Is the RTX 3080/70 stock situation actually worse now than it's ever been?

[maizenblue]

I feel like the situation has actually gotten worse. I used to get regular discord notifications for stock on Newegg, Amazon, Best Buy, B&H etc. Granted I could never add them to my cart and check out fast enough, but at least they were appearing. Now for the past few weeks the notifications have been virtually non existent. In fact I went 2 weeks without a single one. This all happened around the time of Elon Musks public support for crypto currency, so I suspect this is mainly being driven by mining as AIBs sell in bulk to miners.

[bmx6454]

yes, i would agree. i have been trying to help my friend get a 3070 for the past 2 weeks, and i am getting nowhere, and also msrp prices have spiked a bit. when i got my 3070 in early December, it took maybe 1 week of solid effort.

[maizenblue]

7 minutes ago, bmx6454 said:

yes, i would agree. i have been trying to help my friend get a 3070 for the past 2 weeks, and i am getting nowhere, and also msrp prices have spiked a bit. when i got my 3070 in early December, it took maybe 1 week of solid effort.

I was able to order an Asus Tuf 3070 a month ago. In fact I could choose between that and an Aorus Master. I had to cancel it due to a credit card issue but wasnt worried because I figured the situation would improve and I preferred a 3080 anyway. Now the situations gotten a lot worse. 

[Bobbysixjp]

Yes the situation has got worse- a couple of months ago it was pretty easy to a 3070 here in Japan. Even 3080s were available when they were first released. Same for 3060Tis. Now it is almost impossible to get any GPU for anything close to MSRP. 3080s are selling for 2000 USD and 3090s 2500 - 3000 USD. 

[MadAnt250]

Sad, just sad, I miss 2019.

[Rym]

The situation will continue to get worse and worse until it will get better. I expect at least 2 years if not more of shortages. 

[Letgomyleghoe.]

I mean this is expected. Chinese lunar new year didn't just go away this year and correct me if i'm wrong but manufacturing completely stops during this period and takes a while to ramp up back to normal after its over. In the past year retailers would just stock up during this period to make up for the fact that nothing is being made, but this year they're already, probably, buying as much as they can and its going out of stock instantly, so it should be expected that you can't buy anything.

[maizenblue]

6 hours ago, Rym said:

The situation will continue to get worse and worse until it will get better. I expect at least 2 years if not more of shortages. 

Can the situation get worse? No 3000 series has been in stock anywhere for over a minute since launch almost half a year ago.
 

Stock radar showed no 3080 or 3070 in stock anywhere in the US for any amount of time, for over 2 weeks. It literally cant get worse. 

[maizenblue]

6 hours ago, Letgomyleghoe. said:

I mean this is expected. Chinese lunar new year didn't just go away this year and correct me if i'm wrong but manufacturing completely stops during this period and takes a while to ramp up back to normal after its over. In the past year retailers would just stock up during this period to make up for the fact that nothing is being made, but this year they're already, probably, buying as much as they can and its going out of stock instantly, so it should be expected that you can't buy anything.

Do they really shut down all production though? That seems a little unlikely in this day and age. 

[Rym]

4 hours ago, maizenblue said:

Can the situation get worse? No 3000 series has been in stock anywhere for over a minute since launch almost half a year ago.
 

Stock radar showed no 3080 or 3070 in stock anywhere in the US for any amount of time, for over 2 weeks. It literally cant get worse. 

It can though. And it did. The shortage is expected to last at a bare minimum until 2022.

[Maticks]

ordered a 3080 TUF on launch night in August.. still no ETA in March.. looks like a decent amount of stock was coming in around November now its completely stopped.

At least in Australia no stock has come in since just before Xmas.

[Steel_Wind]

Yes, it's worse. Elon screwed us all by investing so large in Bitcoin 2 weeks ago. While that wasn't an investment in Etherium, it impacted the market's perception and the price went up even higher. 

We were previously at a point last Fall where supply was constrained both by yields and Covid issues, and demand was driven by gamers and miners and overall increased home computing use. Now, the mining demand is through the roof at every stage. Add to it so called "arbitrage"  effects where people are scalping; that is, buying and flipping cards for 2x-3x value? YIKES.

And we are now at a Zen point of being Perfectly Screwed. I don't think this will get better until Q1 of 2022. That's right, I expect we will have a year of this to look forward to. And even when it starts to get better, it will only be the start -- not the endpoint of improvement and normalization.

Worse, I have doubts that all computer retailers will survive the shortage. When miners buy graphics cards by the pallet load from distributors and manufacturers, the retailers never see a cent of that business. Worse still, the gear those cards go in are server/rack based affairs which tends not to be inventory they ever carry. Manufacturers and (some) distributors still make money - the end-user retailer does not.

