Microcenter seems to be getting drip fed with stock of various SKUs although each restock seems to be in the single digits. So there are cards out there but they’re spread thin. Nvidia themselves said that supply will be tight in Q1 so not sure why we’re arguing the point. Let’s see how things look in March. First few weeks of any launch are always a shit show.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series Blackwell Availability
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Personally I don't see why these streamers have to do this. I feel it's incredibly stupid, and thus I almost stopped watch most of them (now I probably only watch DF).
For example, it's ok to discuss the supplies and compare it to earlier generation. It's fine. However, saying this is a "paper launch" is an abuse of terms. This is like saying all wars are "genocide". I don't see any reason of doing that other than trying to gain more hits from controversies. This is something I'm against and when I see that, I stop watching the channel.
I really hope more people doing this, to weed out this kind of behavior. Unfortunately I'm obviously in the minority and now I only have very few channels to watch. There's not too much to lose anyway.
For example, it's ok to discuss the supplies and compare it to earlier generation. It's fine. However, saying this is a "paper launch" is an abuse of terms. This is like saying all wars are "genocide". I don't see any reason of doing that other than trying to gain more hits from controversies. This is something I'm against and when I see that, I stop watching the channel.
I really hope more people doing this, to weed out this kind of behavior. Unfortunately I'm obviously in the minority and now I only have very few channels to watch. There's not too much to lose anyway.
Gotta get those clicks and views, so better drum up some "controversy" and get the hordes angry (even though most of the people making noise are not in the market for high end cards)
Subtlesnake
Regular
It has a meaning for the person that uses it, but it doesn't have a generally agreed meaning, in terms of X numbers of units being available. That partly reflects the imprecision of human language (how many grains does it take to make a pile?).
Well yeah it’s all about click revenue for these guys. I’m sure DF is also trying to expand their subscriber base and not making content for charity.
It gets bad when it’s obviously an attempt to invent controversy. Let’s take this current pricing and supply situation. Anyone with knowledge of basic economics knows that in an actual free market prices will be higher when supply is low and prices will drop when supply increases.
The HUB guys are saying that if this happens it’s evidence that Nvidia is manipulating the market. It’s so stupid on a fundamental level that it must be malicious. Having prices stagnant while supply fluctuates is an unnatural phenomenon but somehow we conditioned ourselves to believe that it’s the natural way of things.
What’s actually happening is that prices ignore MSRP when supply is low just as predicted. It’s scalpers in the past who reaped most of the surplus. Now retailers and manufacturers are clawing that back which makes perfect sense. We don’t like it as consumers but that’s the way markets are supposed to work. But saying that isn’t going to get you those rage baited clicks.
The problem is you guys quote the first half of Econ 101 and skipped the second half: this only holds true for perfectly competitive markets. Nvidia is nowhere near this, at best they are a duopoly with AMD or Intel, and at worst just a de-facto monopoly due to their market share and mind share. They can control prices by controlling supply and they are incentivize to essentially collude with their only competition (probably not overtly because that’s illegal). If you look at how these cards are priced it’s very obvious this isn’t a free market, hence why things like MSRP even exist.
The only perfectly competitive market I can think of is probably produce, nobody cares about brands of cabbages, it’s all essentially fungible at the grocery store. Consequently, there’s no MSRP for fruits and vegetables, because the concept of a manufacturer set price makes no sense in a free perfectly competitive market that solely follows the rules of supply and demand.
(I think within semiconductors the closest thing we have to a perfectly competitive market would be memory, but even thats got only a few market participants).
Competition is not a requirement for a free market in non-essential goods. There is no regulation of GPU prices so the only thing that matters is how much people are willing to pay. Clearly some number of people think a 5080 is worth $1800 and others think a 5090 is worth $6000. When those people are satisfied the next tier of buyers will get their shot. That’s how free markets work.
DegustatoR
Legend
It seems to me that it's you who skipped Econ 101.
You cannot be a "de facto monopoly" when there are other players on the market. A monopoly is not a company which captures the majority of the market because of selling best products. It's a company which doesn't have any competition at all.
