TSMC claimed their 40nm yield issues have been resolved, but according to Digitimes, the current shortage of graphics chips is largely caused by low yields of 40nm process at TSMC.

Although the defect density of TSMC’s 40nm technology is said to drop from 0.3-0.4 per square inch to 0.1-0.3, the improvement in overall yield is still incapable of catching up with market demand. AMD has almost completed the allocation of Radeon HD 5xxx series, and NVIDIA is also ready for transition to 40nm, so the shortage problem is expected to last till May.

Considering the GPU shortage and rising DRAM quotes, the graphics card makers including Asus, MSI, Gigabyte and TUL are planning to increase prices of their products by 5% to 10%.