Nvidia - 3080 What Happened?

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GeForce RTX 3080 Launch: What Happened? You Asked, We Answered.
By NVIDIA on September 21, 2020 | Featured Stories
Last week's GeForce RTX 3080 launch was simultaneously the best GPU launch ever and the most frustrating.
The reception to our NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPUs has been off the charts and driven interest to heights we’ve never previously experienced. A few examples compared to our previous launch - 4 times the unique visitors to our website, 10 times the peak web requests per second, and more than 15 times the out clicks to partner pages.
We expected the best ever demand for the RTX 30-series, but the enthusiasm was overwhelming. We were not prepared for this level, nor were our partners. We apologize for this.
Our community has asked questions in the past few days since the launch. Jensen’s personal email has been flooded with requests to help. He wants everyone to know he is working with the team.

What happened? I was really excited for the GeForce RTX 3080, but the launch has made it near impossible to find one and this is really disappointing.
The demand for the GeForce RTX 3080 was truly unprecedented. We and our partners underestimated it.
Over 50 major global retailers had inventory on the day of launch. Our retail partners reported record traffic to their sites, in many cases exceeding Black Friday. This caused crashes, delays and other issues for their customers. We knew the GeForce RTX 3080 would be popular, but none of us expected that much traffic on the first day.

What’s the overall GeForce RTX 3080 stock situation?
The GeForce RTX 3080 is in full production. We began shipping GPUs to our partners in August, and have been increasing the supply weekly. Partners are also ramping up capacity to meet the unprecedented demand. We understand that many gamers are unable to buy a GeForce RTX 3080 right now and we are doing everything we can to catch up quickly. Keep checking in with your favorite retailer to be notified of availability. You may use the GeForce RTX 3080 product finder to find available cards at local retailers.

Why does availability start with such low inventory? Why not wait until more cards are produced?
We have great supply - just not for this level of demand. It is typical for initial demand to exceed supply for our new GPUs. Our global network of partners are ramping as hard as they can to get the new GPUs to the more than 100 million GeForce gamers around the world. Our philosophy has always been to get the latest technology into the hands of gamers as fast as possible. As we race to build more GeForce RTX 3080s, we suggest not buying from opportunistic resellers who are attempting to take advantage of the current situation.

What changes are you making to the NVIDIA Store moving forward?
As with many other etailers, the NVIDIA Store was also overrun with malicious bots and resellers. To combat this challenge we have made the following changes: we moved our NVIDIA Store to a dedicated environment, with increased capacity and more bot protection. We updated the code to be more efficient on the server load. We integrated CAPTCHA to the checkout flow to help offset the use of bots. We implemented additional security protections to the store APIs. And more efforts are underway.

You said the NVIDIA store would have GeForce RTX 3080s at 6 a.m. on September 17th, why did the store immediately go from “notify me” to “out of stock”?
At 6 a.m. Pacific we attempted to push the NVIDIA store live. Instantly, the NVIDIA store was inundated with over 10 times the traffic of our previous generation launch, which took our internal systems to a crawl and encountered an error preventing sales from starting properly at 6:00am pacific. We were able to resolve the issues and process orders later than planned.

I saw individuals who use bots/scripts celebrating the purchase of multiple GeForce RTX 3080 GPUs! Did bots get all of the available supply?
No. While individuals using bots may have shown images of email inboxes filled with confirmed orders, NVIDIA has cancelled hundreds of orders manually before they were able to ship.

Why did the NVIDIA Store not have any preventative measures in place to battle bots (i.e. CAPTCHA,etc)?
The NVIDIA Store had many behind-the-scenes security measures in place which proved sufficient for previous launches. This is the first time that we have seen bots at this scale and sophistication. Since launch, we have been quickly working on numerous security upgrades, including CAPTCHA. We will also continue to manually monitor purchases to help ensure cards get in the hands of legitimate consumers.

Why did NVIDIA send “Notify Me” emails knowing that RTX 3080 FE was out of stock?
We intended for “Notify Me” emails to go out at 6:00 a.m. with the targeted start of availability. Due to the extreme demand and site traffic, we were unable to properly process orders on time. The emails were held back until the errors were resolved later that morning. Still, inventory sold out very quickly, so we were sold out by time most people opened their emails. In retrospect, we should not have sent the “Notify Me” emails.

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Thank you for listening, and thank you for your continued support as we navigate through this. We are excited that you are excited about the GeForce RTX 3080 and we are committed to do everything possible to catch up to the demand as quickly as we can.
 

Radegast74

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Same thing happens every release...founders cards get snapped up immediately, and it takes several weeks (6-8? usually) for the other manufacturers to catch up and for their stock to hit stores.

Except, this time may be different...with the pandemic, there are lots of unemployed/underemployed people looking for a side hustle, and scalping electronics like this is probably one of the first things a lot of people think of.

In fact, I bet if you look at eBay right now, there will be plenty of cards...oh look, surprise, surprise:
Screen Shot 2020-09-30 at 7.08.15 PM.png


Just wait for the PS5 and Xbox release...that's gonna be a mess!
 

