After three decades, Asus is now celebrating its 30th anniversary for its graphics cards division. To celebrate, the tech giant set up a temporary graphics card museum out in Cologne for Gamescom 2025, marking the occasion and showcasing its history of products and innovation.
During the celebration, I sat down with Kent Chien, the Corporate Vice President & General Manager of the Asus Multimedia Business Unit. With 30 years of experience in the GPU industry under his belt, Kent has been in charge of Asus’ graphics card unit since 2007 – practically since the beginning.
Over the past decade, graphics cards have become more popular as PC gaming has taken off and while the cost of GPUs has certainly increased, availability has been a key issue too. Getting your hands on an Nvidia RTX GPU, or any of them for that matter, can be increasingly difficult. I asked Chien what his take is on the graphics card shortage and how much Asus is able to actually do about this issue.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The availability of graphics cards has changed over the years. Before you could walk into a supermarket, buy a graphics card, take it home. Now people are having to pre-order them and fight for them. There are stock issues from all different manufacturers. Why do you think that is?
First of all let me try and explain why this has happened – I don’t know the real cause, but I’ll try to explain. To begin with, the capacity of semiconductor factories is limited. In recent years, AI has been so demanding. I think the world prioritizes AI over gaming and that’s the reason why the majority of the semiconductor factory capacity is occupied by AI.
We work with Nvidia and they try to maintain the amount of graphics cards they allocate but I think they are under high pressure to provide more cards to AI. In terms of gaming, they also need to make sure they support it because that’s what’s provided the infrastructure for new innovations in the past. So I think the main reason is because of priority, AI will always have higher priority in the semiconductor factories.
The second reason is, frankly speaking, is down to internal information. In the very beginning no one thought that gaming demand would grow so much in recent years, even this year alone. The revenue of gaming in the first half of 2025 has already grown year over year by around 40 to 50%. No one expected this to happen.
As a result the industry grew but the capacity is limited. The demand can’t be fulfilled.
Why do you think demand is growing so much this year specifically?
I guess the first thing is Covid-19. A lot of people bought computers during the pandemic and from then to now, it’s been five years. People are trying to upgrade their PCs now all at the same time. On top of that, they feel like 3D computing is something interesting – not just for now, but also in the future, I will need it.
Not only for gaming, but if I was a student. I buy something for entertainment but maybe I’ll need better specifications for the future. Maybe there’ll be some applications I can use, maybe I’ll need it for AI. Even though they’re not using it for these things yet, they are buying something for the future.
So from demand, we know that last year the majority of cards that we sold were 4060s but this year it’s migrated to the more powerful one – 5070s. Demand has migrated from already quite high-end to even higher end. The cards are in shortage but the sales have still increased, no one knows how this happened but it happened.
So what is Asus doing to try and resolve this issue? Is there anything that you’re able to do?
I think Nvidia hasn’t guessed right. They try to provide a certain amount and think ‘Maybe it’s enough’, so I can move the rest of the semiconductor factory capacity over to AI but then it’s still not enough.
For us, what we can do is try our best to convince Nvidia, give us more, invest more, have more for gaming… for me! Of course other people will try and ask for more for AI, but for me, I’ll ask them ‘Give me more for gaming.’
So when you ask them for more, it’s just up to them?
Yes.
Do you think scalpers are still posing an issue to graphics card stock?
I know some people are trying to scalp, some customers are trying to scalp them. But I think they’re too expensive so not really.
Beyond that, is there anything you can do?
I think at the beginning, it’s really hard. What I can do is prepare everything, PCB, capacitor, resistors, inductors, thermal solution, everything there, ready for the GPU. I can try my best to shorten how long it takes for us to ship them out. That is what I can do.
Nvidia then ships me the GPU and I put it together and ship it straight out to the customer. That is what I can do.
