At Computex 2018, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced that the company would not be launching any new GPUs for “a long time”. Perplexing when you consider that the GeForce 10 series of cards have been around for two years. Now we know why. It seems that Nvidia is stuck with excess inventory of 10 series cards due to overestimating the bitcoin mining GPU demand and the demand from gamers. So much so that one top Asian OEM partner reportedly returned 300,000 GPUs to Nvidia. According to a report from SemiAccurate (paid subscription) via Seeking Alpha, Nvidia also aggressively bought GDDR5 that it now has in excess stock of lower-end GPUs that need to be made into boards.
“Nvidia has overestimated pent-up gaming demand and underestimated the impact of declining mining demand,” claims Seeking Alpha before going into details on the state of GPU supply from Nvidia.
“How badly have they miscalculated? Enough to have to agree to take back 300,000 GPUs from a ‘top 3’ Taiwan OEM. This is quite notable news as Nvidia usually exerts massive influence over its partners and can be quite ruthless with allocations of new GPUs if partners step out of line. The fact that this partner returned these GPUs says a lot about the current state of supply in the channel.”
That said, we won’t be surprised to see Nvidia launch something this year, if for any reason but to stay relevant. There’s proof of a launch in the works with Nvidia signing a deal with memory giant SK Hynix that could include GDDR6 memory supply for future GeForce cards.
Plus, cooling fan manufacturer Power Logic has stated it expects shipments to increase in the third quarter. The company makes fans used by global graphics card brands so it probably has an idea of Nvidia’s roadmap, particularly with the rumoured GeForce GTX 1170 and 1180 GPUs.
Power Logic Chairman Hsu Wen-feng specifically called out the Asian Games 2018 in August as a possible tipping point for greater demand, perhaps hinting at when Nvidia may just announce its next-generation GPUs in August. Hopefully they won’t be priced as badly as 10 series GPUs are right now, forcing Nvidia to sell its current range on its own website to undercut OEMs in markets like India.
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