Brandwatch Bulletin #65: The Great Graphics Card Shortage

The story behind graphics card demand in 2021.

Have you been struggling to get a graphics card lately? You’re not the only one. Today we’re looking at the data behind the graphics card shortage.

Let’s get to it.

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A perfect storm brews

Many factors have come together to create the current shortage of graphics cards.

The most simple one is that many people have relied on gaming and PCs for entertainment and work during the pandemic. For some, lockdown presented the opportunity to upgrade their home set up or learn how to build their own PC. We’ve found that engagement with content around PC building has been strong throughout the pandemic.

This interest in PC building has been part of what’s inspired an increase in search interest for graphics cards.

So it’s boom time for graphic card demand, but there have also been some major challenges meeting it.

The last year has seen a lot of disruption to supply. “Coronavirus generally disrupted the manufacturing process and therefore supply of silicon chips, and events like the winter storm which hit Texas in February 2021, causing factories to close, as well as US sanctions against China, have not helped,” writes Ben Johnson from We PC.

Nvidia’s new generation

Amid all this was the September 2020 announcement of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30 series, which began shipping in that same month. This is the company’s latest generation of high-end graphics cards, and the newest in the series is the Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, which came out on 3 June 2021.

These next-generation graphic cards have sparked a lot of additional interest. In fact, Nvidia’s announcement on 1 September 2020 aligns with graphics card searches reaching a five year high in the above chart.

“A special place in hell”

So far, the story is pretty wholesome. It’s about hobbyist gamers and PC builders on the hunt for the latest tech to supercharge their home setups.

But there are also folk devils in this tale. And what we’ve missed so far is just how angry many consumers are about the situation.

Another reason for the increase in demand is crypto mining, which involves intensive use of graphics cards. A lot of people blame crypto miners for the overall shortage, and we found over 30,000 mentions categorized as angry since September that relate to crypto and graphics cards.

And not helping the situation are the so-called “scalpers”, who take advantage of market scarcity by buying up products and selling them on at inflated prices. Graphics cards are already pretty costly – prices for the RTX 3080 Ti starts at an eye-watering $1,199 – so hiking up those prices is not popular. Angry conversation around this group in relation to graphics cards is similar in volume to those talking about crypto (around 30k), and we found a whole bunch of mentions referring to “a special place in hell” for those who do it.

Messy marketplace

This issue isn’t going away any time soon, with demand remaining high and the global shortage dragging on.

For Nvidia, things are looking very healthy with their stock price at an all time high. And for scalpers, there’s plenty of cash to be made from consumers willing to splash out above the RRP to get their hands on the latest tech.

But for consumers generally, this is not an ideal situation, and the anger continues to bubble

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Thanks for reading

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Stay safe,

The Brandwatch React team

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