GPU Megat[H]read - the cores of wrath grew heavy on the die that day

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > GPU Megat[H]read - the cores of wrath grew heavy on the die that day

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Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

A dumb quirk of the Nvidia.com website - if you filter the shop down to only show the 3080, because you don't want the page to load extraneous crap, it'll say "Notify Me" (I guess because it assumes that's all you're interested in). If you add 3090 to the filtered products it'll show OOS.

So yeah, if you were doing that you would've probably missed it anyway.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 14:14

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:52

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Bad Parenting posted:

In the UK I never saw the option to buy the FE on Nvidia's site, just straight from notify me to oos.

I somehow managed to accidentally order 2 evga 3080s through overclockers though, the website was hosed

How much did the EVGA 3080 end up being after OCUK had stopped jacking up the prices?

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 14:21

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Bad Parenting posted:

£699 for the XC3 black, £750 for the XC3 ultra gaming

Ok that's not terrible I guess.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 14:23

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

AirRaid posted:

Next day shipping, arriving tomorrow.

We I did it lads!

�759 holy poo poo. Well, as long as you're happy about it.

Bit of a kick in the nuts (again) for the 2080Ti (ex)owners who sold their cards on eBay for cheap thinking they would actually be able to snag one of these for RRP.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 14:26

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

I can't even load a website that tells me where things are in stock.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 14:44

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

If you've got it in your cart, is it basically a case of keeping clicking the "Checking out" button?

edit: Ah well, it got pulled from my cart.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 16:37

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

So close and yet so far.. could never get further than here.

(This was from a short while ago, when people were getting in - now it's back to being solidly OOS)

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 16:49

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Shogunner posted:

captchas, lottery, queue, pre-order, so many loving ways have been developed to combat botters from sneaker manufacturers, only lovely sites like shoepalace, footlocker, and eastbay don't use them

NVIDIA was more than capable of preventing this, but they just didn't care

It's bizarre, because their website appears to have been able to cope - for the most part, so there's no reason they couldn't have implemented a queue. If you land on it and find you've got 2 hours to wait, you can just get on with your day or give up.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 16:59

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

ijyt posted:

I don't think the UK sites button ever went anywhere, and the only one that added to cart was a dud.

It was possible to order on the UK site, briefly, about 30 or so minutes ago.. whenever people were talking about following the link from the email. Checking out was the problem, but at least one person on this thread managed it.

What makes matters worse is the little idiocyncracies.. I've discovered today that most stores have a completely different node handling their basket/checkout than the main site. The ones that didn't collapse completely would give you the option to preorder, but actually checking out - mission impossible. Nvidia is guilty of this too.

When the launch time came around I was on the Nvidia shopping page with only the 3080 visible (everything else filtered out). It was sat on "Notify Me". It wasn't until probably 20 minutes later I discovered that if you only have one product as a result of the filter, it will just say "Notify Me" anyway. If I added 3090 to the filter - it changed to "Out of Stock". Great.

It shouldn't be this difficult to throw money at a company. I'd rather know I have zero chance, because it's 100% out of stock, than have to keep F5'ing my fingers to the bone on the off chance they'll add more stock, or that I hit a different caching server, or that some backend script will work once for me, or whatever.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 17:04

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

People should focus their ire on Nvidia tbh. Bots are well known to exist, and it's a highly sought after, limited stock product that will sell for considerable overs on eBay, etc. You can take it as read that people will be motivated to get as many as they can.

They didn't implement anything on their website to counter it because they couldn't give a poo poo about end users, really. Hell, a reCaptcha would've taken like 5 minutes to set up.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 17:27

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

This Nvidia FE poo poo wouldn't be so bad if there was any indication whatsoever of when to check again for stock. As it is, you're basically left F5'ing for eternity, thinking that as soon as you decide to stop you'll be unlucky enough to just miss when "Add to Cart" reappears again. Which leaves bots..

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 17:40

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Shogunner posted:

So is it safe to say Europe seemed to have a much easier time than us Amerigoons?

