Graphics Card Supply to Improve in the Latter Half of 2022

It’s been over a year since the release of the newest generation, 30 series GPUs. Vendors still do not have them in stock, or they’re being relisted for egregious prices. “We feel better about our supply situation as we move into the second half of the calendar year,” says Nvidia’s CFO.

It wasn’t the first time Nvidia has claimed GPU supply returning before. Yet, they’re one of the only companies on the planet that has any grasp of the situation. So if the Nvidia CFO, Colette Kress claims that the second half of 2022 will be better for GPU supply than right now, it has some weight.

“We had seen channel levels be quite lean,” Kress says in response to a question regarding the supply for gamers. “We are working with our supply chain partners to increase the availability of supply. And we feel better about our supply situation as we move into the second half of the calendar year ‘22.”

Few major chipmaking companies believe the chip shortage will be over by late 2022, though some have said they think the situation could at least improve by that point. In a recent DigiTimes report, they expect GPU shipments to improve by 10% in 2022. While that isn’t much, it is still an improvement nonetheless.

Intel’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger, more or less expects the supply to remain tight until 2023 when itself and other similar brands can regain the manufacturing capacity online to meet the demand.

Of course, it’s also partially because chipmaking is a slow process. Fabs aren’t built in a day, and even if they were, it would cost an exuberant amount of money and add far too much risk to companies producing them. No chipmaker wishes to build capacity then find that the massive demand slips away before they can sell the surplus number of chips.

Thus, this isn’t entirely a good omen for gamers, but it is the unfortunate, sad reality of the situation that has left PC games worse for wear over the recent two years. Though there will be a point where the demand is satiated by the supply, that light at the end of the tunnel is so far out, that it’s a question of when rather than if.