ATi's new range of 5000 series cards are the hottest thing on the tech market right now, with everyone and their grandmother wanting to get a new DX11 card. Unfortunately as we have reported before the stock levels of the high end 5800 series is still painfully thin on the ground. When we spoke with AMD's John Byrne (Vice President of Worldwide GPU and CPU sales) he had said they had hoped to be a stronger position over the coming months.
Sadly, this doesn't help the punter today and even though the cards are in such demand, people who have even managed to get a hold of one are finding the possibility of making some extra money too hard to resist. We noticed over the last week that some of the 5970's have been selling on ebay for over $1000, as enthusiasts spend a fortune to land the class leading monolithic slab from AMD.
Checking ebay.com today we can see that there are already several cards (here and here) on auction selling for well over the odds with still some time to go on the bidding. We would expect these to earn the sellers a few hundred dollars profit, at least.
Unfortunately situations like this always arise when stocks are low and I am sure most of you will remember the Xbox 360 launch fiasco in the UK a few years ago, with people paying almost a grand for a console and a few games - and then even ending up with a box full of bricks from rogue sellers.
Sadly, it looks as if AMD are not able to rectify the supply shortages and the chances of this changing before Christmas are very low.
i would just wait til they have them in stock instead of paying $1000 for one...
