Why are AMD and Nvidia still putting out new products?
AMD and Nvidia both unveiled new products last week. Team Red has a bevy of new CPUs to fill out its mobile line. Meanwhile, rival Nvidia has also added some new laptop GPUs, as well as the RTX 3060 for the mid-range desktop segment. All of these products look very good on paper. It’s certainly nice to finally see some more affordable next gen option in the graphics market. Well, at least in theory. You see, it’s very unlikely that consumers will be seeing any of these products anytime soon. Which makes you wonder why hardware makers are still putting out new releases at all.
The CCPVirus has caused major disruptions to supply chains, since pretty much everything is made in Communist China. Even the stuff that isn’t is facing shortages due to overwhelming demand. Chip fabs like TSMC and Samsung are having difficulty keeping up with the enormous amount of new tech products that released in 2020. Ones that are selling just as fast as they can be made, as everyone is still stuck at home. Everything is sold out just about everywhere. Well, except on auction and re-seller sites, which seem to have plenty of stock. Just at grossly inflated prices that most of their target demo cannot afford to pay.
Neither AMD nor Nvidia can keep up demand for their existing product stacks. Yet here they are, unveiling more products for sale. Products that they can’t actually manufacture, or at least manufacture enough of to make it worth their while. Let’s also keep in mind that hardware vendors aren’t actually making any money off scalped products. They were initially sold to scalpers at MSRP, and likely would have sold at that price regardless. So there’s a lot of profit being left on the table that opportunists are quickly snatching up.
Meanwhile, all it’s serving to do is frustrate consumers who are facing a double whammy of being unable to buy replacement parts, or having to pay ever rising prices. So I really do have to question what their strategy is here. Are they just doing paper launches to keep investors happy? That doesn’t seem particularly wise given how angry customers are getting. Then again, a lot of these big corporations are still trying to act like it’s “business as usual”.
Hopefully the stock situation will sort itself out at some point this year. Though I have my doubts that will happen given the way things have been going. Let’s just pray to the gods of the glorious PC Master Race that nothing on our rigs breaks.
