Scalpers are struggling to sell the RTX 4080 above MSRP, but retailers won't let them return the cards

1_rick

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Just learned something today, in the EU:
If you bought a product or a service online or outside of a shop (by telephone, mail order, from a door-to-door salesperson), you also have the right to cancel and return your order within 14 days, for any reason and without a justification.

That a bit of a strange rule (specially for something has standard than a video card and that in person shopping would have added usually zero information to the buyer anyway)
 
Scalpers then trying to sell them for MSRP suck too. Depending on the brand, warranty is non-transferable.

No sympathy from me.
If the scalper paid the tax for the end buyer... not so bad of a deal depending where you are.
 
Scalpers around the holidays will buy anything and try to scalp it......toilet paper, breath mints, GPU's..anything that might be considered an impulse or desperation buy for an Xmas Present....tit might be hard to get a PS5 or Xbox Series X now...but the second or third week of January there will be ones available suddenly...they know most retail stores offer lenient return policies so they can try and scalp any item and still have until the end of January to return it no questions asked.

Wal Mart around here used to be so bad a couple decades ago they would gladly give you store credit or process a return for merchandise that had *other stores price stickers* on it...this was back in the days of price stickers anyhow, I think its mostly UPC based scans now and not the old KMart price sticker from the sticker guns.......
 
Wal Mart around here used to be so bad a couple decades ago they would gladly give you store credit or process a return for merchandise that had *other stores price stickers* on it...this was back in the days of price stickers anyhow
it was for a while one of the biggest source of revenues for drug sellers (drug buyer would try to find receipt of people that paid cash in walmart parking lot and use them for that)
 
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Hmm, makes you wonder if Nvidia knew there would be some idiot scalper residuals so get scalper money at $1200 price point. Then come in like heroes with price cut to $800 two weeks before Christmas or 12/13.
 
Good news is people aren't willing to pay $1200 for it. Perhaps this means better pricing on the horizon. Of course, I wonder how much inventory is left. We're hitting peak buying season now so I am wondering if older cards are moving.
 
Price was always way too high. The fact scalpers thought they could get more than $1300-1400, which would barely break them even after fees is some poor judgement.

I don't know, these were the same bottom feeding maggots that were getting close to $2000 on 3080's not that long ago. I guess Nvidia and other retailers allowing that raping to happen to their customers has come to back to bite them.
 
I was hoping to read that the scalpers were run over by the delivery truck, or the victim of some other gruesome accident, but I suppose this will do. For now. ;)
If you think about scalpers buying dozens of these RTX 4090's, it might be better to be hit by a truck.
 
This is Jensen's Master Plan hike the Prices so High so Nobody Buys them.
That actually was the plan, AIB’s begged NVidia to delay the 4000 series launch so they had time to clear out the 3000 series overstock they had. This effectively does just that, create a small number of 4080s and charge absurd prices for them killing demand.
NVidia also wanted to cut back on their TSMC contract but couldn’t, but with the Chinese embargo on A100 and H100 units coming up NVidia is able to use the silicon that would have gone to a normal 4070 and 4080 release and instead feed China all the chips it can before the embargo actually lands.
 
This is bait. Changes on Newegg aren't correlated to 4080's as the MLID tweet tries to paint it, because all Nvidia and AMD GPUs have had the return-for-refund flag switched off at the moment - including clearance models - and it's something that seems to toggle on and off all year long algorithmically or by product manager based on some internal criteria.

Techspot's fan-fiction writeup linked here is built upon MLID's nonsense, not in any objective reality. Scalpers general aren't buying 4080s and really haven't been.
 
