What’s the full situation behind the recent graphics card shortage?
I know the short answer is because of miners, but to me it seems like there’s more to it. Here’s why:
1. The original Ethereum mining craze that really screwed gamers and GPU prices kinda died off back in early Q4 ‘17. This is because it gets harder with time, and it’s been a while since then. Although prices have gone up but it’s still not as good, apparently.
2. Back then high end Nvidia cards were generally less affected by the flood of miners apparently because of their terrible ROI. Though, now it’s impossible to find one that doesn’t go for nearly 2x MSRP.
3. AMD Radeon card stock is better than it was during the Ether mining craze. I’m talking about Polaris, not Vega (that’s on AMD). Back then those things were damn near impossible to even find.
Anyway, some of my ideas for other possible causes behind the GPU shortage are that it could be the influence of the Bitcoin boom, some new thing that people mine nowadays, or even manufacturers not supplying. But really I don’t know.
