Will high end GPUs be sold out forever?

SneakySpectator

The 4090 was released 2 years ago and it's still impossible to get one without buying second hand or resale from scalpers with a 400% price margin. Forget the 5080/90 absolutely no chance of ever owning one of them. 

Even the 4080's are still sold out everywhere... I just don't understand it. When Apple releases a new iphone, they make tens of millions of them so everyone can easily get one and they make so much money from it. 

But Nvidia only makes a few hundred thousand 50 series cards, Why? What benefit is there? Why not just make 10million of them and make billions more profit?

To me it's simple maths.

250,000 GPUs @ $2,000 each = $500million.
10million GPUs @ $2,000 each = $20billion.

Maybe Nvidia just isn't capable of creating that many GPUs I dunno but they sure as hell have no problem making millions of data centre GPUs.

I guess in about 6 years when the 50 series has been discontinued and no longer receiving hardware support or valid warranty etc I could probably scoop one up from a company trying to get rid of the last of its stock, but by then what's the point when all the games will require a newer 80 series card, which again Nvidia will only make a few hundred thousand of... and the cycle repeats.

I wouldn't mind if I had to wait a few weeks or even a couple months for production to pick up again or whatever but we're literally talking years, like 2+ years of no 5080's or 5090's in circulation. I've signed up to every major retailer in the GPU and signed up to be notified when they come back in stock but I suspect that email will never come... Or if it does, they'll be bought by bots before I can even click on the link in my inbox.

What a strange world we live in.

MattMattMattUK

SneakySpectator said:

The 4090 was released 2 years ago and it's still impossible to get one without buying second hand or resale from scalpers with a 400% price margin. Forget the 5080/90 absolutely no chance of ever owning one of them. 

Even the 4080's are still sold out everywhere... I just don't understand it. When Apple releases a new iphone, they make tens of millions of them so everyone can easily get one and they make so much money from it. 

But Nvidia only makes a few hundred thousand 50 series cards, Why? What benefit is there? Why not just make 10million of them and make billions more profit?

To me it's simple maths.

250,000 GPUs @ $2,000 each = $500million.
10million GPUs @ $2,000 each = $20billion.

Maybe Nvidia just isn't capable of creating that many GPUs I dunno but they sure as hell have no problem making millions of data centre GPUs.

I guess in about 6 years when the 50 series has been discontinued and no longer receiving hardware support or valid warranty etc I could probably scoop one up from a company trying to get rid of the last of its stock, but by then what's the point when all the games will require a newer 80 series card, which again Nvidia will only make a few hundred thousand of... and the cycle repeats.

I wouldn't mind if I had to wait a few weeks or even a couple months for production to pick up again or whatever but we're literally talking years, like 2+ years of no 5080's or 5090's in circulation. I've signed up to every major retailer in the GPU and signed up to be notified when they come back in stock but I suspect that email will never come... Or if it does, they'll be bought by bots before I can even click on the link in my inbox.

What a strange world we live in.

4080 cards have been out of production for about six months now, but early last year it was easy to buy a 4080 or 4090 at MSRP. 

The 5080 and 5090 launch was a farce, but in six months time they will be available easily, scalping only lasts for the first six months or so.

Nvidia average production over a products life so that whilst it is under capacity at the start it roughly matches demand in the middle of the product cycle and is slightly over towards the end. The 50 series launch was not a real launch, there were a few hundred cards available in the UK, less than ten thousand available globally, but they will be available later this year.

vacheron

I've seen a fair few high end 40 series cards at retail last year. 

Main reason for the limited numbers is a finite manufacturing capability of quality silicon.
High end GPU's with huge amounts of CUDA cores results in large (and therefore rarer and more valuable) GPU dies.

At present gaming GPU's are a relatively minor revenue stream in Nvidia's product line, with 80% of their revenue coming from AI datacentre processors for LLM's and server farms. GPU's for gaming is only 17%.

It simply makes little sense to divert resources from a high demand / high margin products, to a lower one.

booneruk

As mentioned previously, I reckon it's the 'AI Boom' that's taking silicon out of the hands of gamers right now. I tried my best on launch day to bag a new card, but it really did seem as if there were only a few or that bots got the majority.

You can still 'buy' a card (I mean pre-order, really), although right now you are at the mercy of elevated prices and a pre-order queue. Various points in the supply line seem to take these opportunities to raise their prices (https://www.tweaktown.com/news/103063/msi-and-asus-raise-the-prices-for-all-of-their-geforce-rtx-50-series-cards/index.html etc) which sticks in my craw somewhat.

I made a pre order at Scan for a not too overpriced (£1090 - as if that's cheap) 5080 a week ago. It was showing estimated March 30, but by some stroke of luck I received a dispatch notification out of the blue and it's now tucked into my PC doing a great job.

Oh, if you do pre order anywhere, I do believe there are some sneaky T&Cs attached this time that indicate the price you pre-order at might go up if the manufacturer raises the price while you're waiting.

If you're not in a rush, wait until the rest of Nvidia's product stack is released, as well as AMD's midrange  (potentially quite competitive) effort - this will all happen by mid March

jshm2

It's mostly the big corps buying them up for "AI" just like they were for "crypto".

MattMattMattUK

jshm2 said:

It's mostly the big corps buying them up for "AI" just like they were for "crypto".

It is not, it is just low capacity and a mock launch. The RTX 5090 has 32GB of RAM but for most AI applications that is nowhere near enough, they will be using the server based systems and the DCGPU range. Hobbyists will get value out of the 5090, but even relatively small businesses will go with the proper scalable solution, the TOPS per £ are just too low on the 50XX and the RAM constrains do not work for the larger models. 

forgotmyname

Don't forget that making consumer video cards is a tiny drop in the ocean of what NVIDIA make their money on.

Their enterprise cards come first.

As mentioned you could get 4080 and 4090 cards months ago with choices of which cards to buy.  The 50 series
will drip feed to consumers.  Many will be buying them because they want them not actually need them.

Dandytf

+1 5080 though 4k fps increases are minimum v 4070ti.
I may build though would order pre build if HP manage to send their 265k/5080 from .com to .co.uk
Only a few weeks for 5070 maybe then I can decide.