AMD Increasing Production of Graphics Cards to Address Current Shortage
AMD is finally stepping up to what is slowly becoming a critical shortage of graphics card, driven by cryptocurrency miners who use the GPUs in their mining setups. The company announced that they are "ramping up production" to catch up to the demand.
It's not just AMD, though, as even the pricier Nvidia cards are now very difficult to find in the market at the recommended retail price these days. Almost all models of newer graphics cards that the two companies have been delivering out are being snapped up by customers, who are, in turn, putting them into rigs to mine Ethereum, as Polygon noted.
In a conference call with investors on Tuesday, Jan. 30, AMD president Dr. Lisa Su admitted that demand from cryptocurrency miners have been "consuming a lot of GPUs."
"It's a good part of our business," Dr. Su added, noting that demand has been so high that their graphics card business is running into inventory shortages these past few months.
"The graphics channel is very low, and we're certainly working to replenish that channel environment," the AMD CEO added. She then recommended a course of action to catch up to the demand. While she adds that the company plans to ramp up production in the next few months, AMD could be dealing with GDDR5 and HBM2 memory shortages in the meantime.
"We continue to work through that with our memory partners," Dr. Su noted.
Rival GPU maker NVidia, for their part, has asked retailers to prioritize gamers over cryptocurrency miners in the face of the shortages. A few retailers have responded, with Micro Center, in particular, implementing new policies to give priority to customers who are buying a graphics card to build a gaming PC.
