ASUS having problem keeping up with card demand - is BF3 the culprit?

[mrjoltcola]

Based on what I'm seeing plus talking to some other owners, ASUS is unable to keep up with both new product demand as well as RMA demand. The story is 2 weeks to get cards from Taiwan, offers to replace nvidia models with Radeon, plus out of stock at Newegg and Amazon for 570 and 580 models of the DirectCUII and Matrix cards, but they aren't the only ones. I also see a lot of EVGA models out of stock. The only reason Amazon shows some is they are showing cards at Circuit City.

Makes me frustrated to be a loyal ASUS customer, then get a bad card and be stuck for weeks waiting on replacement while BF3 sits on my desk uninstalled.

 

[Silverforce11]

Could it be the lack of high quality japanese made capacitors?

 

[mrjoltcola]

Could it be the lack of high quality japanese made capacitors?

LOL - you probably nailed it!

 

[Silverforce11]

What's causing the huge price jump in hard drives? They've gone up 50% over the past few months.

Again, platters and caps from japan.

 

[mrjoltcola]

Seems like poor planning, though, when you can't get RMA replacements for $350-500 cards.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

BF3 definitely. Nvidia and AMD should send over a thank you note to EA. PC gaming isn't dying we just need new games that push the limits to get us motivated.

 

[kazryv]

Huge jump in hdd prices is supposedly from the flooding in Thailand... not sure why ASUS is having all the problems though.

 

[Silverforce11]

Curse our Asian overlords and their control over our "spice".

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Huge jump in hdd prices is supposedly from the flooding in Thailand... not sure why ASUS is having all the problems though.

I constantly browse the for sale/for trade forum on here and Hardforum. Things got slow a few months back and you'd see graphics cards not selling or selling really slowly. Now if a high end card (480/570/580 or 6950/6970) pops up for sale they are gone in a hurry. It started about when the BF3 beta came out.

 

[sandorski]

Right now seems a very bad time to be doing major Upgrades. Supply issues for various components caused by Natural Disasters in a couple different places.

Then again, for this particular situation, it could be Nvidia emptying out the 5xx parts and preparing for the release of new parts. AMD had supply issues a couple months back, perhaps Nvidia is currently going through the same?

 

[mrjoltcola]

Agreed. It is a funny time. I was about to sell 2 velociraptor 300s but decided to hang onto them until it passes.

I'm about to install BF3 and play with this 570 with bad pixels and all! I can wait no longer! I'll return it on Monday.

I think I'll pick up a used 570/580 on eBay, as bad as it sounds, at least some sellers properly test their used cards, which seems to be more than some manufacturers!

 

[Idontcare]

What's causing the huge price jump in hard drives? They've gone up 50% over the past few months.

Again, platters and caps from japan.

Flooding in Thailand killed about 30% of the HDD supply, but apparently the worst is yet to come (price-wise):

“The hard drives in PCs have been built and shipped up until December,” explained Ms. Zhang. “Customers will not feel an impact until the first quarter of next year.”
Ms. Zhang said the loss of production from Thailand’s flooding will reduce the production of hard drives by 30 percent, or 50 million drives.

 

[greenhawk]

Got to love the global manufactureing that industry pushes. Pitty it is limited to a few limited places and a few natural disasters and the world's supply gets used up.

Getting normal electrical goods for work has had huge lead times since the earth quake in japan and they are only getting longer.

 

[superccs]

BF3... whoopity. Just OC your 60 GTX and play minesweeper on difficult.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Glad i got a 1.5tb hard drive...might not be a ssd but enough space to last me a life time:biggrin:

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

What's causing the huge price jump in hard drives? They've gone up 50% over the past few months.

Again, platters and caps from japan.

The floods caused that.
You know the world is getting crazy when a 500gb drive cost more than a Intel 2500k cpu
Even crack is cheaper than hdd's

 

[Puppies04]

Based on what I'm seeing plus talking to some other owners, ASUS is unable to keep up with both new product demand as well as RMA demand. The story is 2 weeks to get cards from Taiwan, offers to replace nvidia models with Radeon, plus out of stock at Newegg and Amazon for 570 and 580 models of the DirectCUII and Matrix cards, but they aren't the only ones. I also see a lot of EVGA models out of stock. The only reason Amazon shows some is they are showing cards at Circuit City.

Makes me frustrated to be a loyal ASUS customer, then get a bad card and be stuck for weeks waiting on replacement while BF3 sits on my desk uninstalled.

Perhaps there is a specific problem with asus but if I was a hardware vendor I would be very careful ordering large numbers of GTX 570s and 580s right now with the AMD 7XXX series reported to be arriving very soon. The same would apply if I was a manufacturer like asus because I would start ramping down production of those cards to prevent me having massive quantities of stock sat on the shelf that nobody wants.

I might be barking up the wrong tree but I though I would put it out there....

 

[vshin]

If the 7xxx series isn't coming out in meaningful quantities until next year, then the last thing vendors want to do is cut back on stock during the shopping season. My guess is a shortage of components due to natural disasters and other supply chain issues.

 

[Silverforce11]

Hadn't even realized how bad the flood was, but saw the pics in the storage forum.. and its bad. WD HQ swamped, roads under water everywhere.

 

[Puppies04]

If the 7xxx series isn't coming out in meaningful quantities until next year, then the last thing vendors want to do is cut back on stock during the shopping season. My guess is a shortage of components due to natural disasters and other supply chain issues.

Other supply chain issues.... you mean like the foundries all moving production over to 28nm for those cards you were talking about? By the way is this really the shopping season for GPUs? I would assume the biggest shopping season would be whenever a new CPU drops and people are upgrading their systems not really christmas.

 

[mrjoltcola]

Other supply chain issues.... you mean like the foundries all moving production over to 28nm for those cards you were talking about? By the way is this really the shopping season for GPUs? I would assume the biggest shopping season would be whenever a new CPU drops and people are upgrading their systems not really christmas.

For kids who don't pay for their own hardware, Christmas is the time that parents do the buying, and usually has nothing to do with price drops. For that matter, most parents don't even know one card from the other, just know what little Johnny said he can't live without vs what they can afford.

Here in the US, that starts around Thanksgiving, Black Friday to be specific.

 

[nenforcer]

China has announced a restriction on the sale of rare earth metals.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

China has announced a restriction on the sale of rare earth metals.

Elaborate further? Links?

 

[Silverforce11]

http://www.dailytech.com/China+Cuts+Off+Worlds+Rare+Earth+Metal+Supply/article23069.htm

All electronics use rare earth minerals. Japan is complaining to the WTO about China's restriction since it severely limits their manufacturing and export.

But i don't think this will be felt in the short time, supplies are high and should last awhile.