Less than 18 months ago, it seemed inconceivable that graphics cards could be piled up at the resellers.
This is an incongruous situation, to say the least, while we are just recovering from the most serious shortage of graphics cards that the small world of microcomputing has ever known. While the Covid-19 pandemic is raging, the two main players in the PC graphics card market did not anticipate a prodigiously high demand boosted by three elements whose effects have combined to create an explosive cocktail: a massive shift to telecommuting and therefore the need for a relatively high-performance machine, the arrival on the market of a very promising RTX 3000 generation and crytpomining, which is on the rise thanks to the remarkably high prices of currencies like Ethereum.
The result was not long in coming and within three months - from September to December 2020 - we went from a normal situation to a widespread shortage. A few weeks later, no more graphics cards were available from retailers and even the lowest-end models disappeared from the shelves. What's worse, the few returns that were in stock were snapped up within seconds, or at best a few minutes, and the prices soared to indecent heights: GeForce GTX 1660s at more than 400 euros, or GeForce RTX 3080s at more than 2,000 euros, to name just two examples.
Eventually, we knew things would settle down, but it was hard to predict such a hard landing. First, the demand for PCs has shrunk considerably, whether we're talking about tower-sized machines or laptops. Second, inflation became an issue, and for many households, finding a new graphics card or changing laptops was not necessarily the most important thing. Finally, buyers who broke their piggy banks for an RTX 3000 model are understandably thinking twice about investing in an RTX 4000, regardless of current prices.
Because production levels have not necessarily been properly reassessed by AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and their partners, it seems that very large quantities of certain graphics cards may have been produced... without finding a buyer. The best example is Intel's models which, despite a performance/price ratio among the best, do not manage to convince gamers. In fact, at many retailers, stocks are accumulating and the arrival of new references only makes things worse. Here we think of the latest GeForce RTX 4070, which also fails to convince.
The situation seems to be particularly critical in the United States and Japan, where two unusual offers have aroused our curiosity. The American retailer MicroCenter is launching its " buy one (graphics) card and get another (gift) card free " promotion. The graphics card to buy is a GeForce RTX 4000 - whatever the model - and the gift card is a Steam gift card worth $100: that's a nice discount on the GeForce! Even better, NTT-X in Japan has opted for a "simultaneous" sale: for the purchase of a GeForce RTX 4090 from NVIDIA, the store gives away an ARC A750 from Intel, a card that normally costs around 250 to 300 euros.
