Amazon restricts some Nvidia RTX 50 and AMD Radeon 9070 GPU sales to Prime members

[midian182]

In brief: Amazon is trying to help gamers buy certain RTX 5000 and Radeon RX 9070 graphics cards while also deterring scalpers by allowing only Prime members to purchase the GPUs. Unfortunately, they are already sold out.

Several companies have implemented ways of trying to stop scalpers and bots from grabbing the latest graphics cards as soon as they're in stock.

As spotted by Club386, Amazon's method is to make some of the Nvidia and AMD cards it sells available only to Prime subscribers.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 models, as well as the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, are the cards exclusive to Prime members. However, not every one of these third-party products is locked behind a subscription. RTX 5090 cards and the RTX 40 and 30 series aren't affected, either.

Club386 found at least nine Nvidia cards that included a "reserved for Prime members" warning. Users are unable to add these cards to their basket unless they log in with an existing Prime subscription or join the $15 per month/$139 per year service. Non-members who try to buy one will see the checkout icon replaced with a Join Prime link that directs users to the signing-up process.

There are also at least five RDNA 4 cards that are reserved for prime members, including the XFX Quicksilver Radeon RX 9070 OC and Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9070 XT.

While anything that could help put graphics cards into the hands of gamers should be applauded, don't expect to be able to buy a new GPU just because you're signed up for Prime. As is the case with every other retailer, all the cards that are paywalled – and those that aren't – on Amazon are now out of stock.

Moreover, Amazon's cards are still priced way above their MSRPs, and the delivery times can be as long as two weeks.

Amazon isn't the only company trying to fight card scalpers. Nvidia's Verified Priority Access program allows active Nvidia account holders to buy one GeForce RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 Founders Edition, but numbers are limited.

Card maker Zotac also introduced a method for loyal community members to buy RTX 50-series cards in February. The program offers priority access to members of the Zotac Gaming Discord server. However, it seems the company has been offering hardly any cards through this service.

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Amazon restricts some Nvidia RTX 50 and AMD Radeon 9070 GPU sales to Prime members

 

[yRaz]

Man, everyone wants their peice of the pie. This is so much more than just GPU shortage. Were getting to the point where people are running out of money and everyone else is fighting over scraps. I wish the economy would just crash already. I notice that when all the "Influencers" pop up in my newsfeed about how safe X, Y and Z investments are that those are usually getting ready to crash. Well, everything either is crashing or about to.

This is just Amazon getting every last penny they can before 2-3 year long recession. Or, realisticly, a correction. Free money and low interests rates destroyed the economy.

 

[Dimitriid]

At first most will assume it's not very different from Microcenter system and other retailers that well, go out to the people camping, organize turns, give out purchase vouchers and so on.

However this requiring Prime it's extremely subtle but extremely alarming: I'm not in the GPU market myself but if I was, as someone outside of the US but with easy access to Amazon International imports as well as my own relatives within continental US I'd be easy for me to grab one of these while relatively impossible to grab one at a Microcenter.

This means that if I wasn't a Prime subscription holder already, I would be basically pushed into at the very least the trial period but trust me when I say that there's literally thousands of items that just like this, are either exclusive to Amazon or so far beyond conveniently and timely delivered there's next to no chance for local stores to compete.

This might be another microscopic steps towards Amazon killing off the remaining retail stores like Microcenter but it's not an insignificant one simply because it shows you the inevitability of being slowly choked to death by them until literally no single other store remains.

So if you can at all help it (And trust me: 99.99% of cases you absolutely can live without a GPU) please consider not taking these deals.

 

[Dreadcthulhu]

Man, everyone wants their peice of the pie. This is so much more than just GPU shortage. Were getting to the point where people are running out of money and everyone else is fighting over scraps. I wish the economy would just crash already. I notice that when all the "Influencers" pop up in my newsfeed about how safe X, Y and Z investments are that those are usually getting ready to crash. Well, everything either is crashing or about to.

This is just Amazon getting every last penny they can before 2-3 year long recession. Or, realisticly, a correction. Free money and low interests rates destroyed the economy.

To play the devil's advocate here, if everyone was running out of money then why would we have lines of people showing up to buy what are basically expensive luxury goods? (That said, I generally agree with you that there are some serious structural economic issues that need to be addressed, that the government has been kicking the can down the line on since at least the 2009 recession, but that sort of discussion would probably be way out of the purview of a discussion of video card sale polices).

 

[yRaz]

To play the devil's advocate here, if everyone was running out of money then why would we have lines of people showing up to buy what are basically expensive luxury goods? (That said, I generally agree with you that there are some serious structural economic issues that need to be addressed, that the government has been kicking the can down the line on since at least the 2009 recession, but that sort of discussion would probably be way out of the purview of a discussion of video card sale polices).

So, there is a term going around called "doom spending" which essentially means everyone knows the world is ending and they're trying to spend all their money while they still can. The other side is that many countries, especially the US, intentionally don't teach Financial literacy because having people in debt stimulates the economy and lowers wages.

As far as luxury goods go, the watch and jewelry markets are crashing and the exotic car market is slowing down. The luxury Markets, the things that people who make ~$500,000 a year buy, is slowing. what we have is tons of people who act like they're wealthy buying things on credit cards and saying "hey, look at me!" on social media.

As far as the lines go, between the 50 series and 90 series, rumor has it than less than a 500,000 units combined have been sold world wide. we estimate the population of the world between 7 and 10 billion with around a billion PC gamers. so approximately <0.001% of the population has access to these cards. then there are the people who want to buy these cards and scalp them, so there are more scalpers in those lines than fools with credit cards. The people wealthy enough to pay scalpers consider it a service of the scalper waiting in line for them.

But the end point is that there aren't enough cards for even the richest 1% so you see scalpers waiting in line and you also see financial fools easily parted with their money.

It's not that the opportunity to buy these cards will never present itself, I'm just willing to wait until back to school season to buy one, that's when they typically drop or return to reason. There are 3 times when cards spike in prices, at release, at the beginning of summer and around the holidays. Your best bet for buying hardware at a reasonabke price is January sales and back to school sales. you can "score deals" around the holidays, but those are most flash sales or bundles and I just ignore ignore those.

 

[redgarl]

Got my XFX 9070XT Swift at MSRP.

That would have never happened if I tried to buy an Nvidia card.

 

[poohbear]

Is there still a shortage? In Toronto Canada, I see the 5070ti and the 9070xt in stock with plenty available. Prices for the 5070 ti are still high, but the 9070xt is near MSRP.