News AMD Aims to Protect its RX 6000 Launch Against Scalpers

[Admin]

In an attempt to avoid suffering the same fate as Nvidia, it looks like AMD is prepping its partners for how to handle RX 6000 series orders to ensure as little scalping as possible.

AMD Aims to Protect its RX 6000 Launch Against Scalpers : Read more

 

[Joseph_138]

The way that you protect launches from scalpers is by making sure you have enough cards on launch day so that everyone who wants one can get one. If everyone who wants one, gets one, then there is no market for scalpers.

 

[Evil_Overlord]

Another way to protect against scalpers is to ditch online sales and only sell your product in brick-n-mortar stores. I'm sure Walmart, Meijer, GameStop, Best Buy, and Micro Center would appreciate the foot traffic. ...of course, the prerequisite to selling in a physical store is (as Joseph_138 rightly said) to have enough cards on launch day to populate shelves.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Well lets see:

Ryzen 5000 series: Only to be used on 500 series chipset boards at launch, 400 series support coming next year to SOME boards, cannot be used on 300 series boards.

RX 6000 series: Questionable if performance will be backed up by third party reviews, horrid driver interface, well documented past history of horrid driver support, very questionable ray tracing performance, and lacks nVidia features such as DLSS and nVidia Broadcast.

Seems to me AMD wouldn't care about if Little Johnny got his 6900XT as long as that 6900XT didn't sit on the shelf and collect dust.

 

[TheBeastInside]

Actually I rather like AMD drivers interface a lot more than Nvidias.
I feel NVIDIA haven't updated their UX in ages and it feels the same for ages.
I also feel these driver issues are apparant on both sides at times and sometimes they get more attention. I admit I haven't really analyzed this over time, but my experience is pretty good with both companies.
As far as company policies go, I think Nvidia is the more sneaky one (or the one caught more often 😀). Again, subjective stuff here.
I do hope AMD kick ass this round since we need competition in this area too. Nvidia is feeling way too comfortable as top rooster.

 

[colson79]

Well lets see:

Ryzen 5000 series: Only to be used on 500 series chipset boards at launch, 400 series support coming next year to SOME boards, cannot be used on 300 series boards.

RX 6000 series: Questionable if performance will be backed up by third party reviews, horrid driver interface, well documented past history of horrid driver support, very questionable ray tracing performance, and lacks nVidia features such as DLSS and nVidia Broadcast.

Seems to me AMD wouldn't care about if Little Johnny got his 6900XT as long as that 6900XT didn't sit on the shelf and collect dust.

Sounds like a disgruntled Intel/Nvidia fanboy

 

[Avro Arrow]

This should go far to fight the bots and the scalpers. If there really is sufficient stock for demand, then ATi will have definitely won this generation. Coupled with AMD's complete domination of Intel, October 2020 will be remembered as:

(See what I did there? 😛)

 

[Avro Arrow]

Sounds like a disgruntled Intel/Nvidia fanboy

Read all of his posts. Your description of him is EXACTLY what he is.

 

[nofanneeded]

Another way to protect against scalpers is to ditch online sales and only sell your product in brick-n-mortar stores. I'm sure Walmart, Meijer, GameStop, Best Buy, and Micro Center would appreciate the foot traffic. ...of course, the prerequisite to selling in a physical store is (as Joseph_138 rightly said) to have enough cards on launch day to populate shelves.

Sorry , but Online will always be cheaper and faster to get. I never bought any hardware off the shelves since 2001 ...

Also , Online gives you the chance to get any model you want , and not whats in stock only in the street market.

 

[Math Geek]

The way that you protect launches from scalpers is by making sure you have enough cards on launch day so that everyone who wants one can get one. If everyone who wants one, gets one, then there is no market for scalpers.

and how many people want one? which model? which brand? from which country? from which store?

clearly you know, so please share so the rest of us can know the future as well. i'm sure AMD would love to know the answer as well. there are so many reasons why this is simple wishful thinking......

whine and spout unrealistic expectations all you want, but its just never gonna happen with any product launch.

 

[csm101]

nice, this is what should happen to 3070 as well. slowly these low life's should be put out of commission.

 

[Phaaze88]

Ugh, this screams so much knock on wood... Or perhaps! What better way to sell more product than to use reverse psychology and bait them into buying it all up?
#GOTTEM

There's backdoors to just about everything these days...
Just keep it simple: One unit per customer. Not 2. Not 3, and so on...
It won't stop them completely, but it'll slow them down. People are going to complain regardless; can't satisfy everyone.

 

[nofanneeded]

Just keep it simple: One unit per customer.

