NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series Blackwell Availability

[DegustatoR]

I don't think that there is any indication of a supply problem for anyone yet, only the demand "problem" - and in case of Nvidia the weird decision to EOL 40 series well before the launch of 50 SKUs.

We already saw the results of that in their latest quarterly report where gaming revenue Y/Y fell prior to 50 series launch and we'll see how that launch supply is looking in the next report.

 

[DavidGraham]

This leads to another theory on the possibility of an earthquake early this year causing some disruptions in some TSMC's fabs

The earthquake happened in Jan 21st, NVIDIA should have been stockpiling chips for desktop and laptop for months by then (at least since September), but that obviously didn't happen, which is why I think the earthquake theory is most likely inaccurate.

 

[pcchen]

I don't think that there is any indication of a supply problem for anyone yet, only the demand "problem" - and in case of Nvidia the weird decision to EOL 40 series well before the launch of 50 SKUs.

We already saw the results of that in their latest quarterly report where gaming revenue Y/Y fell prior to 50 series launch and we'll see how that launch supply is looking in the next report.

I'm not sure about this. Even the larger internet retailers here don't have many cards, not just high end cards such as 5090 and 5080, but even 5070 are in short supply (a few hundreds in the first batch and trickle amounts later), and AMD's 9070 and 9070 XT are in the same situation. I don't think the demand is this high at this particular time.

 

[pcchen]

The earthquake happened in Jan 21st, NVIDIA should have been stockpiling chips for desktop and laptop for months by then (at least since September), but that obviously didn't happen, which is why I think the earthquake theory is most likely inaccurate.

I don't think they are contradictory. If NVIDIA had been stockpiling chips last year, we shouldn't be seeing such small supplies now. On the other hand, if for any reason they couldn't (e.g. there's some problems in the early batch or something like that) and have to delay the production into, say, November last year, the earthquake could very possibly disrupt their supplies.

 

[DegustatoR]

I'm not sure about this. Even the larger internet retailers here don't have many cards, not just high end cards such as 5090 and 5080, but even 5070 are in short supply (a few hundreds in the first batch and trickle amounts later), and AMD's 9070 and 9070 XT are in the same situation. I don't think the demand is this high at this particular time.

Retailers not having many cards sitting on shelves don't tell us much about supply aside from the fact that it's not enough to fulfill the current demand.
The demand which is a) always high at pretty much any new generation of GPUs launch and b) has been building up for ~2 months on the Nvidia side (which is/was ~90% of the market so basically for everyone).
In this scenario it's not surprising to see GPUs still selling out everywhere for the second month since launch, and it doesn't necessarily mean that the current supply is the issue.

 

[homerdog]

I don't think that there is any indication of a supply problem for anyone yet, only the demand "problem" - and in case of Nvidia the weird decision to EOL 40 series well before the launch of 50 SKUs.

I mean that is a supply problem as far as I'm concerned. Being short on supply for brand new cards isn't weird, but the old ones going EOL months before the new ones launch is weird and only exacerbates the expected low availability of the new models.

On another note, I'd like to build a 100billion dollar factory. Can anyone recommend some good earthquake zones? The Pacific Ring of Fire looks promising.

 

[DavidGraham]

On the other hand, if for any reason they couldn't (e.g. there's some problems in the early batch or something like that)

A problem we heard nothing about? I mean we already heard about problems for server chips (as early as July last year), but we heard nothing about consumer chips.

In this scenario it's not surprising to see GPUs still selling out everywhere for the second month since launch, and it doesn't necessarily mean that the current supply is the issue.

It doesn't because retailers are all complaining of the severe lack of any RTX 50 supply, which became quite obvious even compared to the relatively limited AMD's RDNA4 supply, and laptop makers were notified of at least a 2 months delay of laptop chips, restocks are also taking way longer than before. The problem is quite pervasive across the whole field.

 

[pcchen]

A problem we heard nothing about? I mean we already heard about problems for server chips (as early as July last year), but we heard nothing about consumer chips.

That's just a possibility. Obviously NVIDIA didn't start production in September as you said for whatever reason, otherwise there wouldn't be a supply issue. As I asid, if the production started as late as November, the earthquake could destroy some of the wafers as a production pipeline can be up to 3 months, so I don't think one can definitely rule out the possibility of a disruption caused by the earthquake.

 

[trinibwoy]

My bet is that it’s all of the above. Blackwell datacenter is confirmed to have issues. Blackwell consumer is confirmed to have issues. It’s a reasonable guess that consumer wafers were also sacrificed to help ramp DC. And then there’s the earthquake, Chinese new year etc. It’s a perfect storm for low supply.