go amd cards and ryzen.. solved
1. Tariffs affect all parts regardless of who makes em 2. Both nvidia and Intel are having trouble keeping them in stock and with what AMD has up against them, AMD just doesn't have the numbers outside small marke niches. many decisions are refelctions of personal value..... If they "wanna be like mike", all that is acceptable is Air Jordans on their feet. 3. nVidias flagship is twice as fast as AMDs.
Why would a company short available supply ? Cause they can, right or wrong consumers simply are not choosing the alternative. AMD Q3 2017 CPU market share =22.3% ... Q3 2018 = 20.9%. AMDs most popular card (480) in use today is 28th in sales. The most popular current generation card is the 580 at 0.54%. The 1080 Ti has 3 times that ... the 1060 with which it competes has 27 times the market share. After 15 months on the market, no Vegas on the list.
The whole market is dropping for the most part as the new generation arrives and folks are sitting waiting for prices to drop, only the mid range nVidia cards showed significant gains
AMD Radeon R7 Graphics - 0.87% down 0.04% market share since last month
AMD Radeon R5 Graphics - 0.67% down 0.04% market share since last month
AMD Radeon RX 480 - 0.60% down 0.02% market share since last month
AMD Radeon RX 580 - 0.54% up 0.03% market share since last month
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 - 14.79%, up 0.50% market share since last month
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti - 11.07%, up 1.37% market share since last month
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 - 6.40%, up 1.27% market share since last month
It will be a month before we see the impact of the excess 1xxx inventories being emptied and 2xxx / 590 sales
But yes, welcome to capitalism... where corporate law requires companies to maximize shareholder value; failure to do so is fiscal misconduct. So yes, as long as demand outstrips supply, prices will go up. Complaining that companies charge "whatever they can get" is like complaining that the dog next door walked thru the hole in your fence and impregnated ya dog that ya left unsupervised.
And while cheaper is always better, ***whether perceived or imagined***, they not going to choose a$6 burger over a $7 steak.
Three things one can do ...
1. Resist the need to be the 1st on on block with new shinny thing and don't buy anything
2. Write to your elected representatives and push to move the tariff from PC parts to completed systems ... already movement here.
3. If the competitions product provides real value for you buy it.
The price of 10xx series cards dropped because of excess inventory ...now demand exceeds inventory and they over $1,000 Want them to come down again, stop buying them.