This Wouldn't help much , should to be one product per credit card number , Also , Must close international sales , and mail forwarding companies , and dont ship to their address in USA.

You will be surprised to know that half of the scalpers are from china and Asia and Russia .. they make contract with mail forwarding companies that take the order from inside USA then ship it outside .. something like MyUS.com

MyUS gives you local US address number with zero tax and a phone number , you use that info when buying online from any store in USA , then MyUS receives the goods and send tem outside USA to their customer .

Scalpers arent even Americans they are from RUSSIA and CHINA and ASIA

 

[TheBeastInside]

Not so simple to define customer.
Scalpers can ship to different addresses under different names...or same address under different names.
There is no singular rule of thumb to this..
You can ensure that a human is making the purchase with some certainty.
Queuing is a good suggestion.
But this issue is not something that's easily resolved.
Also, if a new product shipping doesn't sell out, its either very surprising stock or little demand.
I dont think in these times knowing the speculated demand aligns with being able to supply it easily.

 

[d0x360]

The way that you protect launches from scalpers is by making sure you have enough cards on launch day so that everyone who wants one can get one. If everyone who wants one, gets one, then there is no market for scalpers.

That doesn't make sense whatsoever... You could make enough so there are double the number available than there are actual buyers and bots will still manage to get 75% of them then create artificial shortages to drive up resale prices.

There will ALWAYS be scalpers. The way to protect launches from them is to literally protect launches from them and AMD laid out the best possible ways that retailers currently have.

They need to be looking at billing information, addresses, email... everything. If 1 thing matches then no second sale.

Eventually they will need a database that retailers can access and that's updated immediately upon a sale. Then when you submit an order the system should insert an artificial delay of at least 5 seconds then at the end of the delay query the database and if a match is found..no sale.

Combine that with a complicated captcha system and a virtual line (queue) system. Then even if you line up at 50 (online) stores you will still only be able to get 1. Of course people using bots will find ways around this if they are really dedicated but they will be severely limited on the number they can buy.

Then more legitimate customers who want one on launch can get one. It would flip that 75% to the consumer instead of the reseller.

 

[TheBeastInside]

That doesn't make sense whatsoever... You could make enough so there are double the number available than there are actual buyers and bots will still manage to get 75% of them then create artificial shortages to drive up resale prices.

There will ALWAYS be scalpers. The way to protect launches from them is to literally protect launches from them and AMD laid out the best possible ways that retailers currently have.

They need to be looking at billing information, addresses, email... everything. If 1 thing matches then no second sale.

Eventually they will need a database that retailers can access and that's updated immediately upon a sale. Then when you submit an order the system should insert an artificial delay of at least 5 seconds then at the end of the delay query the database and if a match is found..no sale.

Combine that with a complicated captcha system and a virtual line (queue) system. Then even if you line up at 50 (online) stores you will still only be able to get 1. Of course people using bots will find ways around this if they are really dedicated but they will be severely limited on the number they can buy.

Then more legitimate customers who want one on launch can get one. It would flip that 75% to the consumer instead of the reseller.

Thats not really feasible.
Basic privacy rules and competition prevent sharing such data.
Maybe a long shot would be blacklisting know scalpers and sharing the data...

 

[gggplaya]

The way that you protect launches from scalpers is by making sure you have enough cards on launch day so that everyone who wants one can get one. If everyone who wants one, gets one, then there is no market for scalpers.

That has nothing to do with scalpers. Say for example you did have 1 card for every buyer that wants one. The scalpers will still buy the cards by the dozens using bots and now you don't have enough for everyone. The people that want one still can't buy any, unless they pay the scalpers at higher than MSRP pricing.

Then, if you want to hold back inventory until your can stock up on a huge supply, even to compensate for scalpers. Then you have to push the launch date back by several weeks or months. People don't want that either.

 

[Math Geek]

think a lot of folks missed the "maxed manufacturing capacity" part of the article as well. they are making all they can and can't make em any faster right now. so do you release now with a million units and restock as new ones are finished?

or do you wait a few months to have 10 million stockpiled before release day. but if you want one for EVERY person on earth that may want one (again how many is that exactly?) that's likely a few more months or more depending on how many you need to have on hand for EVERY person to get one. or even longer to do as some have propsed which is make 3x as many as people want so scalpers get theirs AND so does every one on earth that wants to buy one for personal use as well. yah it sounds just as silly when i say it doesn't it!! lol

in other words, the whiners are not gonna be happy no matter how its done. it's not really worth it to feed the fire of their "wwwaaaaaahhhhh i want it and mommy I WANT IT NOW!!!" type posts.

get lucky on launch day or pay scalper prices or simply wait a bit and get it down the road when stock is in a better place.

