Watch OC start the Scalp, prices on 6800's will start to rise. Cheapest RTX 3080 £728, release day £649?.Disgusting
Founders cards were £649 and guess what they are incredibly short and drip fed, why because for obvious reasons, its not hard to work out.
AIB cards, well the board partners simply cannot make a 3080 to sell at £649, they would lose money, that is why at launch AIB's helped resellers to hit the £649 MSRP for limited numbers, typically about 100 cards, I think its fair to say every reseller worldwide sold way beyond this cap and the board partners cannot fund it so resellers just ship goods at cost or slight loss beyond their initial supported quantities.
This is why board partner cards are more expensive, it is not because the board partners are scalping, gouging or whatever you want to call it, they are simply making the margin required to actually survive. The only 3080 you will find at MSRP are FE cards and they are incredibly short supply and very limited, you would have more luck finding a needle in a haystack.
Board partners will want to focus on high-end OC models simply because they can make more margin there to offset the lack or even losses they make on the none OC parts.
It shall be same situation on red team, you won't see a board partner card even close to MSRP and its not because board partners are greedy, they can't make them that cheap, or certainly not right now, when stuff calms down hopefully stuff like components, memory prices drop then I am sure they will be able to further reduce their manufacturing cost but right now this is the way.
We are deeply frustrated just how all our customers are and the big manufacturers have got to really change their methods of launching product, first of all availability and supply needs to be at least 10x better as even if demand was as per normal times the supply is still way below what we would see in normal times, problem is the world has gone bonkers and sales are totally insane. Manufacturers also need to re-think their MSRP, the MSRP should be a price that all add in board partners can easily hit with enough margin to survive and there should also be enough margin for the reseller to survive as well, because lets face it yes of course we could launch a product a sell at near cost, but is that not misleading customers, I feel it is, a products MSRP should be what the board partner and reseller can continue selling that product at 3 months, 6 months and a year down the line. The current MSRP's being set are not possible once board partners make their own cards, 3070, 3080, 3090, not a single one was at MSRP anywhere in the world 24hr after launch, apart from FE, 6800, 6800 XT do you see one single custom AIB card in stock today at MSRP, absolutely not simply because the board partners cannot achieve that and of course the red team board partner cards will be not be close to MSRP's as board partner cannot make them that cheap, no matter how much they try to save with a cheaper cooler design etc.
