There has to be a better way to order a new GPU but how?

[DarrenM343]

Oh for sure there's loads that could be done, what i question is if as a business you'd want to do them.

IDK how past launches have gone as the 9070 XT @ roughly £600 is the first card in the last 4-5 years that i personally consider to be of value, but if yesterday was anything to go by I'm glad i never bothered with past launches as personally i don't think OCUK is doing enough to combat bots. If bots can bring down your entire site that's a problem.

is it actually good value? Depends how people perceive value I guess and what their requirements are. In RT games I didn't think the 9070 XT had a large enough performance increase over the 4070 to be worth it (average across 6 games I think of 11.5% @ 1440P according to one review) although the gap is much larger without RT (more like 30% I think). For £600+ I'd expect better RT game performance after 2 years since the 40 series. 4070 FE was like £530 a few years ago I think.
At least people have had a chance to buy one vs Nvidia's offerings which is good but I was a bit surprised just how much demand there seems to be.

 

[Murphy]

I was referring to a one off list type arrangement on this one. There were even forum members maintaining a list on the other section for the 50 release. All the process would be is:
* Gain interest a few weeks in advance
* Create a list
* Lock it down a week prior
* On launch day, hold back this number of units and send a private message to that list with a private buy link either that day or some time later.

It seems to me the amount of effort in doing this is tiny. It's an hour's work to setup, an hour to finalize and maybe a couple hours to administer the checkout process.

IDK this is what happened previous with the 50 series, I'll admit that seems less work than trying to combat bots.

I can't comment on why it's not a regular thing but if it's only something that was done for the 50 series that suggests it's a relatively new thing so maybe they thought scalpers/bots wouldn't be all that interested in the 9070's. I know i wasn't, it's one of the reasons this launch was my first experience of it all.

is it actually good value?

For me it is, unless you know of a better value card (i.e at a similar price and performance)

 

[danlightbulb]

IDK this is what happened previous with the 50 series, I'll admit that seems less work than trying to combat bots.

I can't comment on why it's not a regular thing but if it's only something that was done for the 50 series that suggests it's a relatively new thing so maybe they thought scalpers/bots wouldn't be all that interested in the 9070's. I know i wasn't, it's one of the reasons this launch was my first experience of it all.

It didn't happen in the end, it was mooted for a couple weeks then didn't go ahead.

It did later in the day as i only saw reports, and experienced it myself, around 3-4pm a good while after the site started experiencing problems. However from what i could tell it served little purpose as even after people reported seeing it the site was still experiencing problems, if i had to guess it may have been simply checking how many different IPs were making requests for the OCUK domain over a period of time.

Basically some type of DNS lookup rate limit rather than a web server rate limit, great if all you want to do is slow down the rate of connections, not so great if you want clients to reduce the number of request they're sending (constant F5'ing, constantly sending GET requests).

The queueing system was active before the 2pm launch as I saw it in action myself at that time then several times throughout the day.

I did get through the queue screen at one point myself, only to then get a 504 error. So what is the point having a limiting system that when you get through it is met with a 504?

Again I'm not techy in this field but if the queue system is meant to only allow a fixed number of sessions on the site at once, then surely once you're through it, it should keep your session active. It's of no use at all if you have to rejoin the queue at every new screen or step of the process, or if it doesn't even stop high traffic from denying you your session that you've queued for. Cloudflare is a big provider, surely their systems should know what they are doing otherwise nobody would implement them.

 

[sunn]

Really does seem OC need a better / a system for high demand

Waiting would be fine if the prices didnt crept or leap up

Bit lucky, tried here 1st, but after 504 / 500 just moved on to another site that worked and had a Pulse at the same price

Had a update that my order was cancelled "Unfortunately, we were only allocated a limited number of units at the price offered by AMD"

Surely if there's stock when its added to the basket, it should be reserved until finished or a time limit, anyway im old and sent a email

Long live the 30 series

 

[Murphy]

Again I'm not techy in this field but if the queue system is meant to only allow a fixed number of sessions on the site at once

It depends, the thing is when someone (you) connect to a web server you open a connection to a web server and tell it to GET data for you. That connection you opened remains open for a certain amount of time so you can send other requests for data, for example if you need to respond to the previous data, this is done because it's quicker and reduces the load on the infrastructure that routed your connection to the web server in the first place.

