Graphics cards prices have been going up and while we saw some form of stability it seems that is not going to last very long. Nvidia has predicted that graphics cards prices are going to continue to go up and it seems that miners are not the only ones to blame here.
According to the prediction, we will not see the prices drop any time before Q3 2018 which is a very big window indeed. tech community lead Brian Hutchins talked about a visit from Nvidia to Massdrop HQ and the following is very interesting:
“pricing in the market will continue to go up through Q3 of this year most likely before we start seeing any type of relief.”
Furthermore, it seems that even though miners have been making things worse, graphics cards prices are going to go up because the same memory is being used in smartphones and mobile makers like Samsung and Apple are willing to pay more in order to get that memory first.
“All new cell phones coming out by Apple and Samsung (and others) last year started using the same memory as graphics cards. Apple and Samsung are willing to pay more for this memory to make sure they get it first and all of it that they need. This has created a shortage of memory for the much smaller companies like MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, and EVGA to make graphics cards.”
We also talked about PC hardware getting more expensive because of UMCO plans to increase the prices for silicon wafer by 20% in 2018 and another 20% increase in the price is planned for 2019. You can read all about that here.
You must be wondering that smartphones use DDR4 memory while modern graphics cards use GDDR5 memory. While that is indeed the case, memory manufacturers are more focused on making memory for smartphones as companies are willing to pay more for that type of memory. This is creating a memory shortage in the market and hence the shortage of graphics cards as well.
All things considered, we can only hope that with the next generation Nvidia Ampere and AMD Vega graphics cards coming out, things will become better and prices will not only drop but become stable as well. If you got the AMD Vega or Nvidia Pascal cards at launch like I did then you are doing better than most.
Let us know what you think about Graphics cards prices and how badly you have been affected by them.
