They are the culprits in this case and exploited the scenario despite all the PR. I told people for the last 5~10 years,AMD/Nvidia/Intel are increasngly looking at enthusiasts as a high margin market,and were using it to subsidise other forays.For years Intel and Nvidia jacked up prices but spent billions subsidising Atom and Tegra.
Once you saw stuff like the Titan,I could see where it was heading. People here argued for the price rises.They supplied miners directly now and during previous boons,which reduced consumer supply. OEMs can get parts such as the RTX3060 fine,and that is why you can get laptops for well under £1000 with one - the RTX3060 cards you buy,actually have less shaders than the laptop version.
AMD prioritised consoles over CPUs and GPUs. Due to Huawei being booted off 7NM,AMD has far more supply than they expected. However,they made a decision to sell lower margin consoles instead. They even added extra console wafer supply in 2H 2020.Nearly 70~80% of all AMD 7NM wafer supply went to consoles IIRC. They even admitted recently they want to sell only higher margin CPU/GPU parts. They could have chosen to sell less consoles,but decided that PC enthusiasts are now a higher margin market,so they restricted supply by design.
Both also have jacked up the prices of the parts they sell to AIB partners- you can see that by their record margins and profits on GPUs. They are making massive margins on their parts.
Tech channels have even said that even before the current problems,graphics card AIB partners were being charged more and more by AMD/Nvidia meaning their margins have gotten smaller and smaller.Nvidia makes a significant amount of revenue from their gaming side,and are at record levels.Nvidia have screwed over its AIB partners before - just look during the Fermi times at XFX!
The fact is they have helped somewhat engineer this crisis,by making sure they restrict supply,and hence it drives up prices and margins on their part. They are simply asking way too much for the parts they sell. The OEMs also get hit,as they can't afford to make the cards at the false RRPs,which are there for marketing purposes. But supply is hardly "small" - you can see between them both they shipped a lot of GPUs.
So the fault is entirely on AMD/Nvidia looking at enthusiasts as cash cows. After all OEMs,console makers,all seem to get far more supply and parts much cheaper than we do. AMD/Nvidia can't push Sony/MS/Nintendo/Apple/Dell/HP too far,so the margins are lower.
But someone has to pay for massive multi billion purchases such as Xilinx and Mellanox right??
So they might as well get idiot gamers to throw money at stuff,and make the rest of the margins,together with business/commercial sales.I don't blame them when they see so many idiots throw money at microtransactions,buy quarter completed early access games and buy gamergirl bathwater,and throw money at half naked Twitch Streamers.
They look at enthusiasts as easy money fools now. Its a total inversion of what it was like 20 years ago. People are just in denial - AMD/Nvidia/Intel now treat gamers like Apple treats anyone who is not willing to pay more - a pointless customer. PCMR hasn't understood the change. AMD/Nvidia want their ever increasing margins and they would rather lose sales,then lower the margins. Apple has basically implied the same thing.
Anyone who was a mainstream gamer has seen the utter stagnation over the last 5~6 years,and the stealth price increases. Only now are the "high-end" gamers now seeing the problems when the prices have gone past what they are willing to pay. Covid or no Covid,this trajectory has been happening for years. Or did you think Turing was a fluke?? There was no mining boom,or money printing like we have now. Yet Nvidia jacked prices up,and they made yet another record year of profits and margins.
Gamers are to blame for this scenario - they voted with their pockets,every year. The same for PC games - reheated rubbish making billions each year,so you get half completed rubbish. If consumers stopped acting so weak,and actually didn't indulge these companies things would improve. But like a drug addiction they can't,and AMD/Nvidia/Intel/favourite game company are the drug dealer.
Covid and the mining boom just pushed it along quicker. This is why consoles,smartphones,etc are now the mass market gaming platforms for the average person.
