Graphics Cards are Hardly Available- The Miners are just One Problem of Many

Whether Nvidia’s Geforce RTX 3000 or AMD’s Radeon RX 6000, graphics cards are in short supply right now. But why is it like that? Sure, Corona or poorly prepared manufacturers are obvious explanations and probably not completely wrong. But it doesn’t seem that easy in the end.

The valued colleague and well-known hardware expert Igor Wallossek from igor’sLAB went on a search for the reasons for the shortage and identified some interesting details.

Hardware guides on GameStar-Plus

Due to poor availability and high prices, many players are currently unable to use any of the new GPUs. But if you are one of the lucky ones who own one of the graphics cards, you will find suitable guides at GameStar-Plus to combine them with the right hardware:

There is a shortage almost everywhere

So far, little suspicion, because generally something more in the background, should also Made to order TSMC not be completely innocent of the shortage.

According to Igor, the Taiwanese have simply taken on too many orders. At the same time, the company is positioned too broadly with three parallel process technologies, the so-called nodes, i.e. 3, 5 and 7 nanometers.

Interesting side note: Nvidia has RTX 3000 manufactured by Samsung, which in turn has its own supply chains and resources. That could even be an advantage in the medium term.

Miners do their part

This advantage fizzles out quickly if one believes Igor’s informants who are not mentioned in detail. Accordingly, the RTX 3060 Ti is actually produced in sufficient numbers and should therefore “easily” be enough in normal times.

Video memory, PWM controller and other components

Videospeicher: There also seems to be a lack of graphics memory. At this point, however, you can see how closely the individual components of a graphics card are interlinked.

On the one hand, according to Igor, Nvidia could rely on the exclusive deal with Micron and thus the particularly fast GDDR6X modules that will be installed from the RTX 3080. The GPUs are not available in sufficient numbers for this.

GDDR6 modules, which are built into all other modern accelerators, whether from AMD or Nvidia, on the other hand, are said to be affected by the shortage. So it could well be that the GPUs exist, but the memory is simply missing – GPU and video memory are usually sold as a bundle.

PWM-Controller und Monitoring-Chips: Somewhat below the radar, but no less important, there is apparently a lack of PWM controllers, i.e. the components that supply the graphics card with the correct voltage or control the phase distribution. According to Igor, the chips are already strictly rationed.

In addition to the PWM controllers, other chips, such as monitoring modules for controlling temperatures, voltages and so on, should also be in short supply. In the end, it is a whole conglomerate of reasons that lead to the current poor availability of graphics cards.