News Nvidia RTX 4090 cards are reportedly being hoarded for sale to China by unscrupulous scalpers, which could inevitably drive prices up

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Like a bad rerun of the cryptocurrency mining horrors of 2021.
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Seems like somewhat of a stretch. The crypto craze initially hit the low/mid-range of the market, before eventually working its way up to higher-end cards. This seems like it'll be limited to RTX 4090 and maybe RTX 4080 cards, due to both memory capacity and the compute power of lower-end cards making them way less useful for LLMs and some of the other cutting-edge AI applications.

We'll probably see some demand-displacement, with would-be buyers of higher-end cards going down-market, but the limited number of folks willing & able to buy a RTX 4090 who don't already have one will probably be readily absorbed by mid-market inventories.

I've been contemplating a RX 7800 XT, and the only thing I see this doing is keeping its price from falling into the next year. If I were planning on a RX 7900 XTX, I might be a bit more worried about its pricing and scarcity.
 
bit_user said:
Seems like somewhat of a stretch. The crypto craze initially hit the low/mid-range of the market, before eventually working its way up to higher-end cards. This seems like it'll be limited to RTX 4090 and maybe RTX 4080 cards, due to both memory capacity and the compute power of lower-end cards making them way less useful for LLMs and some of the other cutting-edge AI applications.

We'll probably see some demand-displacement, with would-be buyers of higher-end cards going down-market, but the limited number of folks willing & able to buy a RTX 4090 who don't already have one will probably be readily absorbed by mid-market inventories.

I've been contemplating a RX 7800 XT, and the only thing I see this doing is keeping its price from falling into the next year. If I were planning on a RX 7900 XTX, I might be a bit more worried about its pricing and scarcity.
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Kinda bittersweet to think that what potentially "saves" gamers is the fact that the current line of GPU has a memory subsystem so horribly castrated that to any professional it's just garbage being sold for up to 1K.
 
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bit_user said:
Seems like somewhat of a stretch. The crypto craze initially hit the low/mid-range of the market, before eventually working its way up to higher-end cards. This seems like it'll be limited to RTX 4090 and maybe RTX 4080 cards, due to both memory capacity and the compute power of lower-end cards making them way less useful for LLMs and some of the other cutting-edge AI applications.

We'll probably see some demand-displacement, with would-be buyers of higher-end cards going down-market, but the limited number of folks willing & able to buy a RTX 4090 who don't already have one will probably be readily absorbed by mid-market inventories.

I've been contemplating a RX 7800 XT, and the only thing I see this doing is keeping its price from falling into the next year. If I were planning on a RX 7900 XTX, I might be a bit more worried about its pricing and scarcity.
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My impressions of the 2020/2021 timeframe are apparently different, because it started with RTX 3080 and 3090 going through the roof. Right after launch, the 3080 was being scalped for $1000+ — just because of scarcity. Then crypto hit around December and prices shot up to $2000+ for a few months. And you could pull in something like $15 per day on a 3080 for a month or so, which is a big part of why that happened. The 3090 was going for $3000 or so on eBay. That had a knock-on effect all the way down the product stacks, and previous generation parts that could mine were impacted as well. But it really began with 3080 tripling in price.

The 4090 obviously isn't anywhere near those levels, yet, but pictures like this of some place with hundreds of 4090 cards stockpiled is exactly what we saw in 2020/2021 as well. "Look at all of my GPUs that you can't buy! Hahaha..." Hence, a bad rerun. It shouldn't be as impactful this time around, since 4080 and below are still able to be exported to China. Unless the US gov't decides to lower the bar on compute once again.
 
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JarredWaltonGPU said:
My impressions of the 2020/2021 timeframe are apparently different,
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I was thinking back to 2017 or so. I remember prices first got inflated on GTX 1070 and below. We bought a GTX 1080 at my job, and it sold for the normal list price. However, we also bought an AMD RX 580 and that card came at something like a 50% markup, as did GTX 1050 Ti's that we also bought.

The 2021 situation was different, in part because you also had the pandemic fueling demand.

JarredWaltonGPU said:
It shouldn't be as impactful this time around, since 4080 and below are still able to be exported to China. Unless the US gov't decides to lower the bar on compute once again.
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I don't see why the China ban changes much. If Nvidia was able to make enough RTX 4090's to satisfy China's demand before, then they should still be making enough to address it now. If anything, there should be more RTX 4090's for the rest of us, because there's no way China will be able to consume as many at the inflated price they're now having to pay.

IMO, the only thing that's really pushing up demand for RTX 4090's is the ban on H100's and derivative datacenter GPUs. Some of the demand for those GPUs is probably translating into demand for RTX 4090's, instead. But, that would be affecting China's demand for RTX 4090's, regardless of whether the 4090 was itself banned.
 
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bit_user said:
I was thinking back to 2017 or so. I remember prices first got inflated on GTX 1070 and below. We bought a GTX 1080 at my job, and it sold for the normal list price. However, we also bought an AMD RX 580 and that card came at something like a 50% markup, as did GTX 1050 Ti's that we also bought.

The 2021 situation was different, in part because you also had the pandemic fueling demand.


I don't see why the China ban changes much. If Nvidia was able to make enough RTX 4090's to satisfy China's demand before, then they should still be making enough to address it now. If anything, there should be more RTX 4090's for the rest of us, because there's no way China will be able to consume as many at the inflated price they're now having to pay.

IMO, the only thing that's really pushing up demand for RTX 4090's is the ban on H100's and derivative datacenter GPUs. Some of the demand for those GPUs is probably translating into demand for RTX 4090's, instead. But, that would be affecting China's demand for RTX 4090's, regardless of whether the 4090 was itself banned.
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The issue is 4090 cards can't be manufactured in China by AIBs. They have to move 4090 card manufacturing first and that's going to take time. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if 4090s were quietly discontinued due to the aforementioned
 
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btmedic04 said:
The issue is 4090 cards can't be manufactured in China by AIBs. They have to move 4090 card manufacturing first and that's going to take time.
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Okay, that makes sense.

btmedic04 said:
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if 4090s were quietly discontinued due to the aforementioned
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I can't agree with that part. There seems to be enough demand and Nvidia seems to have pretty good margins on them, even if they're not as high as their datacenter products.
 
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bit_user said:
Okay, that makes sense.


I can't agree with that part. There seems to be enough demand and Nvidia seems to have pretty good margins on them, even if they're not as high as their datacenter products.
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That's a fair and reasonable point. My counterpoint to that is why sell AD102 as a $1600 4090 when they can shift those dies to the $5000 and up ai/hpc parts considering there's a 52 week lead up on orders as it is?
 
btmedic04 said:
My counterpoint to that is why sell AD102 as a $1600 4090 when they can shift those dies to the $5000 and up ai/hpc parts considering there's a 52 week lead up on orders as it is?
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We've been reading about bottlenecks in the advanced packaging process that's needed for products with HBM, for one thing.

www.tomshardware.com

NVIDIA: GPU Supply Issues Involve Packaging, Not Chip Wafers

Setting the record straight.
www.tomshardware.com www.tomshardware.com

I also wonder if their HBM supplier(s) can keep up with their demand.

www.tomshardware.com

AI Boom Sees Memory Makers Ramp Up HBM Memory Production: Report

Additional HBM production capacities will only come online in Q2 2024.
www.tomshardware.com www.tomshardware.com

If they can't get enough HBM or package them fast enough, what's the point of diverting even more wafers from consumer GPU to datacenter versions?
 
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Yeah, the whole China thing is creating a lot of unintended side effects. No manufacture of AD102 (or A100/H100) in China has to increase the costs. Then, no sales of A100/H100 to China, nor lower tier AD102 parts, means they're looking for alternatives. I don't know how widespread the demand is for AD102 chips, because they're still not at the same level in terms of VRAM capacity and interconnection speed as the A100/H100, but clearly some groups are pursuing this.

I can't help but think the China export restrictions might be part of why RTX 4090 Ti / Super / Titan RTX Ada haven't happened, and may not happen. We're still waiting to see how that all plays out, though.
 
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If you are still shopping for a 4090 this late in the game even though the suprim liquid 4090 that easily oc to 3ghz was selling for $1539 at Lenovo's website 2 months ago, definitely check pcpartpicker for the low bearing fruit. For eg. Gamestop had an PNY 4090 last week for $1639. Asus had a 4090 Touph for $1899 yesterday. Do not buy scalped 4090s from this market manipulation bs!
 
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bit_user said:
I was thinking back to 2017 or so. I remember prices first got inflated on GTX 1070 and below. We bought a GTX 1080 at my job, and it sold for the normal list price. However, we also bought an AMD RX 580 and that card came at something like a 50% markup, as did GTX 1050 Ti's that we also bought.
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That's likely because Geforce 10 series were relatively bad at mining ETH. An RX 580 was nearly as fast as a GTX 1080, and a Vega 56 wiped the floor with a 1080 Ti. The price of Nvidia cards in general rose slower because it took a bit for AMD cards to rise in price to the point of having comparable hash/$. And/or for ETH hashrate to grow to the point where other coins (which Nvidia cards were better at) become appealing options to mine.

It may have seemed like it was restricted to midrange at first, but I'm guessing that's because AMD didn't really have a high end at that point. IIRC, Vega cards were still around at that time but had mediocre availability and weren't really promoted, and had largely been written off by most due to being uncompetitive based on price or power draw. But they became sought after once mining caught on.
 
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bit_user said:
I don't see why the China ban changes much. If Nvidia was able to make enough RTX 4090's to satisfy China's demand before, then they should still be making enough to address it now. If anything, there should be more RTX 4090's for the rest of us, because there's no way China will be able to consume as many at the inflated price they're now having to pay.
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Regardless, the price of the 4090 is climbing in the U.S. and it'll get worse before it gets better.
 
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Admin said:
Prices of Nvidia RTX 4090 cards have been shooting up lately, and there are photos reportedly showing piles of cards being purchased for sale to China by unscrupulous scalpers and traders.

Nvidia RTX 4090 cards are reportedly being hoarded for sale to China by unscrupulous scalpers, which could inevitably drive prices up : Read more
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the scalpers= nvidia
"we just cannot sell directly at 1 per customer, that is unthinkable, scalpers buy all the stock and its just a coincidence that we get to raise the prices by 100% over msrp as a result. our hands are tied. its not artificial demand fixing, its supply and demand"
 
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Admin said:
Prices of Nvidia RTX 4090 cards have been shooting up lately, and there are photos reportedly showing piles of cards being purchased for sale to China by unscrupulous scalpers and traders.

Nvidia RTX 4090 cards are reportedly being hoarded for sale to China by unscrupulous scalpers, which could inevitably drive prices up : Read more
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I have been putting off a very high-end build for 4 months but finally ordered all the parts last week. They are all here and I start building this week. I'm building with the absolute top-end everything, a ridiculous rig that is way overkill for my needs. But guess what? I threw the White Flag 4 days ago and ordered an ASUS Stric 4080 GPU for 1350 bucks. I gave up on the Strix 4090 at 2,200 bucks. It could not be had from any main retailer for the past several weeks.
Oh well. I will wait for the next super card and in the meantime. work with the 4080. By the way, I'm not a gamer but a GFX photographer working with thousands of big 200MB raw files on a daily basis (using the new Dell 6K Pro monitor). The AI functions of Photoshop and Lightroom eat VRAM and require a lot of power..... But the 4080 will be fine for now. But I wanted that 4090.....
 
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"Nvidia RTX 4090 cards are reportedly being hoarded for sale to China by unscrupulous scalpers, which could inevitably drive prices up"

I don't think that the word "inevithttps://www.ginifab.com/feeds/cm_to_inch/ably" is correct for something that has already happened. 😉

The cheapest option for an RTX 4090 from PCPartPicker:
MSi GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming X Trio 24GB - $2,000USD at Newegg

That's already a
header.jpg

from the $1,600USD that it cost about a month ago. (I just couldn't help myself...🤣)

This has served to make the RX 7900 XTX and RTX 4080 look like absolute bargains in comparison! Looking at PCPartPicker again, he's what I found:

ASUS GeForce RTX 4080 TUF Gaming 16GB - $1,200USD
So, the RTX 4090 is 28% faster while being 67% more expensive.

ASRock Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming OC - $950USD
So, the RTX 4090 is 24% faster while being 111% more expensive. You could theoretically buy two RX 7900 XTX's for less than a single RTX 4090 (depending on the model). That's just crazy!

The RTX 4090 has crossed into the realm of "FOR PROFESSIONALS ONLY" because there's no way that this card can be properly justified for gaming.
 
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Avro Arrow said:
"Nvidia RTX 4090 cards are reportedly being hoarded for sale to China by unscrupulous scalpers, which could inevitably drive prices up"
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Someone edited my original title, for whatever reason. I think it was "which will inevitably" and that made more sense. "Could inevitably" are not valid together, because one says it might happen, the other says it will happen. I've axed the "inevitably" bit, even though, as you point out, and as discussed in the text, it's already driving prices up.
 
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JarredWaltonGPU said:
Someone edited my original title, for whatever reason. I think it was "which will inevitably" and that made more sense. "Could inevitably" are not valid together, because one says it might happen, the other says it will happen. I've axed the "inevitably" bit, even though, as you point out, and as discussed in the text, it's already driving prices up.
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I believe you. I was a bit confused in the beginning at what I read. Thanks for clearing it up. 👍
 
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