to get rid of.
    • ... the surplus of near $1000 3070 rtx's are such a steal.

      $544.

      https://www.amazon.com/GIGABYT... [amazon.com]

      • That's still $700 in CAD when doing conversions.

        • by Tailhook ( 98486 )

          That's still $700 in CAD

          LOL

          • That's still $700 in CAD

            LOL

            It's strange the poster didn't notice the .ca on the newegg link, then linked me to 3070's in USD prices. I giggled. If I ordered from the US site, I'd get hit with import fee's and shipping that would largely cancel out the $100 or so dollar price difference, aka the price difference when adding everything up with be negligible.

            • It's strange the poster didn't notice the .ca on the newegg link

              It's strange you don't remember you wrote $1000. Here you go:

              the surplus of near $1000 3070 rtx's are such a steal.

              So yeah, you were 300CAD off, that's ~33%. Seems worth mentioning.

              • It's strange the poster didn't notice the .ca on the newegg link

                It's strange you don't remember you wrote $1000. Here you go:

                the surplus of near $1000 3070 rtx's are such a steal.

                So yeah, you were 300CAD off, that's ~33%. Seems worth mentioning.

                Dude the card was $899 CAD, with tax that is easily over 1000 with shipping. So $1000 was more then close enough.

                I got my original 1070 for $450+tax which was about $550 cad, so you can definitely get a videocard if you are patient and wait for sales and aren't going to overpay. Videocards have been way ahead of game developers for over a decade because game devs target the weakest machines.

                Moores law slowed down in 2000-2004 time frame for cpu's, you haven't needed to upgrade your CPU since the i5-2500

                • Dude

                  I linked a name brand name RTX 3070 for 549USD from a major seller, that's 710CAD... 290CAD less than your link, which is roughly 30% less. Of course a 30% diff in price in relevant.

                  It's strange the poster didn't notice

                  Really, all you had to do was say "oh nice I didn't check Amazon". Instead you're trying to "call me out" for not understanding currency conversions. Because you post in America junior dollars doesn't mean I have to.

                  • Dude

                    I linked a name brand name RTX 3070 for 549USD from a major seller, that's 710CAD... 290CAD less than your link, which is roughly 30% less. Of course a 30% diff in price in relevant.

                    It's strange the poster didn't notice

                    Really, all you had to do was say "oh nice I didn't check Amazon". Instead you're trying to "call me out" for not understanding currency conversions. Because you post in America junior dollars doesn't mean I have to.

                    I'm not calling you out, I'm saying that you're being a tool for suggesting the card is still not overpriced, the whole zeitgeist is no one who's been gaming for over 20 years is going to pay over 500 for a videocard who doesn't care about hardware dickwaving contests. When 95% of all games will target console gpu's as baseline as they are multiplatform, given that for most of console gaming history the PC has always been way ahead of consoles, and recent consoles are literally just X86 AMD cpu's+GPU combo

                    • I'm not calling you out, I'm saying that you're being a tool for suggesting the card is still not overpriced

                      I didn't say that, and honestly I don't think that. I said you quoted a price that was 30% higher than the actual price. Scroll up if you have any doubts.

                      I'm saying that you're being a tool

                      Well, if you think it's normal to attack someone because they pointed out you made a mistake, you might want to take a long look in the mirror. For future interaction with the humans, here's what you might have said:

                      "Oh you're right that Egghead link is a little high, but it's still way overpriced in my opinion", and follow it up with "blah blah blah Moore

                    • "Well, if you think it's normal to attack someone because they pointed out you made a mistake"

                      Dude there's no need to point out a "mistake" when we're talking about overpriced videocards, the whole point is that the 3070 line is still too expensive thanks to cryptocurrency mining and the pandemic shocks. We got a perfect storm of severe price inflation on videocards.

                      Saying I made a mistake and then point to a $700 card, insinuates you pointed out and said "hey it's not as expensive as that" but hey, anyo

                    • Yes I get it. "Don't disrupt my narrative!"

                      Dude there's no need to point out a "mistake" when we're talking about overpriced videocards
                      It makes no sense at all and contributed exactly zero to the conversation.

                      If I had said an RTX 3070 cost 363USD, would you have corrected me? That's exactly 30% difference from the actual price, the same error you made.

