Nvidia’s high end GPUs used in AI and gaming are in short supply. The demand for such GPUs soared up in 2023 on account of AI’s spread, the crypto boom and the popularity of Nvidia’s RTX30 series.

There are reasons for this shortage. There is a shortage of computer chips all over the world. There is US-China trade war. The production capacity of Nvidia’s partners is limited.

Some companies obtain Nvidia GPUs using them as collaterals for loans.

Nvidia RTX 4090, 4080, 4070 cost around 1 lac plus rupees in India. 4060 and 3060 models cost around Rs.40 thousand. 1660 model cost about Rs.21000.

Two types of models are available — RTX and GTX. These are graphics cards. There are some similarities and some differences.

GTX stands for Giga Texel Sharder eXtreme designed to handle high performance gaming with fast and smooth graphics. They use rasterization technique. This technique converts a 3D model into 2D pixels on the screen.

RTX stands for Ray Tracing Texel eXtreme, also designed for gaming and use ray tracing. This technique simulates how light behaves in the real world. It produces reflections, refractions, shadows. illumination and ambient occlusion. It has dedicated hardware to perform ray tracing cores. The games become more realistic. These cards are, therefore, expensive.

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 is the most powerful and expensive RTX card available. The 4080 is slightly less powerful and less expensive. The choice depends on the budget, monitor’s resolution, the desired frame rate and the games you would like to play.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 is AMD’s flagship GPU. Slightly less powerful and less expensive is AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is a mid-range RTX card. The Ti version is more powerful.