What's the deal with the rtx 3080/3090 out of stock

To date, the rtx 3080 and 3090 are pretty much out of stock or can be purchased from scalpers for and arm and a leg. What is going on with NVidia? I've been patiently waiting but I think by the time they are in stock, a new M1 Mini with 16 cpu and 16 gpu cores with 32Gb RAM will be out for around the price of a 3090. Anyway, we're now in March 2021 and still no stock.

They are all used up by crypto currency miners that are buying in bulk and at a premium ...

bunch of greedy b**** literally pissing away energy for money in the most direct form possible _and_ also preventing people from doing actual useful work on top of that by grabbing all availabel supply of high end GPUs.

You'd think nVidia would ratchet up production to meet the demand, though. Frustrating that it doesn't seem to be the case.

You'd think nVidia would ratchet up production to meet the demand, though. Frustrating that it doesn't seem to be the case.

Yeah, it is frustrating to say the least. I need to replace 2 of my graphics cards and I had read they were going to by out with the 3080TI by mid February, and also with the expectations of the 3080 and 3090 to be in stock. We're in March and no site of this, let alone no word from NVidea. Even the big online resellers do not have them in stock, or if some smaller stores do, they're asking for an arm and a leg.

The same thing is happening with AMD as well. This is not good.

You'd think nVidia would ratchet up production to meet the demand, though. Frustrating that it doesn't seem to be the case.

Chip production is the bottleneck.

Pretty much all latest gen chips, from AMD Ryzen, AMD GPU, NVidia RTX 3000, Apple M1, even the Xilinx FPGA used in BlackMagic cameras ... are all fabbed by one company : TSMC.

And space in their fab is limited and booked years in advance ...
And TSMC also can't just "build" new fabs either, it takes like a good decade of planning to make one.

TSMC has all there ASML machines up and running 24/7 but they cant keep up with the big demand of chips last 2 years....

Nvidia should limit there Firmware that mining is not possible anymore with those videocards...
But i guess they wont do that as the prices go up like this and they sell out every batch they make at the moment..

Only a lot of angry gamers / editors / Graphics operators that need new cards... But who cares at nvidia they get there money anyway

One of the BB has just fallen today. First, between 3080, 3090 or even 6800xt, it was what I could first get. Then my transfer from 3440x1440/144 to 4k/144 was demonstrated in future. So that was my max budget, I saved 3000 dollars for my new build. I'm really pleased with 3090 FE as I'm very excited about DLSS for cyberpunk. My fear was that buyers were sorry about the speed at which you checked them down, but that it was the 3090 I am relieved. Only an added advantage of my video editing, although it is just a little bit and a 3080 might have been fine.

This LTT Video covers it quite well:

(They actually spoke to insiders in the industry for their info.)

I think it was nVidia who said, 'It's a demand issue, not a manufacturing issue.'

There are only a handful of companies that can actually make (fabricate) chips. The main ones I know are TSMC, Samsung and Intel.
Space at these fabs is booked years in advance by almost every company (nVidia, AMD, smartphone manufactures, car manufactures, camera manufactures, basically anything electronic) based on estimated product sales.

Because of the pandemic, computer sales have gone up more in the last year than they have in the last decade or two - people are buying stuff so that they can work/ do school from home but also with so many countries under strict 'stay home' orders, more people have been buying computers (or consoles - which also use AMD chips) for gaming in their spare time as well.

As such, demand has far exceeded what anyone thought it would when they booked the fab time a year ago and as nVidia or AMD can't physically make more chips (as they don't make them - TSMC does) and all the fabs are running 24/7 already then they physically can't make more.

Fabs also are incredibly complex and expensive to build, the US government just sunk a lot of money into building new ones ($billions) but it could be at least 2023 (and that's probably optimistic) before any chips actually get manufactured there.

Interestingly, Intel is basically the only company not facing massive shortages because they fab their own chips.

I think mining and the recovery in price of crypto currency probably hasn't helped either, but no one that LTT spoke too actually thought it was a major cause.

Nvidia should limit there Firmware that mining is not possible anymore with those videocards...

nVidia tried to issue a driver to limit some crypto currencies on the newly launched 3060, but there are already like 3 or 4 work arounds. Even then, I think it was mainly Ethereum it targeted, and would still mine bitcoin or whatever just fine.

nVidia leaked their own unlocked firmware within a week but in the end the easiest workaround was a dummy HDMI plug to fool the card into thinking its outputting to a screen. As long as idiots want useless NFTs and other crypto....

Chip production is the bottleneck.

Ahhh.

Frustrating.

I would not be too worried at the moment with not getting an RTX 3080 or 3090.

I've had an RTX 3070 since November and so far it is a pain in the arse with Resolve 16 and especially Resolve 17.

In Resolve 17, the RTX card is just not stable at all and keeps crashing at the drop of a hat for no reason at all.

I'm beginning to regret upgrading from my AMD RX580 card.