Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When important components become scarce: CPUs, GPUs

igorslab.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 101 posts

Re: When important components become scarce: CPUs, GPUs

#51

Post by pilsetnieks »

coward8675309 wrote: post #26

The paranoid conspiratorial tone of TFA is a symptom of what's wrong with the Internet and therefore humanity: > The big brands that are ultimately at stake (Sony, Microsoft, NVIDIA, AMD) all talk about “demand exceeding supply”. Oh, really? [New paragraph.] It is a rather evasive explanation, without any communication about the actual state of their supply and production lines… The dark secret? Not only is demand GR…

I think you're overly simplifying the issue. The interesting part here is about why there are these supply issues - are there technical limitations, lack of manufacturing capacity, manufacturing difficulties, supply issues for source materials, transportation problems or costs, etc.

Re: When important components become scarce: CPUs, GPUs

#52

Post by deadbunny »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #36
monkeydust wrote: post #2

If (like me) your on a long waiting list to get a new Nvidia GPU or AMD processor this piece sheds some light on the issue from a supplier perspective.

I wanted a new GPU so I could run Cyberpunk 2077. Turns out that even people with those GPUs are having issues, so by the time I find one, the game should be sufficiently patched. I have a massive Steam backlog, so I'm not too frustrated.

Cyberpunk is a demanding game but it's not all that bad. I'm running 1080p ultra (no RT) at 50-60fps on a 2070S without any issues.

Re: When important components become scarce: CPUs, GPUs

#53

Post by deadbunny »

kingosticks wrote: post #40
bserge wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried overclocking the everloving shit out of your current card? I mean throw everything at it, best thermal paste/pads, cooling, hardware mods. Genuine question, as that's what I do before deciding to buy a new, well, anything :D Surprisingly, it works pretty well... A few burned out GPUs and motherboards over two decades seems like a good risk/reward ratio.

But if it goes (really) wrong, you have nothing until the supply issues are resolved. Sounds like a bad plan right now. Especially if there's a perfectly good Steam backlog to get through (when is there ever NOT a Steam backlog!).

It's literally impossible to kill hardware with standard overclocking these days.

Re: When important components become scarce: CPUs, GPUs

#54

Post by jcynix »

monkeydust wrote: post #6
est31 wrote: post #3

Really interesting: > With the exception of the current RTX 3000 (Samsung), all market launches of the year 2020 rely on the 7-nm chips from TSMC. ARM-SoC manufacturers such as Qualcomm also use 7 nm and have only recently moved capacity from Samsung to TSMC. TSMC is currently pretty much alone in the market with this technology and the production lines are therefore working at full capacity. A sudden increase in pro…

The ABF thing is fascinating actually. The company behind it Ajinomoto has for the last century since its existence built a business in food products: seasoning, oils, beverages, dairy products and chemicals. ABF came about through internal innovation. There's a really good (perhaps unintentionally funny) video of it here: https://players.brightcove.net/6050660078001/default_default...

Cool video, thanks. Funny enough, Wikipedia doesn't mention ABF at all in their article on the company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajinomoto

Re: When important components become scarce: CPUs, GPUs

#55

Post by kingosticks »

deadbunny wrote: post #53
kingosticks wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if it goes (really) wrong, you have nothing until the supply issues are resolved. Sounds like a bad plan right now. Especially if there's a perfectly good Steam backlog to get through (when is there ever NOT a Steam backlog!).

It's literally impossible to kill hardware with standard overclocking these days.

For obvious reasons I have zero intention of trying to prove you wrong.

Re: When important components become scarce: CPUs, GPUs

#56

Post by cbozeman »

stale2002 wrote: post #48
vlovich123 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument seems to be scalpers don’t have power because OEMs could just raise the price themselves and get all that scalp profit. That’s good in theory but in practice you have complex sales channel configurations and contractual agreements. If Best Buy is selling your GPU at $400 because that’s the agreed upon MSRP, they’re going to be pretty unhappy if they’re out of stock and suddenly you decide to increase MS…

So, I heard an interesting solution to the scalper price problem, where suppliers are unable to raise prices. What Nvidia could do is sell a special "doctors without border's edition" version of their graphics card, that is 500$ more expensive, and the extra money is donated. That way, the extra money goes to charity instead of the scalpers, and nobody can really complain about it, because what do you hate charity?

