Revising my expectations during the chip shortage

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Markess

Well-Known Member
May 19, 2018
1,146
761
113
Northern California
I'm not sure how I should feel that after a while spent looking, I finally found a semi, kind of, sort of, almost, modern generation GPU, new, for close to MSRP? Thrilled that I found one at all, or saddened that its so hard to find? Maybe both?

Only a GT 1030, but enough to play with passthrough and remote acceleration while leaving my "daily driver" alone. At $89.99 shipped, it was less than most used offerings on Ebay.

Along the way, I read several articles about the chip shortage and attempts to address it. The various failed attempts to stop the scalping of higher end GPUs & CPUs, and how the bot wranglers turned each to their advantage, while frustrating, are what I've learned to expect.

The thing that really caught my eye though, was that Nvidia (and their partners) have resumed production of the GT 730, a 7 year old Kepler generation chip, and are marketing it as an option for gamers. When asked though, Nvidia confirmed that they were going through with their prior plans to drop Kepler support in the mainstream "game ready" driver branch after next month's release. So, they will sell you a GPU today that won't have driver support (other than security) come December.

Sort of like how Microsoft will sell you a brand new Surface for a ton of money now that won't be able to run Windows 11 when it comes out next quarter. But that's a whole different can of worms I suppose....
 
  • Like
  • Angry
Reactions: Patrick and Layla

Layla

Game Engine Developer
Jun 21, 2016
215
177
43
40
Unethical/exploitative all around. NVIDIA dropping Kepler support is disappointing to me, as we still have K20/K40/K80 in active service; but, on the plus side, the existing drivers work well for us. It's shocking, though that they're bringing gaming Kepler GPUs back to market while simultaneously dropping support. This shortage sucks.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Markess

Stephan

Well-Known Member
Apr 21, 2017
920
697
93
Germany
No need to buy something old, just wait a few more months. Like this fall. Big crackdowns going on in China and elsewhere against declared-illegal GPU crypto farms. The hardware just has to find its way into the market now (as refurb), also demand from miners should have vastly gone down for many weeks already. Nature is healing...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Markess and Layla

mackle

Active Member
Nov 13, 2013
221
40
28
I got a cheap sandy bridge celeron for my mini-ITX desktop years ago, anticipating an upgrade to a 3770k. That upgrade never happened and the memory is limited to a single 8GB dimm, but I’m still running it pretty happily.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Markess

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
1,050
437
83
Hard to predict how and when exactly chip shortage will end, but one thing for sure - both GPU and Hard Drive prices are already in decline.
One to hope that prices sanity for commodity PC parts will normalize within 6 months or close to it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Stephan and Markess