                      Unbelievable.

                      the whole point is that the 3070 line is still too expensive

                      Here's a tip, free of charge. When you exaggerate to make your point it does you a disservice because people will tend to disregard whatever you say after they realize.

        • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
          3070 FE launch MSRP was $499, so those prices are close to the launch MSRP and below what a lot of those partner cards MSRP was when they were launched, and well below their jacked up MSRPs from last year. AIBs might go lower (EVGA has 3090ti's going for $1299 right now) but 3070 being a lower priced card it has a bit more demand, even now. If you expect them to go to $400 or even $500 CAD, well, that's probably not going to happen.
      • I was just looking at some ML cards and they're 20-30% over the old MSRP, even though they're 30% off the "new" MSRP.

        Still half of what they were last year, so.

      • by linuxguy ( 98493 )
        MSI version of this card is even cheaper at $499. https://a.co/d/c80mh6S [a.co]
    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Canada eh? Sucks to suck I guess. Also who buys from NewEgg anymore? https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=3... [amazon.com]
    • but they're down to $600 - $800. I've seen them as low as $550 at Newegg. That said, I'm in the States and I know the rest of the world gets kind of hosed.
      • That said, I'm in the States and I know the rest of the world gets kind of hosed.

        Hosed? By the government they chose and voted for? Because they live in smaller markets than the US market? (Well, that may not be an issue with EU as the market)

    • by fazig ( 2909523 )
      ~$550 including VAT (USD) here in Germany.
      Prices always vary with the local markets.

      But I wouldn't recommend to waste money on NVIDIA's 8GB VRAM nonsense anyway, unless you really need a graphics card and you can only buy the RTX 3070.
      It has been really crappy from NVIDIA to not even give the 3070TI 10GB VRAM.
  • by sasparillascott ( 1267058 ) on Thursday August 25, 2022 @02:15PM (#62823149)
    Looking at my tired (should have been replaced) 1070. I have waited a long time for this moment, my little green friend...
    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Nvidia isn't your "friend". If they were, they wouldn't have let their board partners ship most of their product to the big crypto miners instead of retail channels in 2021. Doing so caused the GPU shortage to be much worse than it should have been.

      Nvidia went for the easy profit last year and then pretended that "gamers" were buying all of those cards in their quarterly earnings reports. Now they're stuck with a huge surplus of soon-to-be obsolete GPU's because crypto mining profitability fell off a cliff

    • I just bought a used pre-overclocked 1070 for one fiddy on the bay... not too bad for 1080p. A 1080 might have been a smarter buy, though.

  • I am going to build a 13th gen Intel system soon, I don't know if I should get a cheap 3000 series or wait for a 4080ti. I was lucky to snag my 2080ti right before the market took a huge shit. I am scared that if I wait for a 4080 I might end up waiting for a 5080.
  • Nvidia will reduce the number of GPUs it sells to manufacturers of graphics cards and laptops so that those manufacturers can clear out their existing inventory.

    In related news, Ford has decided to reduce the number of Edsels it will sell so car dealerships can clear out their existing inventory,
    Microsoft has decided to reduce the number of copies of Vista it will sell so Computer makers can can clear out their existing inventory,
    CocaCola decided to reduce the number of bottles of NewCoke they sell so super

  • Sounds like the Crypto bubble is over, i will not have to read russian language guides as to mine Ethereum. Plus not getting stolen by Mark Karples and his crook friends

    Why should i buy a gpu now - ps never been able to buy a gpu

  • by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Thursday August 25, 2022 @02:54PM (#62823257) Homepage
    Artificial shortage as a means to fix still higher than retail prices, as in price fixing?
    • by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      A manufacturer can sell its product for whatever price it wants. That is in no way 'price fixing' or 'anti-trust'. Price fixing is an agreement between competitors to set prices for competing products.

    • Depends upon the degree. If they're expecting reduced demand, then it only makes sense to reduce supply to compensate. Otherwise there will just be GPUs sitting on shelves. But, of course, if they go so far that it becomes impossible to find the new GPUs after release, then yes, your criticism will be accurate. I suppose we'll see how it shakes out in the end.
  • Paid $1127 for it in 8/6/21. Exact same ASUS SKU is $679 today 8/25/22. At one point soon after my purchase it was ~$1300 new.