 

[hotaru.hino]

All of these protections really do nothing to stop scalpers. They just make it mildly inconvenient.

CAPTCHA? Could be effective (only mildly so), could be not. After all Google developed one of the most widely used ones as a means to train its AI.
Purchase limits? By what? You can make as many proxy credit cards, emails, and as many mail forwarding things as you want (well, not sure about the last one, but I'm sure you can make a non-trivial amount)
Bot detection? It doesn't matter what the threshold is, a bot can always skirt the tail end of it.

 

[nofanneeded]

think a lot of folks missed the "maxed manufacturing capacity" part of the article as well. they are making all they can and can't make em any faster right now. so do you release now with a million units and restock as new ones are finished?

or do you wait a few months to have 10 million stockpiled before release day. but if you want one for EVERY person on earth that may want one (again how many is that exactly?) that's likely a few more months or more depending on how many you need to have on hand for EVERY person to get one. or even longer to do as some have propsed which is make 3x as many as people want so scalpers get theirs AND so does every one on earth that wants to buy one for personal use as well. yah it sounds just as silly when i say it doesn't it!! lol

in other words, the whiners are not gonna be happy no matter how its done. it's not really worth it to feed the fire of their "wwwaaaaaahhhhh i want it and mommy I WANT IT NOW!!!" type posts.

get lucky on launch day or pay scalper prices or simply wait a bit and get it down the road when stock is in a better place.

You talk like every release in the past had shortages .. sorry you are wrong . Nvidia themselves said that they did not expect that high demand. full stop !

Nvidia did not expect it , and did not Gamble on it , end of story.

 

[JayNor]

"it's no secret that TSMC has no capacity left to increase chip production"

The link only addressed 5nm capacity, which could be limited by availability of EUV equipment.

Is there some similar estimate of 7nm capacity at tsm?

 

[cryoburner]

The way that you protect launches from scalpers is by making sure you have enough cards on launch day so that everyone who wants one can get one. If everyone who wants one, gets one, then there is no market for scalpers.

Alternately, you can make sure your cards are unattractive enough at launch that not many people will want them over existing products, like Nvidia did with the 20-series. : D

You talk like every release in the past had shortages .. sorry you are wrong . Nvidia themselves said that they did not expect that high demand. full stop !

Nvidia did not expect it , and did not Gamble on it , end of story.

Simply put, Nvidia is lying. Just by looking at the performance increases at a given price level compared to the previous generation, it should have been blatantly obvious to anyone that demand would be very high at those prices. So either Nvidia's marketing department is completely stupid, or they knew full well prior to announcing the cards that they would not have remotely enough stock to go around to satisfy demand at those prices. All indications are that Nvidia is plenty capable of making reasonable business decisions, so it is clearly the latter option.

Now, it's certainly possible that Nvidia did not originally expect to sell the cards at those prices when they were first designing them. It seems highly likely that they intended to be selling each of these cards under different model numbers and charging perhaps a couple hundred dollars or so more for them, but then discovered that AMD's designs were going to be highly competitive at the top-end this generation. So Nvidia likely had to slash prices and overclock cards to keep them competitive, even if they knew full well that their supply had no chance of keeping up at those prices. Of course, they likely knew that for many months, so it would be no surprise post-launch that their supply couldn't keep up.

 

[Conahl]

Sorry , but Online will always be cheaper and faster to get. I never bought any hardware off the shelves since 2001 ...

i dont think so, i can go to my local store, and get something thats in stock in a matter of hours, not 2+ days, so faster ?? not likely, cheaper ? maybe, but after factoring shipping ( unless the off chance the item you want, includes free shipping ) its usually about the same

Also , Online gives you the chance to get any model you want , and not whats in stock only in the street market.

true, but even then, online and in store may end up being the same depending on how long it takes the store to get the item in. so this one, could be 50/50

 

[nofanneeded]

i dont think so, i can go to my local store, and get something thats in stock in a matter of hours, not 2+ days, so faster ?? not likely, cheaper ? maybe, but after factoring shipping ( unless the off chance the item you want, includes free shipping ) its usually about the same

I meant by faster to get after release date , not how long it takes to reach you by post .. in General , you can get the product online from day one of release , while the street market needs at least two weeks to stock it and start selling it. also , Some products never reach the street market at all ... Memory kits for example , it is almost impossible to find all kinds of memory kits in local street stores impossible ..

 

[Conahl]

in General , you can get the product online from day one of release , while the street market needs at least two weeks to stock it and start selling it

that also really depends on what the product is 🙂 something that most have been waiting for, IE ampre, zen 3 rdna2, online very well could be faster, but the lesser wanted items, maybe not 🙂