I'm not sure whether anyone is up to date with hardware, but it does look like pretty much all bigger launches this year were extreme paper launches (stock really bad even months after launch - available numbers in at most half dozen units across whole country) with massive use of bots. Vast majority of sold hardware can be found on auction websites pretty much minutes after.

The worst thing about this is, that I can't even pre-order the hardware (there is no possibility of doing that) - I don't really mind pre-ordering it to arrive in month, two or later, but at least having it pre-ordered. Unlike bots I'm actually too busy at work to refresh seller's website all day long to check whether they do have items available (they do not announce ahead of time, and they do not follow official launch dates).

Currently at the state where I'm considering just completely giving up on retail, ordering it through distributor (sells only to registered companies) and wait (but at least being capable of ordering!).

Is the situation the same all around the globe, or is it some kind of new trend happening in my country?

??

Due to the way all the things are wired in the country I live the situation seems to be pretty much the same. So, a few months ago a long-time friend asked me to perform a feasibility study for an idea he had. On my Radeon 7750 1GiB? No thank you. While I have given up on being on the bleeding edge, I wouldn't mind being at least on something recent.

Apparently, vidcards start at 250+ by now that's already way over my comfort zone for the occasional use I'm making.

What can I find for 120? Let's see… nvidia 1050s… nonsense. Oh wait, that's cool a 4GiB vidcard with a 128bit bus? They'll need to be seriously heavy on compression for this thing to make any sense and hey wait, it has 512 lanes… just like mine!

?‍♂️

So nothing on the upper end and… nothing on the lower end either. That's a pretty picture.

@krohm The costs seem to go up (USD 880 for 3070 (average price with VAT in my country) and USD 1100 for 3080 - are perfectly normal prices at retail today), which still end up being unavailable at these costs in about 3 minutes after any are available (you can buy from auction sites for about twice that cost).

I've had a chance to compare out of higher end, due to having these machines used by different people in my company, the following: Radeon R9 290x, Radeon R9 380, Radeon Rx 480, Radeon Rx 590 and Radeon 6800 has already arrived. I can even lists costs for me (these are real costs in my country - just to give a clear picture what those look like from distributor here):

• Rx 480 - USD 375 (USD 310 after VAT deduction)
• Rx 590 - USD 292 (USD 241 after VAT deduction)
• Radeon 6800 - USD 776 (USD 641 after VAT deduction)

And while my comparison isn't perfect (as they also run under different OS's) - the conclusion is - the difference in performance is not that big. The price going up is the result of market behavior, and demand highly exceeding supply these days.

NOTE: At this point, from purely economical point of view, it would be extremely lucrative to enter high-end GPU segment as another manufacturer. Sadly due to costs and complexity of such entry - it is not going to happen.

@ddlox There is clearly lack of competition in that area (NVidia boosted prices up when it pretty much had monopoly on high end products (high-end literally cost 2 - 3 times more in comparison to mid range than about 10 years back).

Pre-ordering somewhat doesn't work in this case (or to be said, there is lack of it). New hardware can't be pre-ordered in my country at all (which forces you to either bot, be extremely lucky, or visit auction websites). This of course artificially increases the price a bit more.

More competitors would inevitably lead to more availability and lower costs, but the entry costs are way too big for this market at this point of time.