Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Nvidia GPUs see massive price hike and huge demand from AI

It feels like we’ve only just emerged from the debilitating graphics card shortage of the last few years, but a new report suggests we can’t breathe easy just yet. Could a new GPU shortage be on the horizon, or are consumers safe from a return to another nightmare scenario?

According to DigiTimes (via Wccftech), Nvidia is seeing a huge surge in demand for its chips due to the explosion in artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT. Nvidia offers a range of graphics cards that excel at AI tasks, including the A100 and H100, and the company is reportedly struggling to keep up in the wake of such massive demand.

Nvidia RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super review
Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Nvidia is especially feeling the strain in China, where the company is selling modified versions of the A100 and H100 in order to bypass U.S. sanctions. Because AI-capable chips are currently so hard to come by in the Chinese market, Nvidia’s modified chips — called the A800 and H800 — are absolutely flying off the shelves.

This has caused Nvidia to increase the price by up to 40% above MSRP, leading to the A800 selling for as much as $36,500. Even the Nvidia V100, a card that launched in 2018, is priced as high as $10,000.

Nvidia is apparently aiming to serve its non-Chinese customers first, which has led to lengthy delays in getting an AI-focused GPU in China. Wait times have reportedly increased to as much as six months from the point of ordering.

Another GPU shortage?

Cryptocurrency mining rig from computer graphic cards.
A cryptocurrency miner attached to a laptop Getty Images

You might be wondering how that will be a problem for consumers. After all, Nvidia’s AI graphics cards are very different from its gaming GPUs, and it’s not like AI companies are going to be snapping up shedloads of the RTX 4090. Surely that means ChatGPT won’t cause another shortage, right?

Well, AI is booming right now, and it is clearly a priority area for Nvidia. The risk is not that companies will buy up every single gaming GPU, but that Nvidia decides to allocate more resources towards high-end business GPUs — the type that shine when it comes to AI workloads – at the expense of consumer graphics cards.

If that comes to pass, it might become much harder to get your hands on a GPU. That doesn’t appear to be happening just yet, but it may not be something that can be entirely ruled out in the future.

While the cryptocurrency boom that fueled the last GPU shortage appears to be over (at least for now), the AI revolution is rearing its head. In fact, many former crypto miners are apparently pivoting to AI in a bid to remain profitable.

It’s a warning sign of what might lie ahead for anyone desperate to get a new graphics card. While a new GPU shortage is by no means guaranteed, the needs of AI businesses could heap more pressure on the graphics card supply chain.

Editors' Recommendations

Alex Blake
In ancient times, people like Alex would have been shunned for their nerdy ways and strange opinions on cheese. Today, he…
ChatGPT tried to pass a college exam and it didn’t go well
A MacBook Pro on a desk with ChatGPT's website showing on its display.

Studying to pass your college exams can be a stressful experience, but what if ChatGPT could just write your papers for you? That’s the question posed by researchers at the U.K.’s University of Bath, and their findings might surprise you.

According to a report from the BBC, artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT excel at certain tasks. James Fern, a lecturer at the University of Bath, noted that “Multiple choice questions, for example, [ChatGPT] will handle those very well. We definitely were not expecting it to do as well as it did ... it was getting close to 100% correct.”

Read more
Steve Wozniak warns AI will make scams even more convincing
steve wozniak tweets wife may be patient zero coronavirus usa speaking 3 2

Steve Wozniak has been sharing his thoughts about the new wave of AI-powered tools that have gained so much attention in recent months.

Speaking to the BBC this week, the Apple co-founder said he fears that the technology will be increasingly used by cybercriminals to make online scams more convincing and therefore harder to spot.

Read more
Slack GPT: attend meetings, summarize messages, and more
A mockup image of Slack's Slack GPT chatbot, showing the Einstein GPT tool suggesting a new sales opportunity.

Sick of attending all those work meetings every day? Slack could soon take care of them for you by sending its own chatbot to summarize what happened. That’s because Slack owner Salesforce has just introduced its own artificial intelligence (AI) tool called Slack GPT, and it could help make your workload a little easier to manage.

According to Slack and Salesforce, Slack GPT aims to bring AI to your day-to-day tasks. That might mean helping you adjust the tone of your messages to suit a certain audience, or automatically drafting emails to send to prospective clients.

Read more