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Why have even older cards disappeared?

Associate
Joined
1 Mar 2010
Posts
57
Everything was OK up until October, and after that there are no graphics cards around, older models and newer models, and other hardware too was unavailable eg PSUs, also some 4K monitors I was looking for...

What's happening?
 
Soldato
Joined
26 May 2014
Posts
2,944
People seem to be buying up almost anything for whatever reason. I've been having a look at the CeX site every now and then, and even terrible old cards like the HD 5770 or 9500 GS are selling almost instantly. It was the case that they used to have a massive inventory of old crap like that available at all times, but they have 11 cards total in stock as of now and half are overpriced 3090s. It's just nuts at the moment.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
1 Mar 2010
Posts
57
and even terrible old cards like the HD 5770 or 9500 GS are selling almost instantly.
Yes exactly. Even crappy old cards are not available. But there is more hardware that's got affected. I was not able to find a Ryzen 5 3600 XT, a PSU (850W, gold, modular, any good make) there was no stock anywhere for months until maybe 2 weeks ago. I was not able to find any of 4 UHD monitors I had short listed (all using same panel), ASUS VG289Q, AOC U28G2AE, ACER CB282K, U28R55 - in the end I gave up and got the ACER from Holland! In September I bought all those things and more very easily, there was a good choice.

I think something happened end September / October. Can it be the US/China trade war? The US elections? Coronavirus?
 
Associate
Joined
6 Jan 2010
Posts
218
Location
CannonSt, London
The primary issue is global supply chain impacts from Covid - you're seeing shipment issues across the board in all industries. These are made worse by interventions in transhipments by various manufacturers "jumping the" queue which impacted non-priority retail shipments.

In general a nightmare for everyone everywhere.

However, you then factor in the impact of Covid on global commodity prices and the resurgence of crypto price inflation you are seeing everyone and their mother jump on mining as a capital outlay. A lot of people who pulled out of the market in the West have been forced back in by non-viable job market.

Finally you have the issue with China and I suspect a huge amount of the disappearing stock is being precipitated by non-expert mass purchasing by Chinese national agents/importers looking to essentially acquire something called a "GPUs" as there's a now an internal market issuance for China to gain control of the majority of the 'Proof of Work' economy (crypto) - I advise Bank Of China in London and so I've seen this sort of spastic reaction to CCP orders in other areas before.
 
Associate
Joined
12 Jan 2021
Posts
1,296
Its been fairly much a perfect storm affecting many components.
1. Getting a quality PSU has been fairly difficult since Feb/March because of covid shutting down China at that time and increased demand making it hard to catch up
2. Ram has been easy to get but apparently they are expected a rise in price in the short term owing to issues at factories
3. NVME/SSD the good news, easy and cheaper to get in 2020
4. GPU, shortage of capacity to make chips and some associated material, eg substrate. Caused by increased demand, Nvidia claim that they are selling about double the number of GPUs that they were the previous year. Not helped by lack of supply by AMD as they have other products to make with their capacity eg game consoles and CPU. Car makers are closing factories as they can't get computer chips to make their cars. So different industries fighting for CPU/GPU
5. Transportation issues, less planes flying and bottlenecks at UK ports making it harder and more expensive to ship items to the UK. Apparently at one point the UK government was paying £1 million a day to store 10,000 containers of PPE at one port. Shortage of empty containers being taken back to China to ship goods in.
 
Soldato
Joined
16 Jul 2010
Posts
5,882
Was there another time in the past where you could not buy a graphics card for love or money?

Nope, but I remember back in the 1997 there was a RAM shortage and RAM was going for silly prices - £160 for 8mb of EDO RAM. That's about £300 in today's money! Thieves were even breaking into companies and stealing the RAM from the PCs.
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Apr 2013
Posts
12,370
Location
La France
Has anyone checked out the GPU stocks at Curry’s PC World at Beckon’s Gateway Retail Park?

They always had a shelf of old (gen before last) low and mid-end cards every time I was forced to stick my head in there when I was suddenly informed that the printer needed a new ink cartridge at 4:30 on a Sunday afternoon and one of the girls had homework that needed to printed out and handed in Monday morning.
 
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