For several years now, the graphics card market has been spiraling out of control. The situation has become so problematic that it is difficult to remember the time when they were available and accessible.
It is possible that one day things will become logical and normal again. Meanwhile, positive signals have been piling up for a few weeks now with falling prices and increasing inventories.
Jon Peddie, a GPU analyst, tries to explain how we got here. It also proposes an approach to reverse the situation. It’s obvious how PC players can act so that those responsible get a violent response?
The solution would be quite simple. It would be based on two fundamental concepts. We must unite and be able to say no.
“There’s a good chance these high prices will crash if players just say no, and speculators and gougers will end up with stocks they can’t sell anymore.” It didn’t happen, but when it does it will be satisfying to watch the gouges lose. †
Graphics Cards, Why Have Prices Exploded?
The first signs of a risk of instability in the GPU market date back to 2010, when GPUs were first discovered to be massively used for cryptocurrency products, including the famous Bitcoin. Then the ASICs arrived but unfortunately also the Ethereum (2017 and acceleration in 2020 then 2021).
Jon Peddie To explain
“In both cases, there have been shortages of custom graphics cards, driving up the end-user price […] As the value of Ethereum started to rise with the pandemic, savvy speculators launched bots to buy every new custom graphics card that hit the market. Then speculators offered these cards for sale by multiplying their prices two or three times. All this happened alongside a collapse in production and the drying up of stocks.’
It is especially interesting to note that this price increase has mainly affected the PC world. While game consoles are also victims of strong demand, the increases are not as significant. Likewise, very popular arcade systems in Asia have not seen significant price increases. PC graphics cards, on the other hand, have seen their prices rise by a factor of 2 or even 3 compared to laptop GPUs.
According to Peddie, this would mean that the ‘scarcity’ argument doesn’t work. The culprits would be: “miners, speculators and “gougers””† AMD and Nvidia would not be the big winners in the end, unlike distribution channels such as Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg and others.
