It’s hard to get excited about new laptops and GPUs when supply is scarce

If you believed in rumors AMD and Nvidia were supposed to deliver a bunch of jaw-dropping announcements at CES. Rumors that Nvidia was going to announce an RTX 3080 Ti or an RTX 3070 Super. Rumors that AMD will launch its RX 6700 by the end of the month. Even Intel was silent on the status of its discrete Xe GPUs, although it still had a host of announcements of new Desktop processors and laptop. Laptop makers seemed more confident in their ability to meet demand, at least in the coming months. availability. After that, it depends on how each company has planned their production schedule to keep stock on the shelves – and, well, I don’t feel totally confident about that with a impending flea shortage and all.

In a normal CES year, we might have heard more about these MIA graphics cards, but tease potential buyers if there’s a good chance they’ll wait long after the launch date to get one? Not a good idea. AMD and Nvidia also announced all the biggest and best things ahead of the New Year, so there wasn’t much left to announce that would generate excitement.

The most of 50 Minute AMD Keynote was echoed by testimonials from CEOs of other companies praising Ryzen processors and how they have benefited their businesses. It’s no mystery that AMD has very good processors, as well as graphics cards. But it looks like AMD’s Ryzen 4000 series processors received more fanfare last year. Maybe it was because some unique laptops, like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, would be the first to have them. Or it was the first time that AMD had a solid and viable alternative to Intel’s mobile processors, even though the company had been making mobile processors for years before.

This time around, it felt like AMD was in awe of the specs of its new mobile processors, and even its performance compared to the previous generation and its Intel counterparts. The only announcement AMD made regarding graphics cards was for the mobile versions of its new RDNA 2 cards, which will be released in the first half of 2021.

Nvidia’s official CES announcement was shorter and more disappointing than AMD’s. The only desktop GPU announced was the RTX 3060, which prompted many people to watch the stream on YouTube type OUT OF STOCK in the chat. It was also widely assumed that the RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 would be coming to laptops, so this announcement wasn’t such a big surprise when it hit. It was more or less expected.

Nvidia announced that a few games are getting DLSS and ray tracing, and it talked about the resizable bar on its 30-series cards – Nvidia and Intel’s response to AMD’s Smart Access memory to increase frequency. images in some games – but nothing else skipped. (Of course, it would be nice to have the option enabled on Series 20 cards, as the Series 30 is so hard to find from anyone outside of scalpers.)

The most interesting information came in the form of a question-and-answer roundtable with Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, that only a limited number of press were invited to. But a lot of the questions revolved around supply and demand, according to Dr Ian Cutress. Su told those in attendance that the chip shortage was “the result of a demand-driven environment, rather than manufacturing issues.”

Su went on to say that she didn’t think the shortage would cap AMD’s market share, but the increased demand not only put pressure on foundries to make more chips, but created a raw material supply issue – an issue that Su says could continue until 2021. There is a lot of prioritization logistics between the number of chips from these companies for end users and OEMs, but Su assured that it was a top priority for AMD to get more chips into the hands of consumers.

Speaking at 19th Annual JP Morgan Tech Auto Forum On January 12, 2021, Nvidia also addressed the chip shortage, saying it expects inventory to “stay lean” until the end of March 2021 in online and physical retail markets. “Our overall capacity has not been able to meet the strong overall demand that we have seen,” said Colette Kress, CFO of Nvidia. Interestingly, Kress said that crypto miners haven’t played a big role in the demand for GPUs that is happening right now.

In some of our own discussions with laptop vendors over the past week, most have said that there will be enough new products to meet demand in the first wave of buying. Still, speaking with Acer, a spokesperson told us the offer could be tight after this initial wave. Again, there is a similar issue with laptop vendors and with chipmakers. (Laptop sellers need parts from chipmakers.) In contrast, a spokesperson for MSI told us sourcing shouldn’t be an issue for its new laptops because it has scheduled shipments. on a weekly basis. How many weeks have these shipments been scheduled, MSI did not say.

Logistically, once supply and demand start to balance, it may take some time for consumers to see the products they want to buy start to fill the shelves. Many companies prefer to ship their products by ocean freight because it is cheaper, but it usually takes a month or a little longer for everything to arrive at US ports. Air shipping is of course faster, but much more expensive, and depending on the weather conditions in the country as we move into winter some areas might experience longer delays than others. (It wasn’t long before I worked in the semiconductor industry to realize that the shipping part is perhaps the most crucial.)

But while many of us hardware enthusiasts are probably feeling a little deflated after this week’s CES announcements, it’s probably for the best that AMD and Nvidia haven’t hoped too much – keep the big one. GPU and all the other announcements for when they’ll land stronger. I expect the RTX 3060 GPU offering to go as fast as any before it. Scalpers will likely continue to make the supply / demand situation worse and piss off legitimate PC builders and parents who are still trying to get a new laptop for their child’s virtual school. Crypto miners will probably fight as hard to get all the cards they can. This is silicon’s circle of life right now. The only thing we can do, if we don’t need a new GPU, CPU, laptop or whatever for now, please be patient.