Why is this important: We’ve seen plenty of claims recently that this year will see the nightmare situation for graphics cards improve, but prices returning to pre-chip shortage levels may be further away than expected. According to a new report, TSMC has already increased its quotes by 10-20% for its 7nm and 5nm processes, which will impact GPUs, CPUs, and ASICs.
According to DigiTimes (Going through Tom’s gear), TSMC’s rising foundry costs will impact all processors made using its 7nm and 5nm process nodes. This will hit AMD the hardest as the red team’s product line features the 7nm Zen 2 and Zen 3 architectures, while this year’s Zen 4 is built on the 5nm process.
Although Intel is less affected, chips already dependent on TSMC to manufacture could become more expensive for consumers due to the Taiwanese company’s price hike. Team blue could also make its products more expensive to cover the development and expansion of the company’s fab; Intel plans to spend $25-28 billion on chip manufacturing in 2022.
It’s not just processors that could feel the consequences of TSMC’s stock price hike. All but one of AMD’s current RDNA 2 graphics cards are built in 7nm, while RDNA 3 is expected to be built in 5nm. Even the supposed Radeon RX 6000 series refresh would use 6nm, so they could be impacted as well.
Nvidia, meanwhile, is using the Samsung 8N node for the consumer Ampere line, but the upcoming RTX 4000 series is expected to be another based on TSMC’s 5nm process. Nvidia recently said that the supply of its cards will improve in the second half of the year, which is when the RTX 4000 series arrives, so while availability might be better, MSRPs might be much higher than expected.
It’s not all pessimistic, however. TSMC is spending $44 billion to upgrade capacity this year; card deliveries should increase by 10%; and mining demand is expected to drop due to Ethereum’s upcoming move from a proof-of-work mechanism to a proof-of-stake. And if you want to buy a card on eBay, the good news is that their average price has dropped in recent weeks.
