We've been let down by the suppliers who are not happy with price gouging at the rate they already rob us at. So now they are selling sought after stock to sister companies who profit further,
The better question than "Should we cancel our pre-orders ?" is "Why order 1st stepping products in the 1st place ? AFAIK. the term originated with Intel, well at least that was the 1st time I heard it back in the 80s.
"[Stepping] is basically the CPU's version number. Whenever Intel improves the manufacturing process, they make a new stepping. Steppings are typically two characters long (like C0, C1, or E0). It's also sometimes called the revision. " It's also used with many other electronic parts.... .
TPU writes:
"The first version of a new microprocessor product is the A-0 step. Later, as improvements are made to the product for functional (bug) fixes or manufacturing improvements, the stepping number will increase. If new steppings come out with fewer bugs you are usually not eligible to RMA for a newer processor. Most of these bugs are supposed to be worked around in the motherboard design, BIOS (drivers), and applications."
Many will remember the infamous P67 / H67 debacle where all Intel based boards were subject to a recall due to a faulty chipset design. The history of new PC component releases is flooded with such instances. Asus's Z87 RoG line was plagued with a problem whereby external devices would not "wake" when PC was resumed from sleep mode. It also had problems with after a crash, the BIOS clock would freeze ... If you crashed on October 15th ... all fiiles created or modified after the 15th were dated October 15th. Asus promised a BIOS fix, one was released for the TUF like but not RoG line.
1. There has always been a section of the population who had to be the 1st on the block to get the new shiny thing, but in the age on Instagram and TikTok, a large segment of potential customers chase "likes" and "thumbs up" as an effort, they believe, will increase their social standing. Getting a new "thing" is somehow put on the same level as say "graduating high school". That of course doesn't apply to all users but that group has certainly grown in the social media era. Whatever one's reason for living on the bleeding edge, there are numerous downsides to this approach.
2. One drawback is the obvious demand exceeding supply ... this leads to buyer frustration and takes a fair amount of extra money out of your pocket. How often in the history of the PC have prices not gone down after release day ? .... well the 2080 Ti is an example. If you buy early you are going to pay more ...that's pretty much as safe a bet as one can make.
3. As for the subsidiary thing .... how is anyone being harmed in any way ? It's called capitalism. A manufacturer sells its products at MSRP (with appropriate wholesale discount), Vendors are selling at a substantial markup .... of the horror ! It's called capitalism. The appropriate price is "what the market will bear"... Don't like it, don't buy ... someone else will. Retailers can not make money on products they don't have; just because they have no stock to sell, they have to pay their rent, taxes, labor and all other fixed and overhead costs. So if retailers make say $30 per card when normally selling 500 cards a week ($15,000), to pay the bills... when demand exceeds supply, they need to get as much as people are willing to pay. If they charging $50 over MSRP and sell out their weekly allotment in one day, rest assured that price margin will be increased. The prices won't drop until a point where when new weekly allotment comes in, there are still cards sitting on warehouse shelves. When a manufacturer sees that it's making $30 a card ... allowing the retailer to sell at +$30 tp hit MSRP ... but that retailer is making $130, why not open a company store that sells at or just below those prices ? Many companies have company stores. It's called capitalism. Corporations are legally required to maximize investor profit ... establishing policies contrary to that principal is malfeasance.
4. First stepping / revision products , by definition have bugs. The Asus MoBo problem mentioned above was not resolved until revision C3, That means two major revisions and 3 minot revisions were made to the board's circuitry before it was fixed. And remember ....
If new steppings come out with fewer bugs you are usually not eligible to RMA for a replacement,
5. Some examples of early stepping GFX card failures:
- MSI Tape-Gate - The 1st batch of MSI 9xx series cards had tape across the shroud to keep fans in place while shipping. The tap supplier used the wrong type of tape and it was overly aggressive. many uses broke off a fan blade when removing the tape.
- EVGA GTX 570s - VRMS were not up to overclocking loads and many cards wee lost to burnt VRMs.
- EVGA 1060 / 1070 / 1080 SC and FTW series - The decision to omit thermal pads on VRMs resulted in significant pyrotechnics
- All AMD 6-pin 480s - Card draw more power than it was rated for causing excessive amperage to be draw from PCI-E slot
- EVGA 970 SC - One-third of the GPU heat sink missed the GPU.
6. Aside from the bugs, performance also increases as the production lines improve . With CPUs for example, the % of CPUs that might hit OC targets at say 4.8, 4.9. 5.0 and up, increases as time goes on. As a production lime matures, various tweaks are applied and as tom goes on, those %'s increase a bit.
7. Finally ... competition decreases pricing ... when AMDs new cards come, regardless of which one "wins" ... competition drives prices down. When the 6xxx series drips from AMD, prices will be lower. In addition, what if AMD drops a card that matches Nvidia in performance, not just in 1 or 2 games but across the board. How ya gonna feel about paying $100 over MSRP then ?
In short, there is only one thing people can do to pay less and get a better product....
stop buying. No company can make money if the products are sitting on warehouse shelves. Waiting gets you a better product at less expense. It's not like thisis a new phenomenon ....it's an every "next generation" thing that happens every time .... the only way to effect this is stop buying the over priced products. Usually not as bad with CPUs as there's less of an urge to buy as impact on gaming is less. Vendors can't make money on products that sit on shelves. As the warehouse shelves fill up, prices will come down. On the other hand ... ya still suffer the consequencs of buying first stepping / revision products.
Made my day
