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Nvidia won, we all lost

(blog.sebin-nyshkim.net)
977 points todsacerdoti | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.405s | source
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strictnein ◴[] No.44469082[source]
This really makes no sense:

> This in turn sparked rumors about NVIDIA purposefully keeping stock low to make it look like the cards are in high demand to drive prices. And sure enough, on secondary markets, the cards go way above MSRP

Nvidia doesn't earn more money when cards are sold above MSRP, but they get almost all the hate for it. Why would they set themselves up for that?

Scalpers are a retail wide problem. Acting like Nvidia has the insight or ability to prevent them is just silly. People may not believe this, but retailers hate it as well and spend millions of dollars trying to combat it. They would have sold the product either way, but scalping results in the retailer's customers being mad and becoming some other company's customers, which are both major negatives.

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kbolino ◴[] No.44469212[source]
Scalping and MSRP-baiting have been around for far too many years for nVidia to claim innocence. The death of EVGA's GPU line also revealed that nVidia holds most of the cards in the relationship with its "partners". Sure, Micro Center and Amazon can only do so much, and nVidia isn't a retailer, but they know what's going on and their behavior shows that they actually like this situation.
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amatecha ◴[] No.44470514[source]
Yeah wait, what happened with EVGA? (guess I can search it up, of course) I was browsing gaming PC hardware recently and noticed none of the GPUs were from EVGA .. I used to buy their cards because they had such a good warranty policy (in my experience)... :\
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1. theshackleford ◴[] No.44470583[source]
In 2022 claiming a lack of respect from Nvidia, low margins, and Nvidia's control over partners as just a few of the reasons, EVGA ended its partnership with Nvidia and ceased manufacturing Nvidia GPUs.

> I used to buy their cards because they had such a good warranty policy (in my experience)... :\

It's so wild to hear this as in my country, they were not considered anything special over any other third party retailer as we have strong consumer protection laws which means its all much of a muchness.

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2. kbolino ◴[] No.44473293[source]
The big bombshell IMO is that, according to EVGA at least, nVidia just comes up with the MSRP for each card all on its own, and doesn't even tell its partners what that number will be before announcing it to the public. I elaborate on this a bit more in a response to a sibling comment.