domeet webmaster

At the end of last year, the price of graphics cards went up all the way, and price increases and shortages became the norm. Many netizens even nicknamed graphics cards “air cards”, meaning: invisible and intangible.

Among them, the price of graphics cards for mining machines is rising, and there is no hope of relief in a short period of time. Affected by this, the price of the entire graphics card market has been raised.

Actually, as the digitization of modern life continues to increase, graphics cards, as one of the core components of computers, have penetrated into people’s lives, whether it’s home computers, e-sports games, many artificial intelligence and cloud computing supporting life In the field, there is a greater demand for graphics cards, and for computer and graphics card dealers, the way of business has undergone tremendous changes.

On March 31, Zhang Xiaorong, Dean of Deepin Technology Research Institute, told Times Weekly reporters that the main graphics cardTo be applied on the PC side, all computers are inseparable from the graphics card. At present, graphics card manufacturers are mainly represented by Nvidia and AMD, and Nvidia has a larger market share.

IDC data shows that in 2020, the global PC market shipments will exceed 300 million units, an increase of 13.1% year-on-year, setting a new high in recent years. Among them, global PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2020 increased by 26.1% year-on-year to 91.6 million units.

1. Worth more than gold

“Don’t think about it, the goods will not wait for people.” “There is no goods, if you need the goods urgently, you can only wait first.” During the conversation, Chen Zhi repeatedly described the shortage of graphics cards to Times Weekly reporters, “There is a Russian customers came to me to pick up the goods (graphics card), and he hesitated. The next day, the price increased by 1,500 yuan for one piece.”< /p>

“Resellers who can’t get the goods are very painful. They can’t do business at all. Many dealers have no choice but to go to second-hand e-commerce platforms to recycle some second-hand graphics cards.” Zhang Jian said that some game players E-commerce platforms rush to buy low-priced graphics cards, and they will also choose to add money to sell them to the scalpers when driven by profits.

Recently, a Times Weekly reporter learned from a number of graphics card vendors in the Huaqiangbei SEG market that the current RTX 30 series graphics card prices are between RMB 5,500 and RMB 15,000. Among them, RTX 3080 has the highest price. From the initial price of 5499 yuan, it has generally risen to about 15000 yuan, and the price has nearly doubled.

On March 24, Zhang Jia (pseudonym), a graphics card merchant in the Huaqiangbei SEG market, told Times Weekly that a large number of foreign customers had previously When placing an order, sometimes hundreds of graphics cards are purchased at a time, and the stock is currently out of stock. Among them, there are also many merchants who stock up, and they are waiting for the price to increase.

“It’s more valuable than gold.” Zhang Jia revealed, “Now even if someone asks for a large number of graphics cards at once, no one seller can provide them all. Because the supply is unstable, they can only be given after a piece of cake. And it will compare the price first, and give it to whomever the price is higher.”

According to Zhang Jian’s recollection, the price increase for graphics cards started in October last year, and there was a substantial price increase after November.

“In October last year, the price of 3070 graphics cards was around 4,000 yuan per card, and the price rose from 200 yuan to 300 yuan in the following week. During the Spring Festival, the price of 3070 graphics cards was close to 6,800 yuan per card. After the Spring Festival, the price of 3070 graphics cards was directly It broke through 7,600 yuan per card, and then continued to rise to 9,000 yuan per card, with an average premium of more than 100%.” ​​Zhang Jian said.

Zhang Jian revealed that the most obvious price increase is AMD RX470/480/570/580 second-hand 4G graphics cards. The early price was about 400 yuan/card, and the current second-hand recycling price is about 1,650 yuan/card.

Compared with graphics card dealers, the experience of graphics card consumers is stronger.

On March 29th, Wang Chong, the founder of the one-stop mining platform Cow Computing Power, told Times Weekly that in mid-2020, it only costs about 900 yuan to buy a XFX 588 graphics card. As the virtual currency market is booming , The price of graphics cards is even higher. By the fifteenth day of the first lunar month in 2021, this card has risen to 3,800 yuan.

From 900 yuan to 3800 yuan, the price of a graphics card has more than tripled.

2. Chips are in short supply and demand is strong

The reason for such a fierce price increase is the imbalance between supply and demand. The supply of graphics cards cannot keep up with the demand, which has inspired the contradiction between supply and demand in the entire market.

From the supply side, the graphics card is inseparablechip. The graphics card is usually composed of bus interface, PCB board, GPU(display chip), video memory, etc. At the moment, global chips are in short supply.

“Nvidia’s display chips are manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Samsung, etc., and the new graphics cards are manufactured using 8nm manufacturing processes. The insufficient production capacity of the foundries and the low yield rate of chips are one of the factors leading to price increases.” A graphics card dealer told the Times Weekly reporter.