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That actually was the plan, AIB’s begged NVidia to delay the 4000 series launch so they had time to clear out the 3000 series overstock they had. This effectively does just that, create a small number of 4080s and charge absurd prices for them killing demand.
NVidia also wanted to cut back on their TSMC contract but couldn’t, but with the Chinese embargo on A100 and H100 units coming up NVidia is able to use the silicon that would have gone to a normal 4070 and 4080 release and instead feed China all the chips it can before the embargo actually lands.
I think Nvidia decided to increase prices in order to shift focus on the premium consumers and avoid mainstream. The idea is that the margin is so low on $200-$300 GPU's that Nvidia would rather ignore that market segment and just prices their GPU's higher because there are a group of people who will spend endless amounts of money on a GPU. Nvidia is trying to be the Ferrari of GPU's. The only problem with that is AMD is trying to be the Lamborghini of GPU's. This would work since 2016 both AMD and Nvidia have been seeing huge demand for GPU's and it has barely dropped since. 2016 is when the crypto market boomed but around 2018 is busted, only to see COVID hit around 2020 and soon after another huge crypto boom. The only problem is that crypto is dead, and nobody right now needs anything better than a GTX 1060, unless they really want to get Ray-Tracing and drive monitors at 120Hz+. Nvidia is just betting on either another crypto market revival, or being extremely dependant on those who have traditionally spent as much or higher than the MSRP. I think AMD has no idea what they're doing and just monkey see monkey do.
 
Ah ha, maybe just maaaaaybe, they should, I don't know, maybe order other PC parts and sell complete customm PCs and sell'em that way.
 
I think Nvidia decided to increase prices in order to shift focus on the premium consumers and avoid mainstream. The idea is that the margin is so low on $200-$300 GPU's that Nvidia would rather ignore that market segment and just prices their GPU's higher because there are a group of people who will spend endless amounts of money on a GPU. Nvidia is trying to be the Ferrari of GPU's. The only problem with that is AMD is trying to be the Lamborghini of GPU's. This would work since 2016 both AMD and Nvidia have been seeing huge demand for GPU's and it has barely dropped since. 2016 is when the crypto market boomed but around 2018 is busted, only to see COVID hit around 2020 and soon after another huge crypto boom. The only problem is that crypto is dead, and nobody right now needs anything better than a GTX 1060, unless they really want to get Ray-Tracing and drive monitors at 120Hz+. Nvidia is just betting on either another crypto market revival, or being extremely dependant on those who have traditionally spent as much or higher than the MSRP. I think AMD has no idea what they're doing and just monkey see monkey do.
The sub $400 market is pretty decently taken care of by the previous generation stock and second-hand sales, there isn't really anything they could release at that price that wouldn't be overshadowed by the cards available on the market currently.
Nvidia is doubling down on enterprise AI research and desktop virtualization, they are also investing heavily into automation controllers for warehouses, manufacturing, as well as facial/object recognition and tracking.
Nvidia is shaping up to be the leader in industrial automation, they found a new market to move their crypto resources from, be it self-driving forklifts, automated floor burnishers, AI-controlled warehouse systems, and big on industrial controls. They also develop those AI systems for employeeless convenience stores as well as the AI tracking and recognition stuff that makes them work. Nvidia is using its AI powerhouse and going balls deep on industrial manufacturing and it's sort of crazy to watch.
AMD is just trying to stay relevant, and as long as they are in the consoles they will manage to do so because if they lose the consoles they really don't have anything going for them. Because god forbid Nvidia takes those from them, then all new games are going to be Nvidia proprietary everything in those games and AMD will flounder at trying to be usable for modern content. The AMD CPU side of things is still hitting all the marks it needs to, but my fear there is things are getting far more specialized and the new Xeons look to have a lot more specialized hardware that will give them distinct advantages in environments tailored to use them and once those environments are locked in with them it will be hard for AMD to take that back without redesigning their cores. Which I see as Intel's attempt to battle the very real threat from ARM in the server space because AMD and Intel can trade back and forth all they like for x86 market share but once they lose somebody to ARM they aren't getting that customer back.
 