For the end-user focused retailer though, they depend on sales of cases, monitors, mice, speakers, mobos, AIO coolers, CPUs and memory -- often at razor thin margins of 7-10% on most of those components. They survive on volume and some larger markups on some of their most attractive components to achieve overall profitability on their leased space and staff. Sustained shortages of key components like a GPU stop purchase of VAST amounts of all hardware and can cause the business to fail.

Those retailers who are particularly retail end-user focused are vulnerable. Linus' first employer NCIX was hit VERY hard by the last shortage and went under, in part, because of it.

Yes, we may see this happen again. This hurts us all. If we lose Canada Computers in Eastern Canada at this point? Gamers in half the country will be screwed. We'll be left with a shrinking handful of Mom and Pop stores, Best Buy (which doesn't really count, imo, except as a dealer of monitors, printers and laptops) and then Newegg and Amazon.  That's a bad bad thing. 

[Mark Kaine]

yes, and I only know because prices on Ali express keep going up...

and none of the usual online stores around here seem to have any in stock (they used to until around mid January) 

[Mister Woof]

I got 2 RTX 3000 series cards (Gigabyte RTX 3070 Aorus Master and ASUS TUF RTX 3080 OC) in December at MSRP.

 

Haven't been able to get one since. Not at MSRP anyway.

[Mark Kaine]

22 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

I got 2 RTX 3000 series cards (Gigabyte RTX 3070 Aorus Master and ASUS TUF RTX 3080 OC) in December at MSRP.

 

Haven't been able to get one since. Not at MSRP anyway.

While I feel like I'm repeating myself, that's exactly why I got my card in December, I knew waiting until February or so wouldn't be the best idea... and while I think I didn't pay 'msrp', I paid like 570 euros... the card now goes for upwards of 1200 euros... so yeah, feels like it was the right decision, plus I never anticipated to get a high end nvidia card for under 500 bucks, that's just unrealistic, and that's why I call the real 'msrp' fake, they never intended to sell a lot of these, at those bargain bin prices, on the contrary they obviously knew supply would be highly limited, so this is more a 'goodwill' price if anything... 

[NotSoHealthy]

On 2/28/2021 at 3:01 AM, bmx6454 said:

yes, i would agree. i have been trying to help my friend get a 3070 for the past 2 weeks, and i am getting nowhere, and also msrp prices have spiked a bit. when i got my 3070 in early December, it took maybe 1 week of solid effort.

can you define solid effort

[bmx6454]

3 hours ago, NotSoHealthy said:

can you define solid effort

sure i guess lol. keeping all relevant twitter pages open for stock alert, watching for when drops would be (newegg/best buy/zotac/b&h/ect.) and having all accounts logged in with payment details ready for quickest possible checkout, and being in as many relevant discords as possible. i'm sure there is more i could do, but that's enough for me lol.

also checking all nearby pc shops/microcenters for stock.

[maizenblue]

9 hours ago, Steel_Wind said:

Worse, I have doubts that all computer retailers will survive the shortage. When miners buy graphics cards by the pallet load from distributors and manufacturers, the retailers never see a cent of that business. Wore, the gear those cards go in are server/rack based affairs which tends not to be inventory they ever carry. Manufacturers and (some) distributors still make money - the end-user retailer does not.
 

This is what I suspected, that GPUs are being shipped to large scale miners. There is no doubt the shortage got substantially worse when Musk threw his weight behind cryptocurrency. I was surprised that the 3060ti completely vanished from inventory, since it seems to be the least appealing of the 3000 series(before the 3060). It's even harder to get than the 3080. Then I found out that was the card miners most preferred, then it was obvious what is driving the worsening shortage.

[maizenblue]

7 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

While I feel like I'm repeating myself, that's exactly why I got my card in December, I knew waiting until February or so wouldn't be the best idea... and while I think I didn't pay 'msrp', I paid like 570 euros... the card now goes for upwards of 1200 euros... so yeah, feels like it was the right decision, plus I never anticipated to get a high end nvidia card for under 500 bucks, that's just unrealistic, and that's why I call the real 'msrp' fake, they never intended to sell a lot of these, at those bargain bin prices, on the contrary they obviously knew supply would be highly limited, so this is more a 'goodwill' price if anything... 

Exactly. I thought the same thing. Not only did they intentionally underprice the 3000 series knowing they didnt have the capacity to actually sell them, but they also gimped them on VRAM for built in obsolescence. They are playing the long game here at a time they knew their capacity was lacking. Realistically the 3070 should have 10gb of VRAM and the 3080 12 if people want a card that will last a few years, as most people do when they buy a GPU.