    So I paid a $448 premium to have this GPU a year earlier than I might have. As I think on this I feel it was worth it; I've had a year of excellent service and life is short, so no complaints. And if it breaks post-warranty now it's not as big a heartbreak to replace it.

    • You almost always pay a significant premium to have something sooner especially in the computer industry.

      You can generally buy last year's phone, computer, etc.. at a significant discount even if still new and you get an even better deal if you are willing to go used.

      It works in other industries too whether it is the car lot or the clearance section.

  • nVidia did little of anything to keep the desktop computer gaming market alive, when miners will buying the cards.
  • decreased demand for its gaming GPUs

    You mean decreased demand for their "planet-incinerating Ponzi scheme" [1] hardware.

    [1] jwz

  • I'm not following the logic of why prices are falling. I'm reading that the Etherium merge and the falling prices of cryptocurrencies have resulted in less people buying beefy GPUs therefore the falling prices.

    However, if the merge will reduce energy consumption by a factor of 1000 would that not mean that a miner could crunch the proof-of-stake algorithms faster, and therefore make *more* mining profits?
    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Merge takes ETH from proof of work (with GPUs) to proof of stake (how much existing ETH do you put down to be given more ETH).

  • ... in order to wait for "the right time" when GPU prices have reached rock bottom. Only then will they put their new high-end GPUs on the store shelves, which will impress by performing only slightly worse than the competitors cheapest models while consuming only slightly more power and costing just a little more. Yay Intel!
  • The very high end cards are no longer marked up to infinity and beyond, but the nvida cards most people might care about are still uniformly over msrp in the USA. The cheapest 3060's (launch msrp $330) right now are going for $350. For the 3060ti (launch msrp $400) you can get one today for the excellent discount price of $460. Frankly both launch msrp's were already not compelling from a value prospective. Paying an extra 10-15% doesn't help any. I suppose $1 is worth about 25-30% less now than when t
  • by Babel-17 ( 1087541 ) on Thursday August 25, 2022 @07:22PM (#62824023)

    I'm a PC gamer with a RTX 3080 and a recently purchased LG C1 OLED TV.
    The limit of 10 GB of video memory has yet to be an issue for me, nor do I anticipate being made uncomfortable by that limit during the life of the card. Generally speaking, the more memory the games I like to play use, the framerate goes down proportionally. So for me the card is quite balanced. DLSS, where available, and VRR, add longer life to this card.

    I also use this OLED for consuming video, and I'm planning on not upgrading to an 8k panel for a long time. There's a whole chicken and egg thing there, and film makers aren't swarming to to adopt the cameras, and lighting, needed to to produce 8k content.

    Right. So nVidia has to count on console ports, and games designed for cutting edge PCs, that will be so demanding that their upcoming 4xxx series cards will be seen as delivering an upgraded gaming experience to consumers who already own 3xxx series cards, or AMD equivalents, and who are "limited" by 4k panels. Given that even updated versions of the current generation of consoles will be using games that are required to have backward compatibility, nVidia will be waiting a pretty long time for the next generation of consoles to come along and generate games that when ported will overtax today's PC gamers hardware.

    FPS gamers will appreciate higher framerates, and many of those will be Day One purchasers of nVidia's new series, but their numbers aren't enough. Given that AMD isn't breathing down nVidia's neck, I can see why they are taking their time in bringing out the 4xxx cards. I'm kind of hoping that they are using the time to be working on new ways and means to increase performance per watt, because even committed gamers are concerned about the amount of heat that high end cards are dumping out.

    • I'm a PC gamer with a RTX 3080 and a recently purchased LG C1 OLED TV. The limit of 10 GB of video memory has yet to be an issue for me

      ports of next-gen games havent really come to PC yet, and many will likely go above 10GB @ native 4k.
      the resident evil 3 remake exceeds 10GB in certain sections.
      cyberpunk gets into the 9s.
      the latest spiderman remastered game requires 10GB for ray tracing on very high.

      if purchasing a GPU soon (like me), i'd go no less than 16GB, for longevity's sake (12GB if you upgrade every gen or two).

  • Fuck you nvidia (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RealNeoMorpheus ( 6713808 ) on Thursday August 25, 2022 @09:07PM (#62824191)

    Same for you Jensen.

    You screwed your loyal gamers fans and sold directly to miners, now drown on your own surplus.

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