If you believed the rumors, I HAVE D and Nvidia he had to deliver a bunch of CES announcements that stop. Rumors that Nvidia will announce an RTX 3080 Ti or an RTX 3070 Super. Rumors that AMD would launch the RX 6700 by the end of this month. Even Intel was quiet about the status of its discrete Xe GPUs, although it still had a lot of announcements about the new Desktop CPUs and notebooks. Laptop manufacturers seemed more confident in their ability to meet demand, at least in the next few months. availability. After that, it depends on how well each company has planned its production schedule to keep the stock on the shelves – and, well, I don’t feel completely confident in that with a imminent lack of chips and all.
During a normal CES year, you may have heard more about these MIA graphics cards, but teasing potential buyers if there is a good chance they will wait a long time after the release date to get one? Not a great idea. Both AMD and Nvidia also announced all the biggest and best things before the new year, so there really weren’t too many things left to announce that it would arouse excitement.
Most of them The 50-minute AMD keynote it was taken up with testimonials from the CEOs of other companies praising Ryzen CPUs and how they benefited their business. It’s no mystery that AMD has some damn good processors, and graphics cards. But it looked like AMD’s Ryzen 4000 series processors had received more fanfare last year. Maybe it was because of some unique laptops like Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, would be the first to have them. Or it was the first time AMD had a strong and viable alternative to Intel mobile processors, even though the company made mobile processors years ago.
This time, AMD felt like AMD was taking a look at the specifications of its new mobile processors and even its performance compared to the previous generation and Intel equivalents. The only announcement made by AMD about graphics cards was the mobile versions of its new RDNA 2 boards, which will be launched sometime in the first half of 2021.
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Nvidia’s formal CES announcement was shorter and more disappointing than AMD’s. The only desktop GPU he announced was the RTX 3060, which determined many people watching the stream on YouTube to type SOLD OUT in chat. It was also assumed that RTX 3080, 3070 and 3060 were arriving on laptops, so the announcement was not so big of a surprise when it hit. It was more or less expected.
Nvidia announced that some games receive DLSS and ray tracing and talked about the Resizable bar on its 30 series cards – Nvidia and Intel’s response to AMD’s smart access memory to increase the frame rate in some games – but it didn’t show up nothing else. (Surely it would be nice to have the option enabled on 20 series cards, because the 30 series is so hard to find from anyone other than scalpers.)
The most interesting information came in the form of a round table of questions and answers with AMD CEO Lisa Su, to which only a select number of the press were invited. But a lot of questions revolved around supply and demand, according to Dr. Ian Cutress. Su told those present that the chip shortage is “the result of a demand-driven environment, rather than production problems.”
Su went on to say that he did not believe the shortage would limit AMD’s market share, but increased demand not only put pressure on foundries to produce more chips, but also created a problem with the supply of raw materials – one that Su said it could continue until 2021. There is a lot of logistics to prioritize between how many chips these companies have for end users and OEMs, but Su assured that it is a top priority for AMD to get more chips in the hands of consumers.
Speaking of The 19th annual conference of the JP Morgan Tech Auto Forum on January 12, 2021, Nvidia also addressed the lack of chips, saying it expects inventory to remain “weak” until the end of March 2021 in both online and physical retail markets. “Our overall capability has failed to keep up with the strong general demand we’ve seen,” said Nvidia CFO Colette Kress. Interestingly, Kress said that crypto miners have not played a major role in the GPU demand that is happening right now.
In some of our own discussions with laptop suppliers over the past week, most have said that there will be enough new products to supply demand during the first wave of buying. However, speaking with Acer, a spokesman told us that supply could be curtailed after that initial wave. So, again, there is a similar problem with laptop suppliers as with chip manufacturers. (Laptop sellers need parts from chip makers.) Instead, an MSI spokesman told us that supply should not be an issue for its new laptops because it has scheduled deliveries that come weekly. How many weeks these expeditions were scheduled, MSI did not say.
From a logistical point of view, once supply and demand start to become more uniform, it may be some time before consumers see the products they want to buy and start filling the shelves. Many companies prefer to deliver their products by shipping because they are cheaper, but it usually takes a month or a little longer until everything arrives in US ports. Air transport is, of course, faster, but much more expensive, and depending on the weather conditions across the country, as we get further into the winter, some areas may have longer delays than others. (It didn’t take me long in my internship in the semiconductor industry to realize that part of the transportation part is probably the most important.)
But while many of us hardware enthusiasts probably feel a little deflated after this week’s CES announcements, it’s probably best that AMD and Nvidia didn’t raise our hopes too high – except for the big GPU and the others. announcements for when I will land harder. I expect the offer of RTX 3060 GPUs to go as fast as all the others before it. Scalpers will likely continue to worsen the supply / demand situation and annoy legitimate PC builders and parents who are still trying to get a new laptop for their child’s virtual school. Crypto miners will probably fight, too, to get all the cards they can. It is the circle of silicon life at this time. The only thing we can do, if not need a new GPU, CPU, laptop or anything else right now is patient.