If you believed the rumors, OMG and Nvidia they should deliver a lot of CES ads to stop the show. Rumors that Nvidia would announce an RTX 3080 Ti or an RTX 3070 Super. Rumors that AMD would launch its 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 bunch of announcements about new Desktop CPUs and laptops. Laptop manufacturers seemed more confident in their ability to meet demand, at least in the coming months. availability. After that, it depends on how well each company has planned its production schedule to keep inventory on the shelves – and, well, I’m not feeling totally confident about it with a chip shortage imminent and it all.
During a normal CES year, we may have heard more about these MIA graphics cards, but tease potential buyers if there is a good chance that they will be waiting long after the release date to get one? It’s not a good idea. Both AMD and Nvidia also announced all the biggest and best things before the new year, so there really wasn’t much to announce that would generate excitement.
The maximum AMD 50-minute talk was resumed with testimonials from CEOs of other companies praising Ryzen CPUs and how they benefited their business. It is no mystery that AMD has some very good processors, video cards too. But it seemed that AMD’s Ryzen 4000 series processors received more fanfare last year. Maybe it’s because some exclusive laptops, like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, would be the first to have them. Or it was the first time that AMD had a strong and viable alternative to Intel’s mobile processors, although the company had manufactured mobile processors years before that.
This time, it seemed that AMD exceeded the specifications of its new mobile processors and even its performance compared to the previous generation and Intel equivalents. The only announcement that AMD made regarding video cards was the mobile version of its new RDNA 2 cards, which will be launched in the first half of 2021.
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Nvidia’s formal announcement at CES was shorter and less impressive than AMD’s. The only desktop GPU announced was the RTX 3060, which took many people watching the broadcast on YouTube enter OUT OF STOCK on chat. It was also widely assumed that the RTX 3080, 3070 and 3060 were arriving on laptops, so the announcement was not a big surprise when it appeared. It was more or less expected.
Nvidia announced that some games were receiving DLSS and ray tracing, and talked about the Resizable bar on their 30 series cards – Nvidia and Intel’s response to AMD’s intelligent access memory to increase the frame rate in some games – but nothing else appeared. (Of course, it would be nice to have the option enabled on 20 series cards, as the 30 series is very difficult to find on anyone other than money changers.)
The most interesting rumors came in the form of a question and answer round table with AMD CEO Lisa Su, to which only a select press number has been invited. But many of the issues were about supply and demand, according to Dr. Ian Cutress. Su told attendees that the chip shortage is “the result of an environment focused on demand, rather than manufacturing problems”.
Su went on to say that he did not believe the scarcity would limit AMD’s market share, but increased demand not only put pressure on foundries to make more chips, but also created a raw material supply problem – one that Su said that it could continue until 2021. There is a lot of prioritization logistics among how many chips these companies have for end users and OEMs, but Su said it’s a priority for AMD to put more chips in the hands of consumers.
Speaking of 19th JP Morgan Tech Auto Forum Annual Conference on January 12, 2021, Nvidia also addressed the chip shortage, saying it expects the stock to “remain thin” until the end of March 2021 in the online and physical retail markets. “Our overall capacity has not been able to keep up with the strong general demand that we have 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 now.
In some of our own discussions with laptop vendors last week, most said there would be enough new products to meet demand during the first wave of purchases. Still, speaking to Acer, a spokesman told us that the offer may be tight after that initial wave. So again, there is a similar problem with laptop vendors and chip makers. (Laptop vendors need parts from chip makers.) In contrast, an MSI spokesman told us that supplies should not be an issue for his new laptops because he has scheduled shipments coming in weekly. For how many weeks these shipments are scheduled, MSI did not say.
Logistically, when supply and demand start to balance, it may take a while before consumers see the products they want to buy and start filling the shelves. Many companies prefer to ship their products via sea freight because it is cheaper, but it usually takes a month or a little longer for everything to reach the ports of the United States. Air transport is obviously faster, but much more expensive and, depending on the country’s climatic conditions, as we move through the winter, some areas may experience longer delays than others. (It didn’t take me long in my work in the semiconductor industry to find out which part of the shipping part is perhaps the most crucial.)
But while many of us hardware enthusiasts are probably feeling a little discouraged after this week’s CES announcements, it was probably best that AMD and Nvidia didn’t have much hope – save the big GPU and any other announcements for when I will land with more force. I am hoping that the delivery of the RTX 3060 GPUs will be as fast as all the previous ones. Money changers are likely to continue to worsen the supply / demand situation and irritate legitimate PC makers and parents who are still trying to buy a new laptop for their children’s virtual school. Crypto miners are also likely to fight hard to get all the cards they can. It is the circle of silicon life at the moment. The only thing we can do, if not need a new GPU, CPU, laptop or whatever it is now, be patient.