Affected by multiple factors such as the new crown pneumonia epidemic and the American cold wave, the shortage of chips has spread to many industries such as automobiles and mobile phones, and graphics cards are also one of them.

The two major chip giants, Nvidia and AMD, once officially responded that: Products have encountered tight supply chains. In addition to insufficient wafers and silicon chips, there are also some reasons for the shortage of substrate materials and components.

Recently, ASUS executives revealed at its investor meeting that in view of the fact that Nvidia’s GPU (display chip) supply will be available in the first quarter As a result, the shortage of graphics cards is expected to continue. ASUS believes that the lack of supply may be caused by Nvidia’s lower-than-expected GPU output.

It is reported that Nvidia provided approximately 9.1 million GPUs for desktop computers in the fourth quarter of 2020. (display chip), shipments Approximately 1 million more than the same period last year, but still unable to meet market demand.

Insufficient chip supply makes the graphics card market “scorched”. On the other hand, the demand side is stronger than ever.

From October 2020 to the present, Ether has increased by more than 400%, and the price of an Ether has risen to more than 11,000 yuan.

The graphics card is the core component in the process of mining (using a computer to obtain virtual currency based on specific algorithms). Driven by market conditions, “mining “Fields” are emerging in endlessly, not only in China, but also in many other countries, the mine owners (people who mine virtual currency) are also increasing their mining efforts. The demand for graphics cards has risen sharply, ranging from thousands of graphics cards to tens of thousands of cards.

According to media reports, currently about 20% of Internet cafes in South Korea have switched to mining operations. The continued mining boom has led to the recent general increase in the price of computer graphics cards in South Korea.

“As the main force in the purchase of graphics cards, the amount of graphics cards purchased by our company in one year is hundreds of millions. About 70% of them are directly cooperating with manufacturers, and 30% are cooperating with some large distributors.” Wang Chong said, 1 unit The mining machine is equipped with 8 graphics cards. For the 1,000 newly purchased mining machines this time, 8,000 graphics cards are required.

According to Wang Chong’s purchase plan, the current price of XFX 588 graphics cards is about 3650 yuan per card, and buying 8,000 of these graphics cards will cost about 29 million yuan.

“Although the cost of mining is rising, when the market is good, the payback cycle will be shortened, so there will still be a lot of people mining.” Wang Chong said bluntly, this year there are more people paying attention to mining, but the output of graphics cards It’s lowered.

Three, the production capacity is saturated, short-term difficult to solve

The question people are concerned about is whether the price of graphics cards will drop in the future? When can it fall? From the perspective of dealers or buyers, these two issues are not easy to judge.

In Wang Chong’s view, the encrypted digital currency market is far from over.

“This wave of market is in the middle or late stage of the bull market, but it certainly has not reached the end of the bull market. After this round of adjustment, there will be room for upside, because larger institutional funds are still entering the market, the biggest reason It also lies in the fact that many central banks in the world have not’released water’. ‍” He believes.

“The willingness of big miners to buy graphics cards is obvious. Graphics cards are a necessity when mining virtual currencies such as Ethereum. Of course, there will be some consumption. According to personal experience, the damage rate of normal graphics cards is about 5%.” Zhang Jian said.

There is no sign of weakening on the demand side. Strengthening supply has become a more important way to solve the shortage of graphics cards.

Zhang Jian said that at present, NVIDIA’s new professional CMP mining card may be listed in mid-April, which will ease the current tight supply and demand relationship to a certain extent, but only ease it.

‍”As far as I know, no matter whether it is NVIDIA or AMD, there will not be too much production capacity released in the first half of the year.” Wang Chong said.

Shenghong Technology(300476.SZ)It is the supplier of graphics card PCB(printed circuit board). On March 30, the staff of the Secretary of the Board of Shenghong Technology told the Times Weekly that the company’s graphics card PCB orders had been saturated in the first half of the year.

A number of dealers suggested that ordinary consumers are not suitable for entering the market at this time and choose a graphics card that they can afford.

In fact, in addition to the promotion of virtual currency mining, changes in the entire consumer market have also pushed up the demand for graphics cards.

According to the “2020 ZDC Report on the Graphics Card Industry”, the demand for electronic products such as games has risen rapidly, coupled with the superimposition of the demand for electronic product replacement, resulting in an increase in market demand at this stage.

The crazy increase in the price of graphics cards has also caused some market chaos. For example, the prices of graphics cards that cannot be mined have also risen sharply, and some prices have doubled. Some distributors revealed that design companies have higher requirements for graphics cards, and some have suspended their purchase plans.

“I also want to know when the price of graphics cards will be reduced?” On April 1, a dealer asked a reporter from Times Weekly about market expectations.

This article is from WeChat official account:Time Weekly (ID: timeweekly)< span class = "text-remarks">, of: Li Jing, coated Mengying