We got gouged to gently caress over here, so I don't think so.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 17:53

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Combat Pretzel posted:

MSI is saying their backplates are graphene composite?

Graphene escaped the lab??

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 19:46

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

axeil posted:

Someone unearthed the API for Nvidia's site and there might still be cards?

https://in-and-ru-store-api.uk-e1.cloudhub.io/DR/get-inventory/en_us/5438481700?format=json&expand=availablequantity
code:
availableQuantity	319
and

https://in-and-ru-store-api.uk-e1.cloudhub.io/DR/products/en_us/USD/5438481700
code:
availableQuantityIsEstimated	"false"
productIsInStock	        "true"
productIsAllowsBackorders	"false"
productIsTracked	        "true"
requestedQuantityAvailable	"true"
status	                        "PRODUCT_INVENTORY_OUT_OF_STOCK"
statusIsEstimated	        "false"
I'm back to mashing f5.

That number keeps creeping up, yet it�s still OOS...

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 21:35

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

�they'll still end up getting before too long.�

You could be talking months though here, if the real price ever goes down at all.

Since supply is always going to be lower than demand there�s no reason not to think that these cards won�t continue to be hoovered up every time they appear in stock, and as said earlier since Nvidia offloads it�s whole e-commerce system to Digital River, using the same API calls to place orders that a bad actor can use, then it really is going to continue to be almost impossible to buy a card by the old fashioned way of clicking buttons.

At that sort of profit margin, or even a third of it, there�s no way that there aren�t going to be more and more bots being set up to capitalise on it.

You�re broadly right though. You can�t get too mad about the scalpers because they�re simply exploiting a weak system and zero desire up and down the system to stamp it out.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 06:01

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

D-Pad posted:

Supply will not always be higher than demand at the scalper's price level. We also know from past experience it takes a while for a new GPU production to be ramped up, but it does ramp up. The scalper's have a window they can make money in and they know it. There is not an infinite supply of people willing to pay 2x-4x the MSRP especially as production ramps up and more and more people that have been waiting get it legit.At a certain point the opportunity cost of using their capital for this as scalping prices have fallen to say 1.25x is too big when they could deploy it for the next limited edition sneaker or whatever and get those 2x-4x margins. Sneakers are different because they may only ever make 500 of them so the price usually always rises and never drops.

Fair point. However, isn�t the FE only going to be sold for a limited time? I presumed it was like a launch card, given its name. Are there many other cards going to be available for �649/$699?

My experience yesterday was that the AIB cards were already more expensive and kept going up in price throughout the day as dodgy retailers realised they could cream more off the top.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 06:17

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

D-Pad posted:

I hear the people who paid $1200 for a 2080 Ti that the 3080 blows out of the water aren't too happy. nVidia knows they'll still get their money.

It�s hard to garner much sympathy for people blowing $1200 on a 2080Ti when a) they�re blowing $1200 disposable on a graphics card, b) it�s well known - especially to anyone in the market for $1200 GPUs - that tech moves on, gets faster, etc and c) the closer you are to the bleeding edge the harder you�re going to get kicked in the balls on the release of a newer �best thing�.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 06:59

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

AirRaid posted:

This means they have your order and are waiting for someone to "pick" it off the shelf in the warehouse and put it in a box with your address on it. If there is no stock to pick it will wait here til there is I guess.

I do like the idea of Vine-Ripened GPUs though.

My Scan order is both due to be dispatched and delivered today. Somehow I think that's unlikely.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 10:17

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Cactus posted:

Just woke up and checked my order with them, the delivery date has changed to Monday 21st Sep. No email was sent to notify of the change though so if you haven't already log into the site and check they haven't stealth-changed it.

Good luck and I hope you get yours today!

