Nvidia won't offer much hope to consumers eagerly awaiting RTX 30 series graphics cards until at least April. At a technology and automotive conference held by J.P. Morgan, the company's CFO, Colette Kress, admitted that "supply remains tight at this point and will remain so until the end of the first quarter," he admitted.

Hopefully, the general consensus on the corporate calendar is that Q1 ends in March and Q2 begins in April. But Nvidia's calendar is full of oddities, and according to this SEC filing [PDF warning], Q1 actually ends at the end of April and Q2 begins in or around May, which is also Nvidia's 2021 fiscal year - so it is usually seasonal related to its business overall related to fluctuations.

My money, sadly, is on that being the definition of Nvidia in Q1, not the general understanding as many of us know it. Kress, after all, is the CFO, she lives for this stuff, and she is talking around the fact that Nvidia is not in Q1 yet - its not on the calendar.

"So supply remains tight at the moment," Colette Kress said on the call (via Seeking Alpha). We expect overall channel inventory will likely remain lean throughout Q1, meaning inventory in our e-retailers and retail channels, as well as our AIC partners"

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In any case, the GPU market is shrinking as we head into 2021. Not the great start to the year we had hoped for, but not surprising given the widely reported supply shortages of key components, rising costs, and of course capacity constraints.

In 2020, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang tempered stock expectations by saying that demand would outpace supply at least through 2021. However, while Huang focused primarily on the issue of high demand, which may be true, Kress now seems to be focusing on larger macro issues as the root cause of the extended constraints.

"Our overall capacity is not keeping up with the overall strong demand that we have seen," Kress continues.

"In terms of constraints, there are constraints from the overall global compute spike, overall capacity, and the capacity that we think we're going to need for assembly, testing, and sub-trade as well. But again, we are focused on this and working every day to improve the overall supply situation."

Many GPU manufacturers are raising the cost of Nvidia's RTX 30 series due to these constraints, along with tariffs on other components in the US.

This is also very disappointing, as Nvidia and AMD's latest graphics cards are overall excellent. At least the RTX 3060 12GB will be available in late February, but we are skeptical at best about both the card's specs and availability.

Hopefully the situation will improve in May, and not just in terms of graphics card supply.