NVIDIA Forecasts Shortage of Gaming/Consumer GPUs This Quarter, RTX 40 Series Prices Expected to Rise

NVIDIA released its Q3 2024 earnings report this week, with a strong focus on its data center GPUs, which are designed for artificial intelligence acceleration.

The revenue from gaming and consumer graphics cards, in comparison, has become relatively low. Given the surge in artificial intelligence demand, NVIDIA might struggle to supply enough gaming and consumer GPUs.

During the earnings call, NVIDIA revealed that there might be a shortage of gaming graphics cards in this quarter (Q4 2024), but this shortage is not expected to last long. Supply is anticipated to improve by early 2025 as production increases.

Although NVIDIA did not disclose the specific reasons for the shortage, it's clear that the company is prioritizing its more profitable division: data center GPUs, leaving gaming graphics cards on the sidelines for now.

Notably, NVIDIA plans to launch the RTX 50 series cards early next year. With the introduction of new cards, the supply pressure on the RTX 40 series may gradually ease, but market price fluctuations are still expected.

As NVIDIA struggles to balance between its gaming and data center GPU divisions, the supply shortage and the upcoming holiday shopping season may lead to temporary price hikes for gaming graphics cards.

More and more gamers are purchasing high-end cards like the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090, which can drive 4K gaming and offer superior experiences. These factors combined are expected to increase demand.

Unless NVIDIA can gradually improve the supply of gaming graphics cards by early next year, it might be difficult for gamers to purchase high-end cards like the RTX 4080 at reasonable prices in the coming months.

In terms of finances, the report showed that NVIDIA's revenue for Q3 2024 increased by 94% to 35 billion, with net income up by 109% to 19.3 billion. The data center division contributed $30.7 billion in revenue, accounting for 87.7%.

This underscores the decrease in the gaming graphics card's revenue share, indicating that for NVIDIA, the data center division is currently the main source of income. Hence, the company is naturally focusing on meeting enterprise AI needs over gamer demands.