I won't, but I'm not too bothered. I've got a i7-3930k in a ~7 year old PC and I ordered an EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 ULTRA because I got carried away with the goings on. It became a bit of a quest yesterday to see if I could snag one. I've got 690 GTX SLI (which cost �1800 and I got about 6 months of use from before my PC was packed away for ~6 years) so at least it should be an upgrade over that.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 12:39

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Nvidia page has been oscillating between �Out of Stock� and �Buy Now� on the 3080, but the button just shows a blank popup.

Interestingly the direct cart link - https://store.nvidia.com/store/nvidia/en_GB/buy/productID.5438481700/clearCart.yes/nextPage.QuickBuyCartPage - now throws an error message instead of telling you that it couldn�t add the card to your cart.

Between that and this inventory page - https://in-and-ru-store-api.uk-e1.cloudhub.io/DR/get-inventory/en_us/5438481700?format=json&expand=availablequantity - creeping up and now sat on 363, this is all starting to feel like some kind of ARG.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2020 11:30

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

redreader posted:

One thing about scalping that sort of sucks even more is, If something is being scalped, scalpers buy it up from retailers. Obviously. But then as more stock comes in, scalpers carry on buying it. I think once scalpers have decided that something is profitable, they'll carry on buying it and making it go out of stock, after it becomes more available, so something being scalped makes it more likely to be scalped more. That still artificially creates a shortage and they can still profit from it. We saw this with the ring fit. More and more stock was added until finally the scalpers were defeated by a massive supply. I would say 'allowing pre-orders before stock is there would defeat this', but then the scalpers would then buy up the entire run of the 3000 series throughout its lifespan, and effectively make themselves the middlemen for all 3000 transactions (I don't think this is actually the case but it'll probably almost be true, or be true for a while. Scalpers will only stop doing it once it becomes 'not worth it' and worst case for them is they'll only be able to sell something new for its full value)

The only practical solution to this, I feel, is not giving scalpers enough time to think or prepare. If Nvidia and the AIBs had been ready to go, Nvidia could have presumably orchestrated preordering (or ordering) to begin at the end of their recent keynote. Hardcore gamers - real customers - would�ve been following it anyway, so they would�ve been the ones who would�ve stood to benefit.

As it was they said �these cards are awesome, cost half as much as the previous gen and are faster, so everyone is going to be desperate for them. You�ll be able to preorder them in a couple of weeks from our website, which you can now spend all your time getting your bots in place to exploit�

It boggles the mind that time and time again companies seem to completely underestimate the determination and resourcefulness of people who stand to make a significant profit if they can get as much stock as possible. Nvidia could�ve done the bare minimum and frustrated casual botters and scalpers, but instead they left their website to run off of the Digital Ocean system as per usual, which is purpose built to offload e-commerce stuff to APIs, a perfect vector for automated abuse.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2020 00:15

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Shipon posted:

nVidia is benefiting from this. People are seeing massive demand and it's triggering their desire to grab a card when they possibly can. It's a feature that things appear so out of stock that people are scrambling to pay way over MSRP from scalpers

Ehhh are they? Nvidia isn�t seeing any of that scalper profits, but it sure as poo poo is copping the negative PR from appearing to not give a crap about it�s �true customers� (which may be true)

No one is going to feel positive about paying scalper rates for one of these cards when Nvidia is advertising an RRP of $699/�649 and couldn�t manage to have them in stock on their website for more than a couple of seconds, and sent out emails 40 minutes after they launched (or not at all) to people who asked to be notified, so they could go and see for themselves that they already missed out 39 minutes and 58 seconds ago.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2020 00:49

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Warmachine posted:

If I had my notes from my behavioral economics course from four years ago, I could go into detail on the auctions bit. There's a specific type of auction that does a very good job of both finding a person's maximum willingness to pay (their true value) while also ensuring they don't overpay due to game theory considerations.

Of course, like pretty much everything in economics, it works great for outright luxuries like jewelry or video cards, but is utter dogshit for necessities like food and housing.

It sounds like you�re talking about a �Dutch auction�.

