If you’ve been pining for one of the new best graphics cards for the past several months, we feel your pain. Unfortunately, things aren’t looking any better this side of 2020 than they were last month. 

We’re doing livestreams on the Tom’s Hardware YouTube channel and Facebook all this week with various tech companies to check out their latest products. Ed Crisler, Sapphire Technology North American PR rep, joined us to talk about GPUs and graphics cards, and we covered a range of topics, including the perfect storm of events that has brought us massive GPU shortages, cryptocurrency mining and more. It’s all part of our CES 2021 coverage.

Crisler spoke frankly with us about the confluence of events that has brought us to this point. COVID is obviously the biggest factor, but its influence extends far beyond lockdowns and social distancing measure. Closed factories, market uncertainty and shipping difficulties have combined with unprecedented levels of demand for PC hardware to create shortages that may last until this summer. 

Oh, and Bitcoin and the coin miners aren’t going to help the situation.

We also talked about GPU overclocking, ray tracing, DLSS, image quality and Sapphire’s TriXX Boost that helps improve performance for a minor drop in fidelity. 

Check out the video above for more, and take a look at our CES livestream schedule for additional coverage from the show.