“Continued shortage of graphics cards and processors first half of 2021”

Enthusiasts will remember the fall of 2020 as the most interesting period in years, with several major launches. What many will also bring with them is the crying lack of graphics cards and processors. Even today, months after the launches, many members sit at SweClockers and wait impatiently to air their wallets.

There has been much talk in the past that the shortage of at least graphics cards will continue during the first quarter of 2021, something that is now confirmed by AMD. In an interview with Anandtech, AMD’s CEO Lisa Su attributes the lack of high demand in combination with component shortages, but that the company is working to increase its capacity in all segments in which they operate – processors, graphics cards and game consoles – and that it will take time to meet the demand.

We are shipping lots of parts, and volumes in all segments are increasing, and that will happen through 2021. There will be tightness in the first half of the year, but alongside consumers we also ship to OEM partners. There is some real-time prioritization between end-user and OEM, but we understand that consumers want more and it’s very high on our priority list to meet this high demand.

Lisa Su also agrees that they not only sell hardware directly to consumers, but also indirectly through partner manufacturers (OEMs) who take part of the company’s capacity. In addition to balancing these interests, the company needs to prioritize between how they allocate manufacturing capacity between graphics cards, the system circuits for the Xbox and Playstation game consoles, but also processors for desktops, laptops and the server market.

In parallel with AMD not being able to meet demand, the company’s graphics card has been far from meeting the company’s recommended prices (MSRP). This is partly attributed to the tariffs the United States imposed on China and which expired at the turn of the year, something which, however, does not affect European and Swedish consumers. Lisa Su also believes that the pandemic has done its part to create a shortage of components and that shipping costs around the world have been raised.

The competitor Nvidia has previously commented on the issue of graphics card shortages. Here, too, the message has been high demand, but at the same time they have not tried to smooth over the fact that there is a lack of components. Already when Nvidia presented its quarterly report in November 2020, CEO Jensen Huang and CFO Colette Kress said that the situation can be expected to last “a few more months”.

Speculation in the industry and among enthusiasts is that the shortage from both parties is solely due to TSMC and Samsung, which manufacture circuits for AMD and Nvidia respectively. Nvidia, for its part, has acknowledged that this is part of the reason, but also attributes the problem of a lack of the substrates to which the circuits are attached and surrounding components required to manufacture a finished graphics card.

In other words, the supply of graphics cards from both and processors from AMD looks set to improve in the coming months, but not enough to meet demand. The fact that AMD is talking about a shortage through the first half of 2021 confirms previous information that the situation can be expected to be resolved as early as the autumn.

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