How Graphics Card shortage is killing PC Gaming

The ongoing Global Chip shortage and crypto-mining is hitting the PC Gamers hard, acquiring a graphics card at a fair price is next to impossible

Although Semiconductor Chip shortages are affecting every major industry from Cars, consoles, toys, and others, PC Gaming is one of the hardest-hit industries for more than one reason. Other than the Pandemic, Taiwan drought, and global dynamics affecting everyone, the Video card market has another predator, the cryptocurrency miners! while the best mining silicon is for them is the graphics card, The supply itself remains incredibly tight. This is very dangerous to the industry and frustrating to GPU buyers, to say the least.

While cryptocurrency mining is exciting for many money minters, it has come down as a heavy cost to computer Gamers who now find it next to impossible to build their Gaming PC. This is one reason that we are recommending cards like the Nvidia GeForce 1030 to our readers. The situation is so bad, that online classifieds like OLX see very few used card listings, people just grab what they can find, old or new!

Anil Dave, a hardware dealer at Nehru place IT hub, New Delhi told Techquila”Whatever card you can find online, is priced so high, it makes no sense to go for it for most customers” And he is right, a graphics card that could be bought for 10-12k Now retails for more than 25K and a high-end card can cost in 6 figures! “It’s unbelievable, how prices haveshot up,” Anil says, “Today I am stocking Nintendo switch and many refurbished cards that many of my customers have sold me back.”

“This is not how it is supposed to be, We should be recommending at least a 1650 today to budget builders,” Says Sahil Tikku, one of Techquila’s team members who is an expert with computer gaming and recently wrote about aBudget Gaming PC Build. “instead, we are asking them to put up with what?.. a GT 1030 at best?” He says with dissatisfaction in his voice!

While a lot of users are looking at new mobile phones or the Nintendo switch instead of buying a new graphics card upgrade, Some have
deferred their purchase of Gaming systems altogether. A few of the people we talked to over the phone decided to buy a gaming laptop. These laptops are easier to find at the right price.

Recently Nvidia has promised hash limited video cards and announced that starting with the GeForce RTX 3060, it will limit the hash rate to 50% of its mining performance. Nvidia also announced the Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP). NVIDIA announced four brand new CMP cards (30HX, 40HX, 50HX, and 90HX) specifically to address the miners. This is supposed to discourage miners from buying up the graphics card meant for Gaming users. Despite the surge in mining-related purchases, PC Gamers are still Nvidia’s main and most profitable customers.

Cryptocurrency has been hopping between GPU and ASIC processors. It is not difficult to imagine that there may be a new platform to mine in the future. Manufacturers like Nvidia know very well that if the PC Gaming industry suffers, so do the profits. After all, it is not Cryptocurrency mining that holds the future, but the PC Gamer!

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