Computer shortage may continue to late 2022

Computer shortage may continue to late 2022

This story about global supply shortages, boiled down, in 1:38 minutes.

What's the fuss?

Power-chips, an essential part in a grand majority of electronics, will continue struggling to meet demand for much longer than we'd have hoped.

The situation

COVID-19 has done a number on us gamers, specifically having reduced the availability of new consoles, PCs, and computer parts available.

  • Difficulties in supply chain management pervasive in electronics have caused such supply issues, meaning that gamers looking to get new gaming hardware either need to get lucky or otherwise purchase from money-grubbing scalpers.

A recent report from Toshiba, one of the largest suppliers of power chips used in consumer electronics, has dashed our hopes of a brisk end to the supply drought. 

  • The company stated they won't be able to meet demand for their power chips for at least another year as materials continue to run dry.
  • On the bright side, the company is confident that by 2024, their capabilities will have grown enough to finally match overwhelming demand.

Boiling it down

Currently, the most used video card (i.e. the computer part used to "power" a video game) by a wide margin is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, which is almost 3 years old now. 

  • Although the video card is still sufficient enough to handle modern games, it pales in comparison to the power of current generation video cards.
  • This stat could reflect how reliant gamers are on old hardware right now, especially when only 4.37% of gamers are up-to-date.

Although today's games are at the cutting edge of graphical fidelity, developers try to provide in-game options to accommodate gamers with less-powerful hardware. 

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