Quote Originally Posted by Heinz68 View Post
Looks like you're right, I was hoping the reason for the shortage was , AMD shipping GPU's to the partners for custom build cards and underestimating the reference card inventory.

Right now the 290 series are sold out everywhere, same goes for the 7900 series, even R9 280X are hard to find. Some price gouging is already going on. Right now only one R9 290 available at Newegg for $460, "Free Battlefield 4 game w/ purchase, limited offer" LOL is more like full price for the game.

All the R9 290X are sold out and all "Auto-Notify" prices are higher than the MSRP.
The worst is ASUS R9290X asking $630, hope this wont last too long, otherwise the custom built cards will cost arm & leg.
Makes me think AMD should start producing ASIC or specialty product if this trend continues. With AMD engineers and a decent budget, they could whip out an ASIC that devours these GPU's. As is, it seems to be taking away products away from people who want to buy these cards for their intended purpose which is gaming.

I don't know how long these trends or things are going to continue, there are way too many crypto currencies popping up and I have a feeling its going to get regulated. As is, it seems like a money launderer dream or the wet dream of people in the illegal trade business. Being able to transfer and hold millions of dollars in a harddrive vs a suitcase and being able to cash in at anytime/anywhere seems to be a really convenient thing for criminals. If bitcoins become stable, I don't see why criminals wouldn't use it. Imagine, they could store money anywhere they want and its barely traceable except when it gets converted into cash and you can do this anywhere in the world. It also lets you cut out banker and overseas bank accounts.

You can seize bank accounts and block access to it. But with bitcoins, the user is in far better control of it as long as they don't lose the harddrive or storage space( which a criminal could hide anywhere), it makes it really attractive for people in illegal dealings.