We have bad news for gamers who were hoping that the current situation with graphics card inventory would improve this year. According to industry analysts, the global shortage of GPUs will remain until 2022, as the demand for chips currently exceeds the supply by about 30%. It is therefore estimated that it will take three to four quarters for supply to catch up with demand.
In other words, taking into account the release date of the new graphics cards, this means that we will be talking about a year and a half of stock shortages. And that’s without taking into account that it will take another three to six months for stores to restock once manufacturers resume full production.
“We believe that semi-finished product companies are shipping 10% to 30% below current demand levels and it will take at least 3 to 4 quarters for supply to catch up with demand; and another 1 to 2 quarters to replenish customer/distribution channel inventories to normal levels,” said Harlan Sur, an analyst at JP Morgan.
On the other hand, Hardware Times reports that various manufacturers such as Gigabyte, ASUS, and MSI are receiving less than 20 units of the RTX 3080 for the entire South Asian region. It also states that China barely received 100 units in the month of February, which is crazy.
Recall that semiconductor giant TSMC has announced a $28 billion investment to expand its facilities in 2021. However, it will take many months to complete the work and start production with such improvements.