A nasty rumor is spreading - especially in Germany - about mass purchases with bots.
You may have heard about it if you follow the world of graphics cards at all. And if you're thinking of buying one of these GeForce RTX series, you'll know it too. As planned, NVIDIA launched the GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080 last Thursday, January 30 at 3 p.m. sharp. Well, no, not quite, and that's precisely the problem. Theoretically opened at 3 p.m., sales of these new Blackwell-generation graphics cards ended... a few minutes later, with stock-outs as widespread asexpected.
Most potential purchasers had to turn away from the various retailers, whether they were trying to buy a Founders Edition model - designed and manufactured by NVIDIA - or a model from the factories of NVIDIA's partners, companies such as ASUS, Gigabyte or MSI, to name but the largest. What's even more disturbing is that the widespread stock shortage could last for several days, with restocking not expected until the end of the week at best, or rather mid-February... and there's no guarantee that this restocking will be any bigger than the first shipment.
GeForce RTX 5090 invoice sold out early © PC Games Hardware
That said, the most disturbing aspect is elsewhere. The specialists at PC Games Hardware have investigated and, at least in German-speaking countries, have found invoices showing that sales were validated more than 30 minutes before the official opening of orders. Inevitably, this posed a problem of fairness if it was possible - for the well-informed - to get their hands on the cards before the scheduled time: the others were unlikely to find any at 3pm. To make matters worse, it seems that bots were used to carry out these "early" sales. The Nvidia KSB Test v1.1 bot is a piece of software that could scan resellers' websites - in this case that of ProShop, which had exclusive rights to sell Founders Edition in German-speaking countries - and place orders as early and as quickly as possible.
Finally, to make matters worse, it's common knowledge that such bots are not only used by "honest" buyers. It's already clear that some of the graphics cards obtained in this way end up on the second-hand market at prices that are 20%, 30% or even 50% higher. For the time being, this delicate situation does not seem to concern France, which "simply" has to make do with very limited stocks that are gone in a matter of minutes. However, it would be a good idea for sellers to be vigilant about the conditions of sale for products that are in high demand and available in small quantities.
