From PC World: It’s impossible to buy anything but the most entry level Radeon graphics cards right now.
That’s expected at the high-end, as AMD’s enthusiast-focused Radeon RX Vega graphics cards won’t launch until the very end of July. But even “sweet spot” mainstream graphics cards like the superb Radeon RX 570 and RX 580 can’t be found right now, with all models either out of stock or selling for wildly inflated prices online. You’ll find a couple of PowerColor RX 580s ostensibly selling at standard cost on Amazon, but if you look closely you’ll see the models are out of stock. Amazon’s selling first dibs on inevitable restocks. You probably shouldn’t expect to see the cards in your hands any time soon.
So what’s going on? Computer Base asked hardware vendors about the shortage at Computex 2017 and the answer can be summed up in a single word: Miners.
Cryptocurrency users can use graphics cards to “mine” new coins and generate a profit, and AMD’s graphics cards happen to be particularly well-suited for the task. This isn’t new: Bitcoin and Litecoin miners gobbled up every Radeon graphics card they could get at the end of 2013, creating a global shortage and inflated pricing. As cryptocurrency matured, however, ASIC hardware dedicated specifically to mining surpassed the efficiency of consumer graphics cards, easing the pressure.
Then came Ethereum, a cryptocurrency that can be mined like Bitcoin.
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