AMD is launching their RX 6600 XT in August and according to the latest Moore's Law is Dead video, NVIDIA has been stockpiling GA106 chips for use in an "RTX 3060" flood against the AMD RX 6600XT. What this means is that if you are a budget gamer waiting for an upgrade opportunity, you want to wait till August because both the RTX 3060 and RX 6600XT should be available at affordable rates shortly.
NVIDIA shifted to Samsung for its GPU production a while back and while the move seemed like a bad idea initially, we know now that it was the perfect move. With the global chip supply squeezed and TSMC at the center of it all, not being tied down by TSMC's production capability must feel great. According to MLiD, the company is preparing a flood of RTX 3060s and should have vastly more supply than AMD's RX 6600 XT. This combined with the drop in pricing all around the world and the introduction of LHR cards means that we might actually see close-to-affordable pricing with the RTX 3060 and RX 6600XT.
On the topic of LHR cards, however, it seems that NVIDIA is not being very strict with AIBs and is actually allowing them to accumulate RTX 3070 non-LHR dies. Keep in mind however that if NVIDIA has already produced these dies they will obviously want to sell all of these. The following are the quotes received by MLiD:
"You know now that you mention it Tom, the overwhelming majority of our arriving [GeForce RTX] 3070 stock is non-LHR. Last week I thought this was just the last remaining stock... but now it's late July, and most of our arriving 3070s remain as non-LHR models. The majority of upcoming deliveries are non-LHR as well".
"Keep in mind that we are buying these dies from NVIDIA, and they are different from the LHR dies. So NVIDIA has to be mindful of what is going on, and letting some AIBs drag their feet more than others. LHR might be the standard for every SKU eventually, but we (AIBs) are going to drag this process out if they let us...". Source: Moore's Law Is Dead, Transcription via Tweaktown
As you can see, AIBs are happy to receive non-LHR cards because they fetch a higher premium and can be sold to miners and it looks like, for now, NVIDIA has a good inventory of these. Unfortunately for gamers, it does mean that the prices will not properly crash till the non-LHR inventory runs out. As long as there are non-LHR cards available, mining will be profitable. The good news is that these shenanigans should last, at most, for another quarter or so before inventory depletes. This is also around the same time Ethereum will shift to Proof of Stake so profitable mining's days are limited at any rate.
