Not THIS time around.
Nvidia was pretty much out RIGHT after Christmas other than "huge markup gougers" on anything higher than the 3GB 1060, AMD still had quite a bit of stock left at "pre-Christmas norm" pricing for over a week past that point before THEY got into the same position on RX 570/580 cards (Vega has been OUT for a lot longer, likely due to continuing issues limiting production on HBM 2 memory).
I don't understand it myself, unless NVidia had a HECK of a Christmas season while AMD's was only so-so, or Nvidia is already shifting production in the initial ramp-up to the Volta consumer cards that I anticipate being announced in late March (yes, there can and USUALLY IS that much lead time on getting chips out of a foundry, getting them distributed to manufacturers, and getting the cards themselves built and some "launch stock" built up).
OK... to be a bit more fair to the demand analysts at both companies... I agree that it's maybe not reasonable for them to predict the DEGREE of this mid-Nov to early Jan... but most certainly some kind of Q1-Q2'17 pump should have at the very least been included in their scenario analysis. I would give them almost a complete pass on that early '17 situation since there was no precedent for it. But that event itself should have been considered as a potential precursor for another such rise in prices, and hence, demand for GPUs. As someone who has done this type of work, I would be expected to at the very least to make management aware of these scenarios. Maybe they did and they were just quashed by moron directors that know nothing about crypto, we will never know for sure... but most certainly, somebody dropped the ball big time at both companies. Again, not saying they should have predicted the Degree of spike but they clearly ignored the possibility outright.
As to the timeline of stock disappearing... this is what I observed:
- I was able to get 3 Vega 56's from NewEgg in mid-Nov for $450 each. Maybe 7-10 after that I realized prices going up, then they were pretty much gone by first week of Dec
- This is what started me looking into Nvidia cards. I was out of the country for about 11 days and back just after xmas and in the next few days, was able to get 4 1070ti's for about $500/each.
- By the time i decided i wanted more just a few days later, they were either gone or way above retail.
- That started me looking into rx 570s. Was able to get an MSI 570 8GB from newegg for $300 on Jan 3rd and 4GB variety for $270 on Jan 8th. Since then, nothing readily available at all for a reasonable price.
So, it seemed that top-end AMD dried up first, then top-end NVidia (1070 and up - actaully 1070 & 70ti's seemed to go first closely followed by 1080s. I remember there still being 1080tis available for $800 when I was looking for more 70ti's), then AMD mid-range (570-580) was next to go. Granted, it seems very likely that a big cause of the Vega shortage is the shortness of HBM2. Once those intitial blower style Vegas were gone, it's just been way too long for any amount of custom ones to hit the market, and only a very very few have.
I have no idea why you think they were supposed to predict this price surge, much less how much it would be and how "across the board" it would be.
The last AND ONLY such widespread price surge was back this spring, not Q4 - and that was ITSELF "no precedent for it" as you say.
Even the Chinese "markets re-opened to Yuan purchases" event didn't produce such a sudden widespread HUGE jump - it bumped Bitcoin up a lot fast and helped feed a long surge, but nothing else went up much at that time.
The other factor to keep in mind - they might not be ABLE to bump production much if at all, given how swamped every 14/16nm production line has been during their entire existence (except Samsung, but the Nvidia move to produce SOME of their cards on Samsung seems to have eaten THAT spare production) there doesn't seem to BE much if any spare production left at that node.
It's been a long-known fact that lead times on 14/16nm are measured in months, and have been for a long time now - AMD and Nvidia would have had to predict this surge LAST SUMMER at the latest, and in that timeframe coin pricing had flattened out to started drifting DOWN.
Vega disappeared for 2 reasons - the widespread "this is a KILLER Monero mining card" reviews and articles that started showing up in early-to-mid November, and the extreme existing shortage of production on them probably due to continuing issues with HBM2 production.
That PREdated the big December price jump and is not related (though the price jump certainly didn't HELP any).
I have yet to see stock anywhere of Vega custom cards, though I've seen a couple of listings.
Possible someone had a few and I missed it though.
1070 1070ti and 1080 dried up pretty close together, yes - and 1080 ti a day or two after that.
AMD Polaris was almost a week later from what I saw.
I'm not sure on the 1060 6GB cards, there WERE still a few 1060 3GB available for a couple days after the last of the AMD 470/570/480/480 cards at non-gouge pricing went poof.
Unfortunately, Newegg has decided to start doing MILD gouging on what stock they're getting now - not DOUBLE, but 20-40% over normal markup level so far.
