NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 Series launch has been quite the disaster, with GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards being nowhere to be found even weeks after release. Not surprisingly, AMD is doing what it can to avoid that situation.
As demonstrated by a letter shared by RedGamingTech, AMD is working directly with partners to ensure that Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards and Ryzen 5000 Series processors will actually be available to buy at launch. The letter contains a variety of measures that red team is telling retailers to adopt in order to fend off unscrupulous sellers and bots. These include CAPTCHA, manual order reviews, and queue-based notifications – something that EVGA recently embraced for its web store.
Here is the complete list of what AMD is recommending for its retail partners:
- Bot Detection and Management: Use real-time bot detection mechanisms and tools to scan and filter site traffic and identify/block known malicious bots.
- CAPTCHA Implementation: Use challenge-response tests to determine if the user is human during the checkout process_ (e.g. am not a robot” check box, simple math problem, picture/confident or alpha-numeric identification or honeypot.
- Purchase Limits: Limit purchases at launch to 1 per end-user. Reject subsequent orders containing the same information, such as name, email address or billing/shipping address.
- Reservations: Use a queue-based notification system which allows customers to reserve their place in line to purchase as stock becomes available in the future. If a product is shown “out of stock,” customers have the option to be notified by email once the product is available.
- Manual Order Processing: At launch, switch to manual order processing to properly validate orders with minimal delays.
- Limit Reseller Sales (B2B): During the 3 weeks after launch, limit the number of sales made to commercial re-sellers.
- Inventory-to-Cart Allocation: Allocate inventory only when a customer submits an order or set a time limit on how long a customer can hold our product in their cart. Inform customers that purchases are not guaranteed until the order is submitted.
Are these measures going to be enough to ensure that Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards and Ryzen 5000 Series processors go to legit buyers? Probably not – as most readers have pointed out, most of these measures have already been employed by retailers, but scalpers are still getting away with tons of product.
You can check out the full letter from AMD below. It’s better than nothing, we suppose.