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I think Nvidia decided to increase prices in order to shift focus on the premium consumers and avoid mainstream. The idea is that the margin is so low on $200-$300 GPU's that Nvidia would rather ignore that market segment and just prices their GPU's higher because there are a group of people who will spend endless amounts of money on a GPU. Nvidia is trying to be the Ferrari of GPU's. The only problem with that is AMD is trying to be the Lamborghini of GPU's. This would work since 2016 both AMD and Nvidia have been seeing huge demand for GPU's and it has barely dropped since. 2016 is when the crypto market boomed but around 2018 is busted, only to see COVID hit around 2020 and soon after another huge crypto boom. The only problem is that crypto is dead, and nobody right now needs anything better than a GTX 1060, unless they really want to get Ray-Tracing and drive monitors at 120Hz+. Nvidia is just betting on either another crypto market revival, or being extremely dependant on those who have traditionally spent as much or higher than the MSRP. I think AMD has no idea what they're doing and just monkey see monkey do.

No offense meant, but I believe that to be farfetched. Mid range gpu's are the bulk and most purchased. Also the die sizes are smaller down the stepping ladder, which increase the amount of low/mid range dies per wafer, while also reducing the impact of defects/failures, as they would be more costly for larger monolithic chips. It doesn't have anything to do with Nvidia focusing on high end, as mainstream is where the mass majority of purchases lie. For example, on steam charts, the Rtx 3080 only has a 1.84 percent user base. Where as the highest percentage owned cards in the top 15 are mid range, and account for 40%. The majority of them all being entry to mid range cards from the 10/20/30 series nvidia. The 3070 being the only outlier, if you can even call that high end, being at 2.44 percent.

It all really comes down to Nvidia having too much 3000 series stock, and not wanting to sacrifice their bottom line by slotting the 4000 series to replace the 3000. They would have to sell the 3000 series at a aggressive discount compared to the 4000 series that meant to replace them. Instead, they raised the prices even more so on their new cards, to create a buffer to go through their 3000 surplus. I won't be so absent minded to say greed wasn't a part of their plan. The fact they tried to release a 4070 as a 4080 12gb, and a 4080 16gb which meant to replace the 3080, at a $500 mark up compared to previous gen is just pure greed. But what I find to be more offensive is the fact that the 4080 16gb released at $1200 and it squeaked through...When you think about it, it was a purely tactical move, the outcry for the 4080 12gb and cancellation of the card, was enough to quell the masses to thinking they had won, but in reality, Nvidia still got what they want, a $500 mark up on the 3080 replacement. Limiting production on their 4000 series card to move the 3000 through the market, while keeping their current gen cards still priced astronomically high.

I'm hoping RDNA 3 can undercut nvidia, would be great if the 7900XT and XTX would be 4090 competitors, doubt it would happen, as rumors are pointing to a 4080 competitor. But even so, if it matches a 4080, with the $2-300 cheaper price tag, would be a win. Also nice to see 4080 stock not moving much...Hopefully a reality check for Nvidia, cause this shit is just unacceptable.
 
The sub $400 market is pretty decently taken care of by the previous generation stock and second-hand sales, there isn't really anything they could release at that price that wouldn't be overshadowed by the cards available on the market currently.
The die size and power a chiplet TSMC 5 or TSMC 5 Nvidia 4N would require to compete with a Zotac 3060Ti/6700xt, could make for an interesting product for both party, but has price difference for newer TSMC product increase, maybe not that much.

If a 380mm can beat sometime a 3090TI, maybe a 260mm, 180 watt product could do very well in a nice easy to cool and power package, with the new cache letting ram being relatively cheap and old.

In the market where the start of the previous sentence matter more (laptop) maybe it will be more aggressive
 
The die size and power a chiplet TSMC 5 or TSMC 5 Nvidia 4N would require to compete with a Zotac 3060Ti/6700xt, could make for an interesting product for both party, but has price difference for newer TSMC product increase, maybe not that much.

If a 380mm can beat sometime a 3090TI, maybe a 260mm, 180 watt product could do very well in a nice easy to cool and power package, with the new cache letting ram being relatively cheap and old.

