We have reported before NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards plummet in China, there are even manufacturers that are expected to sell out in large quantities. For players who have not yet bought a new graphics card, they may expect that the price will continue to drop in the future, and the change will be cheaper. AMD is not clear on the part, but NVIDIA graphics cards will become difficult, because the demand for AI artificial intelligence GPUs has surged recently, and now the production capacity is insufficient. In the future, NVIDIA may focus on AI GPUs, which will affect the inventory of game graphics cards. This means that the low volume is of course unlikely to reduce prices, and may even increase prices.
Looking forward to NVIDIA gaming graphics cards continuing to drop in price? With the recent surge in demand for AI GPUs, it is likely that we will not be able to wait, and may even see price increases.
According to foreign media Wccftech, multiple reports now point out that NVIDIA is currently unable to cope with the huge demand for AI chips, even though the company has worked hard to produce them. The article also quoted DigiTimes Report:
據市場消息人士稱，NVIDIA 的 A100 和 H100 AI GPU 訂單增加，導致台積電的晶圓產量增加。
ChatGPT 帶來的人工智慧熱潮導致對高運算 GPU 的需求飆升。加上美國禁止向中國銷售 AI 晶片，百度等中國大公司正在購買 Nvidia 的 AI GPU。
Kuai Technology also pointed out that some NVIDIA chips will be out of stock until the end of the year, and prices continue to rise. For example, the price of A100 began to increase in December last year, and by the first half of April it had increased by 37.5%, and that of A800 reached 20%.
NVIDIA A100：
A100 and H100 are not available for sale in China, so NVIDIA has specially launched a modified version called A800 (the performance seems to be only 70% of A100) to avoid US sanctions. It is said that the price of the A800 has reached 12,000 US dollars, about 83,000 RMB, the A100 is priced at 15,000 US dollars, at least 103,000 RMB, and the most powerful H100 is priced at 36,500 US dollars, more than 252,000 RMB.
NVIDIA H100：
What’s even more interesting is that even the first V100 GPU using the Tensor Core architecture launched in 2018 costs US$10,000, about RMB 69,000:
Even if it is so expensive, it is not something you can buy in China if you have money. There is news that NVIDIA first hopes to satisfy non-Chinese technology partners. Chinese manufacturers originally had to wait 3 months to get NVIDIA GPUs when placing orders. Now it has added an additional 3 months to at least 6 months. Some new orders may not be completed until December.
Wccftech mentioned, NVIDIA must be very happy that there is such a shortage of AI GPU chips, but it is not good news for consumers and players, because if NVIDIA sees that the AI GPU business is growing so fast, it may give priority to supplying these businesses instead of game GPUs.
Although the current inventory of game GPUs seems to be sufficient, as the shortage of AI GPUs intensifies, it may gradually begin to have an impact, especially the high-end versions, which are relatively rare compared to the mid-to-low-end versions. At the same time, high-end game GPUs also have good AI capabilities and are cheaper than AI-specific GPUs, which is very attractive to some manufacturers.
So overall, maybe the price of NVIDIA gaming graphics cards will remain cheap in the short term, but in the long term, it is really difficult to continue to drop prices. I don’t know when this wave of AI will be satisfied. Seeing that there are good prices, it is time to consider buying.There is also news that NVIDIA is controlling the volume of the RTX 40 series, it is basically impossible to get it at a particularly cheap price.
Source: KOCPC Chinese