Amazon adds new benefit to Prime subscription that gives members a better chance of buying an Nvidia RTX 5000 or AMD RX 9070 GPU

Date:
Thu, 03 Apr 2025 14:29:46 +0000

Description:
Desperate to buy a reasonably priced Nvidia Blackwell or AMD RDNA 4 GPU?
Youll get better odds if youre a Prime member.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Amazon is making some models of Nvidia or AMD GPUs exclusive to Prime members A handful of RTX 5000 and RX 9070 models fall into this category The idea is to stop scalpers, or at least throw another hurdle in their way

Amazon appears to have made some changes that mean those who are Prime
members stand a better chance of buying one of AMD or Nvidias new GPUs.

As you cant have failed to notice, since they launched, its been a painful scramble for stock when it comes to Nvidia Blackwell and AMD RDNA 4 graphics cards, with would-be buyers finding it very difficult to secure a GPU.

Club386 was keen-eyed enough to catch (via Toms Hardware ) that Amazon in
the US now has some RTX 5000 or RX 9070 models marked as reserved for Prime members. If youre logged into your Amazon account and are a Prime subscriber, youll see these GPUs available to buy. But if you arent a Prime member, you wont see them.

Its also worth noting that you may not realize that these are Prime exclusives, as that isnt flagged for those who are logged in they just see that the GPU is on sale.

To give you a quick example, if you search for RTX 5080 models on Amazon
(US), youll see that the Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5080 OC Edition is an exclusive for Prime subscribers, as is the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5080 Gaming OC.

On those pages, those who arent Prime members will see a box to Join Prime instead of the usual Add to cart or Buy now options (for those GPUs which are in stock, of course).

There are still more of these (relatively) new Nvidia or AMD GPUs available
to everyone than reserved models for Prime members, granted but theres more than a handful of the latter. (Image credit: Future / Asus / AMD) Analysis: Prime movers

Whats the reasoning behind this? Well, its another way of tempting folks to sign up for a Prime membership , of course, but its also a defensive measure against scalpers.

Price scalping types looking to buy MSRP level graphics cards or more affordably priced models as soon as they come in stock, to resell in order
to make a profit are a scourge on the GPU world. Theyve made it particularly hard to get hold of more expensive GPUs ( Nvidia models in the main ), as
they can be jacked up to even more ridiculous prices, and weve seen exactly this happening on auction sites this year.

Requiring a Prime membership for certain graphics cards at least shields them from some scalpers who, in the main, probably havent bothered subscribing to Prime. (Although thats not to say some price gougers wont, of course or that they cant sign up there and then).

Still, this should make it a little bit easier for Prime members to grab a GPU. Right now, for example, theres an RTX 5070 overclocked edition from Asus available for Prime members at $700. Thats still a quarter over the MSRP, but theres always going to be a premium for overclocked models, and in that
light, it doesnt look like a terrible buy. (Or it wouldnt if the RTX 5070 was a better GPU in general, but sadly, it falls well short of what Nvidia has managed with other Blackwell GPUs ).

On the AMD side, equally sadly, more affordable RX 9070 GPUs just arent available at Amazon currently, although they have been very recently, as Club386 highlighted. They may turn up once again before long, with any luck, and the situation with Nvidias Blackwell graphics cards certainly seems to be improving (dare I say it) on Amazon.

As far as I can tell, this is a US-only scheme for now, and certainly Amazon in the UK isnt running it (at least not yet, at the time of writing). You might also like Lenovo accidentally leaks Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti and 5060 models in a desktop PC, suggesting these GPUs are close to release If the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT comes with a sub-$400 price tag, it might be the best-value graphics card PC gamers have ever seen AMD could be working on a faster RX 9070 Extreme graphics card



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/gpu/amazon-adds-new-benefit-to-prime-subsc ription-that-gives-members-a-better-chance-of-buying-an-nvidia-rtx-5000-or-amd -rx-9070-gpu


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