In the market where the start of the previous sentence matter more (laptop) maybe it will be more aggressive
TSMCs rates for 5 and 4n are more than double the cost per mm^2 than 7nm, I don't think the performance gains from the shrink offset the costs of the shrink at this stage. But that is one of the reasons AMD's new chiplet-based GPUs interest me if they can mix and match nodes there isn't anything keeping them from using older cheaper nodes for budget-based cards. Yeah, they will use more power and such but they may be able to achieve some very good price-performance metrics there should a market develop for it down the line. But the new Nvidia stuff looks really power efficient (excluding the 4090), a 4060 mobile part could probably be a serious 1440p gaming beast.
 
I'm hoping RDNA 3 can undercut nvidia, would be great if the 7900XT and XTX would be 4090 competitors, doubt it would happen, as rumors are pointing to a 4080 competitor. But even so, if it matches a 4080, with the $2-300 cheaper price tag, would be a win. Also nice to see 4080 stock not moving much...Hopefully a reality check for Nvidia, cause this shit is just unacceptable.
It easily could, the 7900xtx by all accounts should be a much cheaper card than it currently is but Nvidia priced things so high that if AMD had gone lower bots and scalpers would easily be making up the difference, and then some. AMD has also promised their investors a greater than 55% margin on their product stack going forward trying to compete with Nvidia's 60%. But AMD suffers from a silicon shortage, they will sell everything they make in every market they sell it in, they are in no hurry to lower their prices on anything so if Nvidia sets their prices out in orbit AMD will be right there behind them so that they are a serious consideration for the people who want them and an option for somebody who was otherwise looking at an Nvidia product but AMD can't afford to go after too much market share without risking their ability to deliver parts in other more profitable market segments.
 
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I think Nvidia decided to increase prices in order to shift focus on the premium consumers and avoid mainstream. The idea is that the margin is so low on $200-$300 GPU's that Nvidia would rather ignore that market segment and just prices their GPU's higher because there are a group of people who will spend endless amounts of money on a GPU. Nvidia is trying to be the Ferrari of GPU's. The only problem with that is AMD is trying to be the Lamborghini of GPU's. This would work since 2016 both AMD and Nvidia have been seeing huge demand for GPU's and it has barely dropped since. 2016 is when the crypto market boomed but around 2018 is busted, only to see COVID hit around 2020 and soon after another huge crypto boom. The only problem is that crypto is dead, and nobody right now needs anything better than a GTX 1060, unless they really want to get Ray-Tracing and drive monitors at 120Hz+. Nvidia is just betting on either another crypto market revival, or being extremely dependant on those who have traditionally spent as much or higher than the MSRP. I think AMD has no idea what they're doing and just monkey see monkey do.

I don’t think that’s what they’re doing at all. The biggest GPU segment by far is the “60” class cards and they would be stupid to walk away from that. Nvidia’s simply testing what the market would bear after consumers spent the last few years demonstrating how much they were willing to spend on a GPU. That’s pretty much it. We can blame miners and scalpers all we want, but the reality is that the 4090 launched at $1600 and there were line-ups at stores to buy them despite a crashing crypto market. Nvidia rolled the dice that gamers would therefore be willing to spend $1200 on the 4080 (spend $400 less on a card that’s still pretty good) and it seems like that was a miscalculation on their part. This launched is very similar to Turing to be honest.
 
I don’t think that’s what they’re doing at all. The biggest GPU segment by far is the “60” class cards and they would be stupid to walk away from that. Nvidia’s simply testing what the market would bear after consumers spent the last few years demonstrating how much they were willing to spend on a GPU. That’s pretty much it. We can blame miners and scalpers all we want, but the reality is that the 4090 launched at $1600 and there were line-ups at stores to buy them despite a crashing crypto market. Nvidia rolled the dice that gamers would therefore be willing to spend $1200 on the 4080 (spend $400 less on a card that’s still pretty good) and it seems like that was a miscalculation on their part. This launched is very similar to Turing to be honest.
4090 was always going to be halo card priced. No doubt about that. The 4080 prices were set to rid the world of excessive 3XXX stock. They pretty much admitted that. I expect to see 4080 prices drop after the first of the year to a more reasonable NV price.
 