The problem comes when someone (like a bot) opens a connection to a web server and instead of behaving like a normal person they abuse that connection by constantly (hundreds, even thousands, of times a second) sending request for data. That would technically be what you seem to be describing as one session (a single connection) but because it's a single connection that's sending thousands of request to the web server every second it acts more like a thousand humans would behave.

I can't emphasis enough that this is pure speculation on my behalf but i suspect OCUK maybe limiting how many open connections are allowed to the web server at any one time but it's possible they may not be limiting, or it maybe set a bit too high, the number of requests each of those connections can make in a certain time period.

 

[233]

sat for several hours trying to get a card yesterday until Mrs 233 forced me to go leave the house and attend a family dinner, logged on to overclockers on the phone in the car and managed to get one in basket, ordered and checked out with so much excitement the good lady nearly pulled over and punched me.

que my utter dissapointment when i realised in my excitement i had added a powercolour 9070 not a 9070xt to my basket and ordered. in fairness didnt have my glasses on phone call to ocuk when they open shortly asking for that order to be cancelled. lovely card i'm sure but not what i'm after

@Gibbo dont suppose you fancy changing my card to a MSRP 9070 XT do you? - dont ask you dont get lol


Dropped CS a cancelation request, and also tried calling CS to cancel this as i'm sure someone else would love to pick it up but cant get through, webnote saying to 10 days for a reply.


whats the best way of dealing just reject the delivery tommorow if it turns up? or accept and then return?

 

[COYS]

@Gibbo dont suppose you fancy changing my card to a MSRP 9070 XT do you? - dont ask you dont get lol


Dropped CS a cancelation request, and also tried calling CS to cancel this as i'm sure someone else would love to pick it up but cant get through, webnote saying to 10 days for a reply.


whats the best way of dealing just reject the delivery tommorow if it turns up? or accept and then return?

If you accept and return then you'll have to cover postage

 

[D1craig]

Wrong thread

 

[Malt_Vinegar]

Every year when I order an iphone its utterly seamless. Its about as seamless as you can get for ordering electronics online these days anyway.

Product announced, you get to enter pre-payment information and your spec. The price is set, you either take it or leave it.

On the day of pre-order you click order and get instant confirmation and expected ship date.

You then simply get on with life until it arrives (usually a few days earlier than they say).

Its funny that a global software company with 2.2 Billion people relying on their web based services has better demand capability than OcUK

Who would have thought it!

 

[Lankoss]

Just wait till it comes down.

Gibbo says they have loads of stock coming. There isnt infinite demand like there was for the 3xxx series.

At some point people will snap out of it and wonder why they are paying over rrp for these cards (as that makes them no better price/perf wise than we had before).

At some point later this year they will be at MSRP again (unless something unforseen happens economy wis have zero confidence the cards will come down to MSRP anytime soon, if ever.

Just wait till it comes down.

Gibbo says they have loads of stock coming. There isnt infinite demand like there was for the 3xxx series.

At some point people will snap out of it and wonder why they are paying over rrp for these cards (as that makes them no better price/perf wise than we had before).

At some point later this year they will be at MSRP again (unless something unforseen happens economy wise)

Are there any cards from the last 2 years sitting at MSRP right now? I have zero confidence the cards will come down to MSRP anytime soon.

 

[Rogueywon]

Are there any cards from the last 2 years sitting at MSRP right now? I have zero confidence the cards will come down to MSRP anytime soon.

MSRP could always go up to match current prices!

 

[Jono8]

Are there any cards from the last 2 years sitting at MSRP right now? I have zero confidence the cards will come down to MSRP anytime soon.

There were loads all of last year and before the new gen came out. In fact I think every card managed to hit it's RRP or even less last year.

