If you’re a PC gamer, you better be babying your video card. While there have been some signs that GPU prices are dropping, it’s still nigh impossible to get your hands on a new video card. There was some hope that the AMD website’s anti-bot measures would help, but an image posted by a team of scalpers shows that not to be the case. If the screenshot is to be believed, one bot managed to purchase the majority of GPUs offered in AMD’s latest European drop.
We’re not going to bother going into great detail on the nature of the GPU shortage. We all know what’s been going on after the last few years — high demand, low silicon supply, cryptocurrency mining, and so on. That’s why you can’t get a decent GPU for anything close to retail. As of this writing, an AMD 6800 XT, which is supposed to retail for $649 is going for closer to $1,500. That’s one of the cards dropping weekly in limited numbers on AMD’s official store. Try as they might, regular unassisted humans buyers are still being outclassed by machines.
Following the most recent European GPU drop, one Redditor posted a screenshot allegedly posted in a stock tracker Discord chat (as spotted by Tom’s Hardware). The image shows the purchase stats for the Vuurvlieg AMD Companion script, one of many bots designed to snap up video cards whenever they go on sale. The bot in this case was able to buy 214 of the 350 GPUs that AMD allotted for the European market. It managed to buy almost every 6800 XT, of which there were only 50 available, and half of the 6700 XT units.
These are just the numbers from a single bot. It’s possible no regular people managed to purchase cards — perhaps it was just bot vs. bot. So clearly, the solution is for the lowly individual buyer to break down and use a bot, right? Unfortunately, the best automated scripts are difficult to access. Vuurvlieg, for example, requires a subscription that the owner suspiciously calls a “donation.” Paid members can get in the queue to get the bot-purchased cards, but space is limited. If someone buys out all the spots, as they have with Vuurvlieg, you are out of luck.
The shortage has dragged on so long at this point that desperate gamers are going to extremes. Some have paid the $199 fee to get into Best Buy’s subscription-only queue for GPUs. Others, meanwhile, have resorted to stock scraping bots. The latest data indicates things are going to be like this for the rest of 2022 at least. Be nice to your GPU in the meantime.
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