4090 was always going to be halo card priced. No doubt about that. The 4080 prices were set to rid the world of excessive 3XXX stock. They pretty much admitted that. I expect to see 4080 prices drop after the first of the year to a more reasonable NV price.
I miss the days when "halo priced" cards were ~500.
Anyone remember the GTX 280? Yeah I paid $650 for it and there was a partial refund when the price was adjusted downward. Now we get excited about cards costing three times as much. Good thing CPUs haven't followed suit! If Intel still did the EE thing they'd probably be north of $3k now!
 
Id rather buy used on forums and buy used product with warranty for less then cost of new card. I prefer make my dollar work for me, not me work for my dollar
 
I miss the days when "halo priced" cards were ~500.
Anyone remember the GTX 280? Yeah I paid $650 for it and there was a partial refund when the price was adjusted downward. Now we get excited about cards costing three times as much. Good thing CPUs haven't followed suit! If Intel still did the EE thing they'd probably be north of $3k now!
Most of the pricing there is TSMC they are the best and they charge for the privilege of having them make your chips. The insane R&D needed to push the GPU tech doesn’t help much either.
Look how infrequently AMD or Intel make major changes to their CPU architecture, sure minor tweaks but not a full overhaul that lets them spread those costs out. But GPU’s get a full redesign every 18 months like clockwork.
 
Newegg has had something like this policy for a while now.

I bought a 6700XT from them, and less than two weeks later found a6800 for $75 more than what I paid for the 6700XT, I paid $600 for my 6700XT. I tried to do a return, but because the product packaging was opened I couldn’t return it.

Thanks to scalpers and the miners a lot of us regular folk get screwed with these return policies created just because of them.
 
Newegg has had something like this policy for a while now.

I bought a 6700XT from them, and less than two weeks later found a6800 for $75 more than what I paid for the 6700XT, I paid $600 for my 6700XT. I tried to do a return, but because the product packaging was opened I couldn’t return it.

Thanks to scalpers and the miners a lot of us regular folk get screwed with these return policies created just because of them.

Not just a factor of scalpers/miners. Newegg has always been abysmal on the return policy side for open items for quite some time. I remember getting a Asrock X79 board back in the day. Had some really seriously problems when using a capture card with that board, usb video corruption, and massive system stutters and freezes when doing so, no matter which USB port I used. Hit up newegg for a return to get something else, and refused to take it back since the package was opened, only offering an exchange. Luckily I paid via paypal, and at that time, had better protection guidelines on returns, so newegg were forced to take it back and offer me a refund, went with an Asus x79 instead, problem solved.

Overall though, I try to avoid buying from newegg when I can now-a-days, unless I have no choice. Mostly buy on Amazon, since the return policy is very lax if I come across any issues. Best buy being the second option if their limited selection fits my needs, while Microcenter being my preferred choice, but only when I'm in the vicinity, as it's 2 hours away as my local MC.
 
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Not just a factor of scalpers/miners. Newegg has always been abysmal on the return policy side for open items for quite some time. I remember getting a Asrock X79 board back in the day. Had some really seriously problems when using a capture card with that board, usb video corruption, and massive system stutters and freezes when doing so, no matter which USB port I used. Hit up newegg for a return to get something else, and refused to take it back since the package was opened, only offering an exchange. Luckily I paid via paypal, and at that time, had better protection guidelines on returns, so newegg were forced to take it back and offer me a refund, went with an Asus x79 instead, problem solved.

Overall though, I try to avoid buying from newegg when I can now-a-days, unless I have no choice. Mostly buy on Amazon, since the return policy is very lax if I come across any issues. Best buy being the second option if their limited selection fits my needs, while Microcenter being my preferred choice, but only when I'm in the vicinity, as it's 2 hours away from my local MC.
Once they shipped me the wrong stuff refused to take back the things I didn’t order then tried to charge me for them.
 
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