From what I’ve read NVidia and AMD launches had similar stock levels to prior launches. Producing high volumes of stock is very financially risky. The unprecedented demand is therefore a significant factor.
This seems to be a perfect storm. The pandemic has caused significant increases in sales of entertainment technology. With great CPU, GPU and console launches within a couple of months of each other it looks like supply chains have been overloaded.
Take that what you read about AMD having similar stock levels to prior lauches and throw it out.
AMD launch was no where near the same as their NAVI launch last year on July 7.
This "unprecedented demand" is created when you reduced your stock to extreme low levels than what you had before.
Retail stores barely got any stock, and the ones that did were the regionally located stores like Micro-center. Larger retailers like Best Buy got zilch.
Online retailers like B&H got zilch, ShopBLT got zilch.
Amazon and Newegg barely got any and sold out in under a minute, likely by scalper bot community monitoring their site.
AMD's shop site sold out in under a minute.
Last year, on July 7, 2019. After I watched Steve's Hardware Unbox review of the RX 5700 XT, and seen how well the card did in Forza Horizon 4 against the RTX 2080 Ti. I immediately went to AMD's website and ordered a RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition GPU without any hassel. I didn't have to spam the shopping cart icon, of F5 refresh, none of that non-sense which people talked about this time, in large due to AMD barely providing stock for Big Navi.
Last year the Made by AMD and the AIB partners RX 5700 and 5700 XT reference cards where readily available.
The custom AIB models did not come out until a month later, and when they did they were priced reasonably between $399 to $449 and in-stock.
This year, barely any stock for reference cards. AMD allowed AIB partners to release their custom cards only a week after the reference launch, which barely any AIB partner provided (I seen one AIB reference from photo of someone who managed to get a PowerColor RX 6800 from Micro-Center) with them having no stock.
Right now due there barely being any available, the prices of the few are being dictated by scalpers and 3rd party resellers making a profit on this artificial high demand AMD created by not providing enough stock.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram