News Zotac is selling RTX 50-series GPUs directly to customers to thwart scalpers

[Co BIY]

The cards end up in the hands of those that will pay rather than someone who has a good use for it.

Do you have a superior way to evaluate value ? The buyer determines the value they see in the product.

Who gets to decide what is a "good use" ?

 

[Co BIY]

Saying what should happen to scalpers would get me banned from this forum.

How is a scalper different than any other reseller ?

Is it always wrong to see something priced less than you believe it can be sold for, buy it and then resell it ?

 

[JayGau]

Really - it's the first time you have heard an economic case for a "middle man" in a market ?

How is a "scalper" different than any other distributor of a product ?

Zotac and any other distributor should just auction these off to the highest bidder. I would recommend a uniform-price multi-unit auction as appearing most fair.

Comparing to a thief is way off.

So tired of this stupid argument that doesn't make any sense. Scalpers have nothing to do with distributors. They purposely create shortage to sell products at inflated prices. Imagine the guy who goes to the groceries and buys all the bread and sell it at the exit of the store for twice the price. For you that's just fine? It's just a middle man in the market?

And for you, auction to the highest bidder is fair? Having only the richest people able to get a GPU is fair for you?

I'm gonna stop here before saying what I think, otherwise I gonna get banned for the next 10000 years.

 

[Co BIY]

So tired of this stupid argument that doesn't make any sense. Scalpers have nothing to do with distributors. They purposely create shortage to sell products at inflated prices. Imagine the guy who goes to the groceries and buys all the bread and sell it at the exit of the store for twice the price. For you that's just fine? It's just a middle man in the market?

And for you, auction to the highest bidder is fair? Having only the richest people able to get a GPU is fair for you?

I'm gonna stop here before saying what I think, otherwise I gonna get banned for the next 10000 years.

I think that your theoretical bread scalper will be stuck with a vanload of bread at the end of the day and the supermarket will be filled the next.

I totally think that auction is just fine. The shortage is not created by the sales, it is created by the difficulty in production.

How is the world made better by a random distribution of GPUs or Rolexes or any other luxury good ?

An auction would only result in only the rich getting the GPUs if they valued it more than others. Generally the "Rich" do get more. Often they work more or at jobs "valued" more.

Would it be more fair if Zotac just sold the 10 they get to their employees ?It would be easier and I doubt they are "Rich" and some probably like to game.

 

[magbarn]

Scalping actually causes a much fairer distribution of products than simply selling at an arbitrary retail price does. It does come at the cost of some friction in the market. But at the end of the day, the product ends up in the hands of more people who can put it to its best use.

Someone like me who has reasonable amount of money might buy a new video card just because I can afford it and not use it to its full potential where as someone who can use the cards to create games or something else would pay more for the card and create more wealth for the society as a whole.

The same thing happens in disasters, where the government prevents price raising. I bought every damned drop of gasoline I had storage for. I did not need need it, not immediately, but if it remains cheap, I do not want to be left wanting or being forced to sit in line for 3 hours a second time.

If the price of gasoline had risen to double or triple, I might have thought harder about how much gasoline I truly needed at the moment.

When profit goes to Nvidia, some it goes to R&D to develop future products. When profit goes to AIBs and retailers, employees are hired and money is also used for warranty/customer support. When scalpers make more profit than Nvidia+AIB+Retailer combined and benefits no one but themselves, that is a travesty.

 

[derekullo]

If you rely on chatgpt for anything, please take a position at the Fail Line.

As long as you are very clear with the instructions and the task is very easy but has to be done hundreds of times I'm fine with using chatgpt for it.

For example I had a page of logs with systems names, IP, and gibberish data that refused to let me extract just the system names.
Uploaded the logs to chatgpt and gave it an example of a system name and it pulled all 400 or so out of them into an easy to copy list.
Double checked it and it was all good!

 

[Pete Mitchell]

Scalping actually causes a much fairer distribution of products than simply selling at an arbitrary retail price does. It does come at the cost of some friction in the market. But at the end of the day, the product ends up in the hands of more people who can put it to its best use.

Someone like me who has reasonable amount of money might buy a new video card just because I can afford it and not use it to its full potential where as someone who can use the cards to create games or something else would pay more for the card and create more wealth for the society as a whole.

The same thing happens in disasters, where the government prevents price raising. I bought every damned drop of gasoline I had storage for. I did not need need it, not immediately, but if it remains cheap, I do not want to be left wanting or being forced to sit in line for 3 hours a second time.

If the price of gasoline had risen to double or triple, I might have thought harder about how much gasoline I truly needed at the moment.

Sounds like something a scalper would say to justify their actions.

 

[Pete Mitchell]

Saying what should happen to scalpers would get me banned from this forum.

They should be Luigi'd.

 

[Heiro78]

It is not like they are making more money by failing to meet demand, and it is not like they do not understand what the demand is going to be.

They are restrained by many aspects and those aspects are hard to change. The amount of access to process nodes, how many chips make the cut and so forth. These things are second tier cutting edge technology, with their AI products being first tier cutting edge technology and first tier profit margins. Their first priority is to supply as much AI as they can, because their priority is always investor return on investment.

If they had access to more wafers they would make more wafers, if they had higher success with the wafers, they could sell more devices, but their are constraints and there are competing priorities.

The fact that they are making any consumer grade chips at all when there is still a massive demand for $60,000 AI processors is really about all you can hope for.

They did allow the technology to stagnate though, adding in more AI rather than rasterization and RT power. That is because their current gravy train is the AI. That will change eventually.

Hopefully this gives Intel and AMD a chance to catch up and become true competitors, as competition will eventually cause the leaps in performance and the need to meet customer demands to be required.

A year and a half ago it was reported that Nvidia could launch their next line of GPUs in the fall of 2024 but pushed it to 2025 and would adjust depending on AMDs launch.

Yes they are focusing on the AI hardware for companies like microsoft, twitter/ tesla, openai and the rest who want to jump on all the AI bs.

Nvidia did make a choice on the 50 series being a paper launch with too low an initial inventory. We as consumers need to speak with our wallets. I truly hope AMD and Intel do pick up the slack. And also play their own game/ find their own path instead of follow along with what Nvidia is doing. I recently watched this video and I agree with much of what is stated about AMD stagnating behind Nvidia because they are trying to play the same game.

View: https://youtu.be/KEtb0punTHk?si=rm2PYSQICqUou1KC

edit: just to add, I used to believe that developers were truly trying and not relying on DLSS, FSR, XESS to boost performance. But now I believe they are being pushed by publishers and the heads of the developer studios to get things out as soon as possible with little regard to quality. It's the enshitification of gaming right alongside so many other services and goods

 

[HardwiredWireless]

Or maybe the company supplying the cards can actually launch with proper amounts if inventory instead of just trying to get stuff out there.

Come on, the guy is a stoner, you can't expect clear thinking or rationality.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

Or they could simply start selling them unsealed tanking the resale value. Alternatively, they could get so much personal information on a person and tie it to the SN along with a unique code so that nobody would want to resell it. That data is only wiped after x-days or x-hours of use.
Lastly they could just have one-time DRM that bricks the card is not activated on the system identifier or IP provided during sale within 24 hours.

Of course as stock returns to normal eliminate the system.

Or better yet, boycott Nvidia for creating these artificial shortages for cards with pricetags like this in the first place. No I'm not a AMD fanboy, I have a 4090. No I'm not jealous of the 50-series, my 4090 still beats the 5080 except for maybe the new DLSS-F(akeFrames) which is meaningless.

Eventually people will get fed up with this Nvidia crap and settle for a less powerful bit more affordable and available AMD card and Nvidia will have self sabotaged themselves and rightfully so.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

A year and a half ago it was reported that Nvidia could launch their next line of GPUs in the fall of 2024 but pushed it to 2025 and would adjust depending on AMDs launch.

Yes they are focusing on the AI hardware for companies like microsoft, twitter/ tesla, openai and the rest who want to jump on all the AI bs.

Nvidia did make a choice on the 50 series being a paper launch with too low an initial inventory. We as consumers need to speak with our wallets. I truly hope AMD and Intel do pick up the slack. And also play their own game/ find their own path instead of follow along with what Nvidia is doing. I recently watched this video and I agree with much of what is stated about AMD stagnating behind Nvidia because they are trying to play the same game.

View: https://youtu.be/KEtb0punTHk?si=rm2PYSQICqUou1KC

edit: just to add, I used to believe that developers were truly trying and not relying on DLSS, FSR, XESS to boost performance. But now I believe they are being pushed by publishers and the heads of the developer studios to get things out as soon as possible with little regard to quality. It's the enshitification of gaming right alongside so many other services and goods

I saw that video and the dude became increasingly unhinged as the video progressed and I lost interest.

What you said I agree with though, except them not truly relying on it part. It's a shortcut for them and cheaper for the rich "expletives" in charge. They can hire developers cheaper because experience won't be as important. Next everyone will be throwing them a bone for using AI to make games.

They are in this mess precisely because they got sloppy and all this live service and microtransaction crap. There are exceptions ofcourse like Microcrap shutting down the studio (among many) that created some of the best and original games like Hi-Fi Rush and Ghostwire (Tango who apparently is back-ish) And Deathloop (Arkane).
Gamers need to vote with their wallets like you said but not just hardware, games too. Games drive the hardware and the hardware drives the games. If people continue to support say MS (since they keep buying up studios I'm picking on them), they are driving and supporting that imbalance and things will only get worse.

 

[micheal_15]

Zotac USA implements a priority access system to sell RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 GPUs directly to its fans on its Discord server.

Zotac is selling RTX 50-series GPUs directly to customers to thwart scalpers : Read more

All Zotac/Nvidia needs to do is let the scalpers buy the initial lot. Then BLAST out 10s of thousands of cards. Leaving the scalpers with non-warranty non-sellable stuff. Bankruptcy ahead!

 

[Ferlucio]

Scalping actually causes a much fairer distribution of products than simply selling at an arbitrary retail price does. It does come at the cost of some friction in the market. But at the end of the day, the product ends up in the hands of more people who can put it to its best use.

Someone like me who has reasonable amount of money might buy a new video card just because I can afford it and not use it to its full potential where as someone who can use the cards to create games or something else would pay more for the card and create more wealth for the society as a whole.

The same thing happens in disasters, where the government prevents price raising. I bought every damned drop of gasoline I had storage for. I did not need need it, not immediately, but if it remains cheap, I do not want to be left wanting or being forced to sit in line for 3 hours a second time.

If the price of gasoline had risen to double or triple, I might have thought harder about how much gasoline I truly needed at the moment.

Whether I can or can't use a luxury item to "it's full potential" is irrelevant on whether I should be able to buy it at the proper price of be price gauged 2-3x. This has nothing to do with disaster relief.
The company sets the price, not some lowlife scammer.


You must be a scalper yourself to think like that.

 

[Ferlucio]

Props to Zotac for trying to to something but ngl this <Mod Edit> stuff is dystopian AF. Like participating in a raffle to get a chance to buy expensive <Mod Edit> stuff ? Some cyberpunk stuff.

 

[tamalero]

This makes me miss EVGA, they would sell directly and had a queue / backorder system that I would use to get ahold of Hydro cards.

This! I survived the 3080's lottery XD

 

[flowingbass]

Really - it's the first time you have heard an economic case for a "middle man" in a market ?

How is a "scalper" different than any other distributor of a product ?

Zotac and any other distributor should just auction these off to the highest bidder. I would recommend a uniform-price multi-unit auction as appearing most fair.

Comparing to a thief is way off.

The product already went through a middle man.

As the product has been produced by the manufacturer, it is then picked up by the distributor (middleman) to be distributed and delivered by their logistics, to retailers who owns stores which are conveniently accessible by consumers.

Scalpers don't add additional value to the product.

Product is already on retail with an MSRP.

Why buy a product for a price higher than retail?

That's insane, like going to a theif offering them to rob you.

That's why i find justifying scalping is amusing.

 

[teeejay94]

Scalping actually causes a much fairer distribution of products than simply selling at an arbitrary retail price does. It does come at the cost of some friction in the market. But at the end of the day, the product ends up in the hands of more people who can put it to its best use.

Someone like me who has reasonable amount of money might buy a new video card just because I can afford it and not use it to its full potential where as someone who can use the cards to create games or something else would pay more for the card and create more wealth for the society as a whole.

The same thing happens in disasters, where the government prevents price raising. I bought every damned drop of gasoline I had storage for. I did not need need it, not immediately, but if it remains cheap, I do not want to be left wanting or being forced to sit in line for 3 hours a second time.

If the price of gasoline had risen to double or triple, I might have thought harder about how much gasoline I truly needed at the moment.

Ridiculous notion considering that if they were available from the manufacturer in the first place you wouldn't have to go looking at all, this is a solution to a non-existent problem. Selling everyone 1 GPU and 1 GPU only is the way it will have to be until people stop trying to make a business out of ripping people off, and no a place like Best buy doesn't rip you off because they try to sell you at the lowest possible price they can afford to, scalpers will take from you as much as they can get, big difference and no they don't help the market even though your little delusion told you so. It doesn't matter how many paragraphs you write you're wrong, scalpers need to jump off the nearest high bridge 👌

 

[Co BIY]

When profit goes to Nvidia, some it goes to R&D to develop future products. When profit goes to AIBs and retailers, employees are hired and money is also used for warranty/customer support. When scalpers make more profit than Nvidia+AIB+Retailer combined and benefits no one but themselves, that is a travesty.

They sold a card to someone who wanted one, didn't have a better way to get one and was willing to pay. That person believed they benefited otherwise they wouldn't pay.

I do think Nvidia should sell direct and start with a way high MSRP that keeps an amount of availability and allows them maximum profit. If inventory build lower the price. But it's not my company.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

They sold a card to someone who wanted one, didn't have a better way to get one and was willing to pay. That person believed they benefited otherwise they wouldn't pay.

I do think Nvidia should sell direct and start with a way high MSRP that keeps an amount of availability and allows them maximum profit. If inventory build lower the price. But it's not my company.

They sold a card to someone who wanted one, didn’t have a better way to get one because the immoral thieves had sniped them on release and was a fool to pay the inflated price. That person was taken in by the hype and would have been better off with a 4090 but paid anyway.

Nvidia price on cost of design, parts, labour, distribution and value added to generate a profit. Even at RRP/SRP the product is expensive. The RRP/SRP is already high and it is only the scarcity of the parts, the lack of availability that allows the scalpers to steal from genuine customers.

The retail distributors can’t seem to stop Internet sales being taken by scalpers. Retail outlets, bricks and mortar, have disappeared in too many places At least you could see that a customer had only one card if bought in person.
It really seems like it’s on Nvidia et al to be able to supply enough inventory to cover the initial hype and not release until a decent inventory is available. Supply needs to initially overwhelm demand.

Note, stock on a shelf is losing money simply being there. To a retailer every day it is unsold money isn’t doing something else be it buying different goods or gathering interest or keeping the business loan down and reducing interest payments. Retailers need to know that the stock will sell out in a reasonable period. With enough inventory available from the distribution network in a timely manner they can always reorder.

 

[Heiro78]

I saw that video and the dude became increasingly unhinged as the video progressed and I lost interest.

What you said I agree with though, except them not truly relying on it part. It's a shortcut for them and cheaper for the rich "expletives" in charge. They can hire developers cheaper because experience won't be as important. Next everyone will be throwing them a bone for using AI to make games.

They are in this mess precisely because they got sloppy and all this live service and microtransaction crap. There are exceptions ofcourse like Microcrap shutting down the studio (among many) that created some of the best and original games like Hi-Fi Rush and Ghostwire (Tango who apparently is back-ish) And Deathloop (Arkane).
Gamers need to vote with their wallets like you said but not just hardware, games too. Games drive the hardware and the hardware drives the games. If people continue to support say MS (since they keep buying up studios I'm picking on them), they are driving and supporting that imbalance and things will only get worse.

Agreed. I bought some games in the past few years that I wanted to support but knew I wouldn't get to them any time soon. And I already see some games coming out this year that I won't get to but want to support

 

[stuff and nonesense]

Forgetting the click bait title

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxE-4ZxYxDA


4 min shows a some interesting numbers for the US. Dallas TX got 9 5090’s.

It puts Zotac’s gesture into perspective.

 

[A Stoner]

Ridiculous notion considering that if they were available from the manufacturer in the first place you wouldn't have to go looking at all, this is a solution to a non-existent problem. Selling everyone 1 GPU and 1 GPU only is the way it will have to be until people stop trying to make a business out of ripping people off, and no a place like Best buy doesn't rip you off because they try to sell you at the lowest possible price they can afford to, scalpers will take from you as much as they can get, big difference and no they don't help the market even though your little delusion told you so. It doesn't matter how many paragraphs you write you're wrong, scalpers need to jump off the nearest high bridge 👌

You are right, if there is unlimited supply scalpers would not exist. Unlimited supply is a dream. And here scalping prices, creates efficiency in the system due to lack of supply for all. It ensures there is access for those who desperately need the items and removes supply going to people who do not.

 

[A Stoner]

The cards end up in the hands of those that will pay rather than someone who has a good use for it.

For the most part people who are willing to pay the high price are willing to do so because they make money off of its use. Making money generally means they are making good use of it.

 

[A Stoner]

First time i've seen a justification for scalping.

Like justifying thieving, "i see you only use your 4x4 pickup truck for groceries. Let me steal it because i can put better use of its capability like off roading when running from cops and hauling loads of gpus that i will steal for folding at home, i have good intentions".

I got a nice chuckle though.

Yeah, paying for something is just like stealing.