Almost definitely, yes.
At this point in the year, most PC building enthusiasts are likely getting more than a bit frustrated. With three massive releases under the belt, the end of the year seems to be shaping up to be one where there’s plenty of goodies on the market… but none in the customer’s hands.
Earlier this year, we saw Nvidia‘s launch of their new graphics card, the RTX 30-series. The 3080 and 3090 had a launch that many have come to consider one of the worst launches in recent tech history, with bots buying up each and every card in less than two seconds flat.
Jump forward to the launch for the 3070 GPU, and many were a bit more optimistic. Much of this optimism came from the fact that Nvidia even went so far as to delay the launch of their 3070 cards so that they could build up more stock to counter the problem the previous launch had.
Unfortunately, this didn’t work in the least, with the Best Buy site that exclusively sold the cards crashing hard. While they released stock in waves to try to alleviate the digital crowds, it ended without much satisfaction for the vast majority of customers who had battled the crashes.
All of this has worked up to be wonderful publicity for AMD, who are preparing for their own GPU launch later on this month on November 18th. Walking into the spotlight with their Radeon RX 6000 series lineup, many that had failed to get Nvidia cards turned to team red.
But today, we saw the launch of AMD’s new processor series, the 5000-series processors that are currently blowing Intel out of the water. Many saw this to be the benchmark for whether or not the AMD card launch in a bit more than a week would be successful.
Unfortunately, many were a bit disappointed. Releasing at 9:00 EST at a variety of outlets, the processor sold out within a minute or two, leaving most customers disappointed once again.
At this point, it seems like no one is able to keep any product in stock for the customers, leading to a frustrated PC enthusiast community. Many are now looking at the RX 6000 launch with some hesitation, now fully expecting a fourth consecutive disastrous launch where no one can grab what they want.
AMD seems confident that they’re going to be able to bring the supply promised, perhaps aided by the fact that a fraction of the market was able to grab Nvidia’s 30-series cards and aren’t on the market for a card anymore.
Either way, most enthusiasts seem confident on betting that they won’t be able to get their hands on the shiniest new hardware. While this is far from a new situation to be in, this year’s launches have been a bit more bitter and just a little bit more disastrous than normal, leading to heightened frustration against the manufacturers.