Interesting idea... but I'd only be interested if I could claim that $500 as a tax deduction. :)

Otherwise I'd rather just wait for supply to become available and donate the $500 outright.

Re: When important components become scarce: CPUs, GPUs

#57

Post by cartoonfoxes »

stale2002 wrote: post #48
vlovich123 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument seems to be scalpers don’t have power because OEMs could just raise the price themselves and get all that scalp profit. That’s good in theory but in practice you have complex sales channel configurations and contractual agreements. If Best Buy is selling your GPU at $400 because that’s the agreed upon MSRP, they’re going to be pretty unhappy if they’re out of stock and suddenly you decide to increase MS…

So, I heard an interesting solution to the scalper price problem, where suppliers are unable to raise prices. What Nvidia could do is sell a special "doctors without border's edition" version of their graphics card, that is 500$ more expensive, and the extra money is donated. That way, the extra money goes to charity instead of the scalpers, and nobody can really complain about it, because what do you hate charity?

Clever, I like this. Doubtless I'm sure I'm about to read followups telling me why this won't work, which I look forward to reading.

Re: When important components become scarce: CPUs, GPUs

#58

Post by csomar »

monkeydust wrote: post #2

If (like me) your on a long waiting list to get a new Nvidia GPU or AMD processor this piece sheds some light on the issue from a supplier perspective.

It's interesting because I live in Tunisia (which has lots of challenges for importing stuff, one of them is lack of foreign currency) but the new Ryzen series is widely available including the 5950x. You can find it in most of the gaming suppliers (like this one https://skymil-informatique.com/processeur-amd/3357-amd-ryze...). The RTX series are also available, though I'm still waiting for AMDs.

Do you they have per-country quotas?

Re: When important components become scarce: CPUs, GPUs

#59

Post by BlueTemplar »

mschuster91 wrote: post #45
rob74 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scalpers aren't powerful enough to create an artificial scarcity. If there were not really an increased demand for the products, noone would pay their inflated prices. When demand outstrips supply, the logical thing for manufacturers and (e-)retailers to do would be to increase prices themselves to balance out the situation, but for various reasons (one of which is possible negative PR) they are reluctant to do that,…

> Scalpers aren't powerful enough to create an artificial scarcity. Of course they are. Back in ye olde days when GPU mining for bitcoin was still possible (basically, FPGAs were not widespread and ASICs not even on the horizon), the amount of people who bought out all usable GPUs and resold them on ebay was massive . It was almost impossible to get anything for months unless you were willing to pay many multiples th…

This must mean that these concert tickets aren't being sold at market prices to start with...

Now, a much worse situation is for critical health products, like what happened with masks and hydroalcoholic gel during the start of Covid. Not surprising that the governments intervened and made scalping of that illegal, and relaxed some rules on their fabrication.

(But on the other hand the governments did some "scalping" themselves for the medical workers, by not only requisitioning masks, but also making propaganda about how masks weren't effective!)

Re: When important components become scarce: CPUs, GPUs

#60

Post by mjevans »

monkeydust wrote: post #2

If (like me) your on a long waiting list to get a new Nvidia GPU or AMD processor this piece sheds some light on the issue from a supplier perspective.

I just want to enter a global waiting queue where the actual supply is raffled or rationed out by a lottery of sorts.

E.G.

mid-November AMD confirms all the parts will exist and opens pre-orders; I enter for the CPU and GPU I want.

Based on how many weeks go by unfulfilled I get that many spots in the drawing.

A new batch clears customs in my country. Sequential drawings are run until the requested parts are depleted.

I am sent a token from AMD that I can use at a retailer to buy the indicated stuff

Post reply on HN