The graphics card shortage started in the 1st quarter of 2020. A few thing came / come together:
- the Corona lockdowns kept a lot more people at home.
The Steam game platform saw records broken for all its peak statistics in 2020 - 21% more games purchased, and 50% more hours played.
- new games for consoles crippled the older consoles - people turned to PC gaming again.
- early last year, Chinese manufacturing was temporarily limited due to the coronavirus outbreak;
later, shipping delays hit the electronics market;
and the price of Bitcoin has made "mining" - using GPUs - more lucrative.
- more demand for High End Workstations. Game Engines, VR, 3D - work from home on your own computer.
- shipping containers stuck in harbours somewhere because you were not allowed to ship or unload.
- Nvidia and AMD said last year before christmas, they could not produce enough graphics cards.
The buyers demand was simply too high. They said the situation would at least last until the end of the first quarter of 2021.
Since the situation has not really been changing it will take longer to get back to normal.
I would sit this out if you can. Think of it as a nice gift for upcoming christmas 2021!
CHeers, Klaus
ps: anybody wants to buy a GeForce GTX 1070 Ti ? Only 1500$$$$$