For what it�s worth, in this particular instance, I don�t think it�s particularly scummy. No one needs a latest and greatest GPU, and if the messaging is that the stock is very finite then a Dutch auction system could work. Unfortunately the optics aren�t great, and Nvidia don�t operate in a bubble - they have AIBs who would be releasing cards at normal RRPs, and a major competitor in AMD who wouldn�t decry these antics and potentially steal some (many?) of their customers.

That said, it would be an equaliser to some extent. But, I think the cards would sell out long before they got to $699, such is the demand and market (nerds with a decent amount of disposable income who thought nothing of blowing $1200+ on the last gen). Good news for Nvidia from a profits standpoint, but an equal or greater, albeit different kind of frustration for consumers.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2020 09:12

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

So is the consensus that that's pretty much it for Nvidia FE cards? Or do we all have to keep on F5'ing to hope to see a "BUY NOW" button appear for a nanosecond?

# ¿ Sep 20, 2020 13:44

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

FiftySeven posted:

I dont know about that, the RTX2000 series was way over priced and I know a large amount of people like myself with GTX1000 series cards who saw it and said "nah, too expensive". These cards are enticing because they are actually back into indulgent impulse purchase range again, and had the 3080 been anything over that �650 price, I would have probably sighed and waited for another generation. I wouldnt have liked it but I dont think I could have justified the expenditure beyond that point.

PC gamers may be willing to spend lots of money chasing FPS, but in 2020 with half the worlds economy being on fire, I think its totally understandable that Nvidia might have looked and decided to cast a wider net rather than manning the harpoons and whale hunting.

I dug out my GTX 690 invoices from 8 years ago, and they were �899 each then.

I�m inclined to believe that this card is priced at the level it is because of an expectation on Nvidia�s part that AMD are/were going to come out at a similar price point.

I find it hard to believe that they pitched a new product that is faster than the previous one at ~50% of the cost because of COVID or other external forces. The financial impact of COVID hasn�t really hit yet, there doesn�t seem to be any significant evidence that it�s made a dent in this kind of spending. When Apple release a new iPhone next month for �1200 or whatever you can bet people are going to find a way to buy it.

I think if anything the price of this card shows just how egregious the RRP of the 2080Ti was, and the profit margins involved.

Durzel fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Sep 21, 2020

# ¿ Sep 21, 2020 07:40

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Vir posted:

A UK retailer tells a bit too much. Looks like it's only OC models from now on, and that the MSRP AIB models were a launch-day exclusive just meant to show that the MSRP wasn't fake. I mean, if you believe this poo poo.
https://reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/ixoqyf/email_response_from_uk_retailers_about_selling/

Talk about saying the quiet parts out loud.

Why didn't they just do what OCUK did and blame price rises (as in the price of cards going up �50+ while people were actually checking out) on "exchange rate volatility". I mean, at least that has the whiff of legitimacy about it.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2020 16:37

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Ulio posted:

Is there any date for the next batch of FE? I don't want to look every day at their store, hopefully captcha gives me time to make a purchase this time. I might try the 3090 this week as well.

I�m probably being dumb but if it�s still possible to buy directly using the Digital River API, bypassing Nvidia�s website entirely, then wouldn�t a CAPTCHA simply slow down and possibly break checking out for regular people even more?

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 06:16

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

I've still got one in my cart, but not knowing anything about Sam's Club didn't realise they only ship to the States.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 18:39

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

EVGA website is just making GBS threads the bed at various times. I can't even order from the US website but I'm just refreshing it to try and get news of a release to the thread (probably not helping the server load I guess).

It shouldn't be this hard to spend money (well, spend money and actually get something in return rather than it being sat in some retailer's bank account for X weeks/months).

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 19:13

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Skilbs posted:

Scan are saying on twitter that they are expecting a delivery from MSI either Friday or early next week. No word on how many cards are coming or if it contains any Gaming X Trios, which no one in the UK seems to have yet.

My Scan order is at the original lower price and had free shipping so that means I am near the front of the queue. I wonder how many cards they actually get.

Did Scan jack the price on all the cards then?

