[geriatricpollywog]

Already at my Microcenter, the shelves are STOCKED with AMD cards while the NV side is bare. What's next, another aisle stocked with Intel cards? What if my customer wants an NVIDIA card and I have to tell them I can only get them their 2nd or 3rd choice? I believe competition is a good thing and the GPP is detrimental to competition. However, if there was a silver lining, it would be that there is more silicon allocation and market share for premium NVIDIA cards. After all, NVIDIA is not wrong. If there was a premium GPU brand, they would be it.

 

[geriatricpollywog]

Shelves of competitor parts aren't responsible for lack of NVIDIA stock at Microcenter, or anywhere else. Microcenter refusing to stock AMD or Intel GPUs isn't going to magically conjure more NVIDIA GPUs for them.

If anything, the presence of any alternatives, even grossly overpriced ones, is at least slightly reducing the demand for NVIDIA parts. Every non NVIDIA part sold is one more NVIDIA part those insistant on NVIDIA have a chance to get. If NVIDIA parts are the only parts being displayed at retailers, then you'll see them available even less frequently.



There is no silver lining to anticompetitive practices, except for the shareholders of the company successfully implementing them.

Silicon allotments are all but set in stone long before cards make it to shelves (and have enormous supply chain delays even when it's possible get more) and more market share, for a brand that already dominates market share, is never going to benefit consumers of those products. It leads to higher prices, longer product cycles, and technological stagnation.

Good explanation as usual. It makes me feel a little better about future availability of RTX cards, though I can only hope NVIDIA can get a good share of allotment next product cycle. Especially if Intel is not fabbing their own GPUs.