PC enthusiasts and gamers have been irked by the state of GPU supply in the market as this crucial component has been difficult to get a hold off. If they do become available, they’re overpriced and thus difficult to acquire for many customers. AMD is aware of the supply issues with its Radeon graphics cards and the company says that its ramping up production to meet demand.
Incredibly high demand for GPUs isn’t a problem that just AMD is facing. Its main rival NVIDIA is having to deal with high demand as well since the past year because not only do gamers need GPUs, but there’s a whole new segment of consumers who use graphic cards for mining cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum. NVIDIA has even urged retailers to sell GPUs to gamers and not miners.
Take AMD’s RX Vega series of new GPUs that the company launched in August last year. They’ve basically been sold out since then. The custom models that use those GPUs are reportedly impossible to get a hold off as well.
AMD CEO and president Dr. Lisa Su acknowledged during the investor call to discuss the company’s Q4 results that the cryptocurrency mining market is “consuming a lot of GPUs,” and that this demand has become a good part of AMD’s business. However, Dr. Su said that the major chunk of sales growth that AMD reported in graphics card came from outside the blockchain market.
She added that since the availability of graphics cards is lower than what the company would like it to be, it’s ramping up production. She also clarified that the supply shortage is not due to unavailability of silicon. AMD is having to deal with shortages in the GDDR5 and HBM2 memory markets and it will continue to work with its memory partners to ensure that AMD can meet rising demand for GPUs.
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