I bought an EVGA FTW3 GAMING and then subsequently an EVGA FTW3 ULTRA GAMING when I realised I'd bought the wrong one (why is there so many drat variations). I have no idea if it was the original prices or not, I suspect not given my orders went through at around 14:40 and 15:20 respectively.

It seems Scan are not telling anyone about anything with these cards. You can't get queue positions, because it is "not reflective of how long it will take you to get a card" because something something regular stock deliveries, etc. Obviously the cynic in me just thinks that if they tell people they're 75 on a list to get a card that they'll have people cancelling orders.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 19:18

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

DrDork posted:

It's not the people at #75 they're worried about (I'd absolutely keep that spot!). It's the people who find out they're #10,075, who would cancel and take their money back.

Well they've claimed on Twitter that they cut off preorders well before they got 1000 orders, but no one has any way of knowing that to be factually accurate or not.

The difference in order numbers between my two orders is 1773 alone, and looking at an order I placed in June with them the difference in order numbers is 131k. I think it's probably reasonable to assume their order numbers are sequential, with perhaps some gaps for failed checkouts, etc.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 19:33

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

FiftySeven posted:

I am in the same card queue as you (FTW3 Ultra), and honestly, I just wish they would let us know roughly when the shipments are due, that alone would satisfy me. The total lack of any ETA is really loving annoying and even though I knew when I ordered it that I would be waiting a while, I didnt anticipate having literally no idea. Just out of interest, what is your order number? I am at E405xxxx and my order went in at 2:45ish and they said that is the only indicator of where you stand in the order queue.

My first order at 14:42 (FTW3 GAMING) is about 320 lower/earlier than yours. The 15:20 (FTW3 ULTRA - the one I want) is about 1500 higher/later than yours.

That is to say that you�ve got a much better chance of getting an FTW3 ULTRA than me. I think it�s safe to assume the order numbers are sequential and that Scan were taking 50+ orders per minute, which would make sense.

It also blows apart the whole �we turned it off before it got to 1000!� argument to pieces.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 20:11

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Nothing like building hype to cripple an already flatlined website.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 20:34

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

fletcher posted:

The original tweet got deleted now but there was a report of EVGA IP banning people for using nvidia-snatcher: https://twitter.com/EVGA_JacobF/status/1308854817868206082

nvidia-snatcher - as far as I know - just polls the page for a change in the source, and alerts you if found. It doesn�t buy it or add to cart as far as I know. Assuming the interval it does this is not completely predictable it would be functionally identical to someone constantly F5�ing.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 22:04

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Cream-of-Plenty posted:

Just a heads up, there have been a number of similar conversations on EVGA's own messageboard and I think the consensus is that the Step-Up queue numbers aren't assigned in sequential order. I saw a couple of the numbers that a few people received upon enrolling on the morning of the 17th (several hours before I did) and my number was actually lower than theirs.

That convo was relation to Scan, a UK retailer, not the Step Up program.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 22:46

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

I climbed my Everest. I saw a green Add to Cart button, more than many men did. But I could go no further.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 23:40

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

ijyt posted:

The UK got a clickable "Out of Stock" button, back to normal now lmao.

This made me laugh. A green OOS button. Web developer having themselves some lols.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 23:48

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

I got confused for a second there and just kept refreshing this page constantly. Took me a good 30 seconds to realise. I�ve been broken by this ordeal.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 23:59

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Sagebrush posted:

i ascended a step higher than you, friend

only to fall ever further. a quantum superposition of carts that are empty and not empty simultaneously. fascinating

I got that too at the end, when the website finally started working, after everyone else had gotten their cards.

I feel numb.

�Here�s what you could�ve won!�

# ¿ Sep 24, 2020 00:02

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:52

Durzel: Nov 15, 2005

Anyone want to buy a framed print of the EVGA website showing an Add to Cart button for a fabled 3080 card? I�ll get it signed by EVGA_Jason.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2020 00:05

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > GPU Megat[H]read - the cores of wrath grew heavy on the die that day

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