Also, do you think demand for these is indefinite? They've already sold absolutely loads. The whole world doesn't want a £600 GPU....

 

[Lankoss]

MSRP could always go up to match current prices!

MSRP is meaningless for the 9070 anyway as there is no reference card. If AMD would have released one and sold it at actual MSRP themselves, it would have drive down prices of aftermarket ones instead of letting the resellers just pick a price they think they can get away with. No-ones going to pay £700 for a aftermarket card when you can buy a reference one with basically identical performance for £500.

 

[Jono8]

MSRP is meaningless for the 9070 anyway as there is no reference card. If AMD would have released one and sold it at actual MSRP themselves, it would have drive down prices of aftermarket ones instead of letting the resellers just pick a price they think they can get away with. No-ones going to pay £700 for a aftermarket card when you can buy a reference one with basically identical performance for £500.

You say that...but people are buying the £700+ models of the 9070xt

 

[Lankoss]

You say that...but people are buying the £700+ models of the 9070xt

Well they are all OOS on OCUK, so yes. Regardless on whether they sell, they are only able to set that price as there is no reference version to compete with. The suggested MSRP from AMD was £530, so we could expect the MSRP for the reference to be £500 ish, the most expensive AM ones would have been £600-£650 mark, whereas now they are £800.

 

[Tom|Nbk]

Interesting statement from OcUK on their Facebook Page

 

[Bidley]

MSRP is meaningless for the 9070 anyway as there is no reference card. If AMD would have released one and sold it at actual MSRP themselves, it would have drive down prices of aftermarket ones instead of letting the resellers just pick a price they think they can get away with. No-ones going to pay £700 for a aftermarket card when you can buy a reference one with basically identical performance for £500.

You're absolutely right. I mean Nvidia have reference cards for the 50 series and that really helped drive prices down.

 

[Sparky]

Interesting statement from OcUK on their Facebook Page

Which is? For those of us that Don't have FB

 

[Malt_Vinegar]

Taken from OcUK facebook


Hello Overclockers! As we very much were at OcUK HQ, you may be aware that our website unexpectedly experienced outages during the AMD RX 9070 launch that lasted longer than was expected.

We aim to take away key learnings with every product launch so we can continue to optimise the customer experience - from the launch communications, to how we handle stock drops, down to how fast we pack and dispatch the orders.

Going into the 9070 XT launch, we implemented several new features to accomplish this. These included a queuing system, deploying stricter bot checks, completely blocking traffic in specific regions, and more to help create a smooth checkout process for genuine customers looking to buy the latest hardware for themselves.

While these changes did allow more customers to reach the website and buy the card they wanted, the amount of available stock pushed the load to a part of our website infrastructure that in previous launches experienced a far lower volume of requests and was therefore unprepared for this. As more customers refreshed pages, added cards to basket, and attempted to check out, these requests kept multiplying and resulted in timeouts.

Our response was to hold all traffic in our queuing system indefinitely whilst we investigated, identified, and remedied the issue. However, we were unable to remove traffic already on the website as this would cause data loss for those already attempting to complete their order, thus continuing to create new requests. To speed this process up, we manually reviewed how specific IP addresses were behaving, removing any which displayed excessive and therefore suspicious behaviour. As the traffic already on the website reduced and completed their transactions, we were able to deploy our fix and reopen the website.

With the site reopened and stock back on sale, we resumed offering cards at MSRP. We used the quantities we had confirmed before experiencing issues, despite being the only retailer to have stock in the UK at the time of returning online. This lasted until around 11pm as we batched our stock allocation throughout the evening to give genuine customers a fair chance of securing a card at MSRP.

Whilst this launch did not go as we had planned, we are confident that we have built on the learnings of previous launches and now have the systems and processes in place to serve the demand for the next product launch.

We thank you for your patience and understanding, and look forward to you shopping with us again soon.

 

[robj20]

Interesting statement from OcUK on their Facebook Page

Do we have to install Facebook to see, or are you going to tell us.