Question Where are all the graphics cards?!

Arfa

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My son has a little gaming PC, just a basic Ryzen 5 3400g system, but he's saved up some cash and now wants to add a graphics card (got a 750W PSU in case). Had a budget of about £150-200, figured something like an Nvidia GTX 1650 Super would suit pretty well.

However, I'm struggling to find any UK stockist with any stock! Ebuyer, Scan, Currys, Aria, Overclockers, Box etc. Everyone is clean out and all awaiting stock. Only things that appear to be available are a few super low-end cards (£60-70 range) or monster cards over a £grand.

What's going on? Is this DDR6 shortages? Brexit? Something else?
What's the best plan, sit tight for a couple of months? Does anyone know of retailers with stock not at over-inflated prices trying to profiteer?
 
There is no specific answer. I was in the same boat until a helpful member on this forum alerted me that a 3060ti was in stock at scan.co.uk ( 10 mins later they were sold out )

People say it's something to do with bitcoin mining, corona virus etc.

Watch this video...


Read this thread for some advice....

For that budget I'd recommend an RX580. It will handle every game you throw at it on 1080p
 
Brexit and Covid is my understanding, but probably more COVID since you can't really manufacture Graphics Cards working from home... I've got the same problem, been waiting for an 3080 for ages, wanted a founders edition, but that's clearly out. Just getting one at all would suffice. Have been seeing the Awaiting Stock messages for ages.
 
Also this lack of GPU's has mage older cheaper ones go up in price - saw a 580 the other day for £20 more than it was when I bought one in 2016.
 
For that budget I'd recommend an RX580. It will handle every game you throw at it on 1080p

Thanks for info. That RX580 you linked is £300, bit more than our £200 budget! :) Is that more than you were expecting? Has it gone up in price due to damand?

I was also looking at RX5500 for around £180 odd. Any good? Better/worse than a GTX1650 Super?

Certainly beginning to think we just hold off for a couple of months to avoid paying over the odds on what we can get hold of.
 
What games are you looking to play ?

TBH these days my son is mainly playing Minecraft and Brawlhalla which his Ryzen 5 3400g handles pretty well with integrated graphics. He's got his eye on Elite Dangerous though, which seems like it will need a dedicated graphics card. Overall, really just looking for something that'll cover most game he fancies over next year or so.
 
Best bet at the moment is to wait it out.
Both Nvidia and AMD released new cards towards the end of 2020 and there was a massive rush for them.
Nv are suggesting that by the spring things wil start to normalise, until then it seems all cards are hard to come by and the prices are jacked up.
 
Yep, some prices are incredible.

No PS5's no Graphics cards... what's the world coming to. How am I supposed to Work From Home under these conditions!
 
Yeah £192 for a GTX1650, definitely inflated prices, but tempting. Yeah, think I'll encourage him to hold out until things settle. You know how it is with kids once they've got their mind set on something and have cash burning in their pocket!

Thanks everyone!
 
TBH these days my son is mainly playing Minecraft and Brawlhalla which his Ryzen 5 3400g handles pretty well with integrated graphics. He's got his eye on Elite Dangerous though, which seems like it will need a dedicated graphics card. Overall, really just looking for something that'll cover most game he fancies over next year or so.

Good news for you!! - Elite is an oldish game that plays really well on low end graphics cards, the ryzen 3400g should be fine. On a laptop dedicated GPU (basically crap), I could run it 1440p on medium and they was fine. On a 1660 super I have on my desktop it runs 4k ultra at max 60fps for my monitor..
 
TBH these days my son is mainly playing Minecraft and Brawlhalla which his Ryzen 5 3400g handles pretty well with integrated graphics. He's got his eye on Elite Dangerous though, which seems like it will need a dedicated graphics card. Overall, really just looking for something that'll cover most game he fancies over next year or so.

Get one of these
 
There is a very high demand for components at the moment and the two big players on the GPU market are struggling to meet that demand. AMD especially since they prioritised their chip demand towards Xbox and Playstation, for obvious reasons since they would have volume contracts. Hence why you would see very poor shelf storage from AMD.

As for Nvidia, they have sold a lot of units, their earnings showed massive increase in revenue and demand.

However another big factor in all this mix are miners. They disrupt the market by buying GPUs at any price hence they themselves are bots or people use bots to scalp and sell to miners. A good article around this can be found here: NVIDIA Allegedly Sold $175 Million Worth of Ampere GeForce RTX 30 GPUs To Crypto Miners

Add high demand, miners and scalpers and you have the current market. As long as crypto stays high, which it will, the supply won't meet it anytime soon in my personal opinion. We've seen news where gov of Taiwan asked TSMC to prioritise car chips which will have knock on effect for mobile and desktop chips.
 
Crypto boom killing everything again... everything lost value and Crypto went up. Great business, just need a nice solar system and you are set, making ££££££££££ doing nothing.

Go tell a Crypto fanatic that their coin is doing absolutely nothing except spoil stuff for everyone else not into Crypto.
 
NVidia are saying it could be 2023 or even 2024 before things return to normal. I'm sure some of that is marketing spiel but my suppliers are saying similar things.
 
Groan :(

Baring in mind I've already been waiting a year for a 3080/90 that's appalling.
 
Groan :(

Baring in mind I've already been waiting a year for a 3080/90 that's appalling.
Its not just mining causing a problem. We buy a lot of HPC capacity and to be honest we haven't had a huge issue getting hold of kit but then we are paying server prices even though the chips are the pretty much the same as consumer cards. Who can blame NVidia when a server card can cost 5x the cost of a gaming card and probably only 2x to make.

We do buy workstation cards (normally Quadro) as well but not in the same quantity but it normally takes 8 to 12 weeks to fulfil an order anyway and we have agreed a certain volume for the rest of this year already so not expecting any delays.
 

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