ColdDog

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1996 - Tickle Me Elmo
Tyco's Tickle Me Elmo, a stuffed animal with


Credit: Newsday / Ken Spencer
Tyco's Tickle Me Elmo, a stuffed animal with interactive tickle spots that, when stimulated, would cause him to laugh hysterically, caused mass chaos when it was released in 1996. Due to unexpected demand, the toy, which had a retail price of $28.99, was in short supply, resulting in parent-on-parent showdowns at various toy stores, and people asking for as much as $1,500 for the coveted doll on the internet. One million units were sold.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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Heres a completely new concept: Just don't buy from people who obviously try to rip you off.
It's the reason why I haven't got a 20 series card yet. Keep looking at the 2060 and it keeps being around £300 which is what the 3060 is supposed to cost when it comes out.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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With all the capacitor question marks, is buying from a Scalper even viable? You won't get any after-sales support with a second hand card...

Actually...

Hows this for a Scalper management system:

They can know exactly which cards go to which customers. Each card has a serial number, each customer gets allocated a serial numbered card. Previously no one has really given a damn about who gets what serial number it's only relevant if the card goes wrong, but it would be relatively simple to start recording what goes to who especially for Founders Editions which get shipped directly without going through resellers.

So, an hour or two after the cards have shipped a warehouse operative notices nine went to the same guy or some dude in sales sees in his spreadsheet eleven transactions came from the same credit card in 2.5 seconds. Before the cards even arrive with the guy, a firmware update is set on the system so when those serial numbered cards are plugged in Nvidia Experience will brick the card and show a notice on the screen to contact Nvidia to discuss the matter.

Now you could do it for all the cards they got, so they plug theirs in and see the message which has basically killed their inventory, or you could not for the first card that is plugged in (their own). The ebay auctions and craiglist's go up. Sales are made. Unhappy customers come back. Scalpers reputations are trashed. Minus one Scalper and minus nine or so customers who would not choose a Scalper in future.

If purchases are genuine for a guy who has eleven computers in his house, they'll be able to follow instructions like "Plug in the following serial numbered cards in the following order" or whatever which would be able to report back to HQ through Experience in that sequence and prove they still have all the stock and the boxes are opened, unpacked and plugged in to machine/s.

We live in the future, it might be time to start acting like it.
 

Bambooza

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With all the capacitor question marks, is buying from a Scalper even viable? You won't get any after-sales support with a second hand card...

Actually...

Hows this for a Scalper management system:

They can know exactly which cards go to which customers. Each card has a serial number, each customer gets allocated a serial numbered card. Previously no one has really given a damn about who gets what serial number it's only relevant if the card goes wrong, but it would be relatively simple to start recording what goes to who especially for Founders Editions which get shipped directly without going through resellers.

So, an hour or two after the cards have shipped a warehouse operative notices nine went to the same guy or some dude in sales sees in his spreadsheet eleven transactions came from the same credit card in 2.5 seconds. Before the cards even arrive with the guy, a firmware update is set on the system so when those serial numbered cards are plugged in Nvidia Experience will brick the card and show a notice on the screen to contact Nvidia to discuss the matter.

Now you could do it for all the cards they got, so they plug theirs in and see the message which has basically killed their inventory, or you could not for the first card that is plugged in (their own). The ebay auctions and craiglist's go up. Sales are made. Unhappy customers come back. Scalpers reputations are trashed. Minus one Scalper and minus nine or so customers who would not choose a Scalper in future.

If purchases are genuine for a guy who has eleven computers in his house, they'll be able to follow instructions like "Plug in the following serial numbered cards in the following order" or whatever which would be able to report back to HQ through Experience in that sequence and prove they still have all the stock and the boxes are opened, unpacked and plugged in to machine/s.

We live in the future, it might be time to start acting like it.

Seems overly complex. The truth is that as long as people are willing to pay on the second-hand market there will always be scalpers. Just like there will always be drug dealers, bootleggers, and fences. Until we the people as a whole say no more the demand will always attract a supply and its honestly near impossible to prevent.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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Seems overly complex. The truth is that as long as people are willing to pay on the second-hand market there will always be scalpers. Just like there will always be drug dealers, bootleggers, and fences. Until we the people as a whole say no more the demand will always attract a supply and its honestly near impossible to prevent.
Complex? No, just another database with a true/false toggle. Immoral? Perhaps. Introducing a security exploit risk? Most likely.

Though, true, the producing company gets paid no matter what, so that's not really any of their concern, their involvement ends when the cash drawer closes, really.

I would note many solid companies have been run out of business when their competitors have adopted a customer focused stratagy, though. Look after what you have got, or you may find you don't have it anymore once the competition catches up or even overtakes you. What may look unnecessary now while the grass is green and the sun is out may be a fraction of what you'll loose when winter comes and you have not prepared any insulation for your pipes.
 
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Gambit

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The producing company solution to the capacitors will just be a firmware capping OCs for those units. Bad for consumers? yes. People will continue buying? yesss...

I can even imagine the same company selling a better fitted VGA for more money.

The best solution for us, as consumers, is just get rid of the anxiety-heavy impulse to quickly consuming these new toys before the car-crash-dummies field test them. I got a 1080 4 years ago, batted an eye, and suddenly the 2000s are old news 😄
 
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