This works in the opposite direction - prices are decided upon by the available supply. This is true even when a company decides to "control the prices". Which was said above and now you're arguing with this.
Conspiracy theories, yay!
It's absolutely the opposite: since no one can provide better value than these cards do it is a free market and the cards are priced according to it.
Things like MSRP exist to limit the appetites of the board makers and the supply chain which if left without any control can be detrimental to the lineup positioning (5080 costing more than 4090 etc).
They has nothing to do with any free market.
The question here is whether NVIDIA is artificially limiting the supply in order to manipulate the market. This has nothing to do with monopoly or duopoly, because if they are a monopoly and they really want to increase the price, they can just increase the price. Set the MSRP to US$3,000, just like some people predicted. By your logic, people will still be lining up to buy them. Why make things complex when you can just do it the simple way?
DegustatoR
Legend
Manipulate into what exactly? Into not selling any cards and thus not getting any revenue from them?
Nvidia is shipping chips+boards at their set MSRP levels minus partner and chain margins. They don't get anything from limiting the supply since the price increase happens on the side of AIBs and retail, not on Nvidia's side.
Unless we're talking about scalpers all working for Nvidia there are zero reasons for Nvidia to want to have that situation on the market.
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Yes, the same question went up too during the crypto mining mania. People tend to forget that NVIDIA mostly just supplies chips to the AIB partners and the only profit they got were from the chips. They can't require the AIB partners to just sell these cards to their sponsored scalpers.
DegustatoR
Legend
True but with crypto they have at the very least "enjoyed" the overall rise in volume of chips being sold - even if they were still selling them at "MSRP" levels themselves.
Here there's nothing for them. No margins from higher retail prices, no higher volume of sales. What is the end goal for Nvidia in this "manipulation"?
I’m not talking about regulations, you are correct that non-esssential monopolies aren’t usually regulated.
Perfectly competitive markets don’t have MSRPs.
What else would you describe the GPU market as, considering AMD just happens to price their cards at Nvidia-$50?
This isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s simply a consequence of game theory. Haven’t you guys seen A Beautiful Mind?
I don’t think you understand what a perfectly competitive market. A perfectly competitive market is when a near infinite amount of producers are essentially making the same product. If one producer makes one that’s better than everyone else it’s the opposite of perfectly competitive.
I’m not making a value judgement on whether or not to regulate nvidia (lol), I’m saying that in actual markets it’s a lot more complicated than supply/demand.
In an actual perfectly competitive market MSRPs literally cannot exist. They would make no sense.
It is a free market, just not perfectly competitive. Every market in America is ‘free’ unless it’s regulated, which few are really.
In a perfectly competitive market if you decreased your supply the equilibrium price would essentially be unchanged because of the sheer volume of producers.
You can only artificially limit supply to raise prices if you are in a market with few producers. This is the main mechanism by which monopolies raise prices.
Now I don't understand your point. You said NVIDIA is a monopoly or duopoly. So I said if that's true NVIDIA can just jack up the prices, without having to do all this conspiracies with low MSRP and limiting supplies in order to manipulate the market into higher actual selling prices.
So what's the problem? I don't see anything from you refuting this.
You’re conflating two different things. Perfectly competitive markets are not the same as free markets. You can have the latter without the former.
In a free market buyers and sellers determine the price by deciding whether to buy or sell with no outside interference (regulations, subsidies etc)).
Because I don’t have a point refuting this? I’m saying you can’t use traditional supply demand curves for products in a market that isn’t perfectly competitive.
I have no idea if Nvidia is manipulating supply or whatever, that said, a monopolist can set prices how they want precisely because they control supply for all equities products on the market. If Nvidia didn’t control supply for high end GPUs they would be an ineffective price setter as they’d just get undercut. So we are essentially saying the same thing.
Correct, I am talking about the former, not the latter. The semiconductor market is obviously free as it’s not govt controlled or regulated, beyond things like tariffs (which do distort the market but we don’t have say rent control but for GPUs).
