WTF? ! In perhaps another sign of how bad the PC graphics card market is today, a sort of loot box system for them has emerged on Amazon Japan. While this offers a chance of getting your hands on an RTX 30 series or Radeon 6000 card, it’s much more likely that you’ll end up with a GTX 900 series or something even older.
Seller IGRNG has a product page on Amazon Japan offer a “surprise blind box” GPU for just $100. The box includes a randomly selected Nvidia and AMD graphics card from different models from the past few years. The description calls it “an adventure about courage and good luck.” At the moment it is out of stock with no information on when additional supply might arrive.
From Nvidia’s Ampere series, the page mentions the RTX 3090, RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3070 Ti, and RTX 3060 Ti. Referring to AMD’s RDNA2 series, the vendor lists the RX 6900 XT, RX 6800, RX 6700 XT, and RX 6600 XT. The listing also mentions that a surprise box might contain used boards, but all Ampere and RDNA2 boards are brand new.
What is of concern are the actual probabilities. Buyers only have a 2% chance of winning an Ampere or RDNA2 card. There is a 4% chance of winning an RTX 20 or RX 5000 card, an 8% chance of winning a GTX 10 or RX 500 series, and a 16% chance of winning a GTX 900 or RX 300 series. The remaining 70% are “other” cards, including older GPUs. Currently, the page only has two reviews, one from someone who hadn’t even purchased the box.
With prices as they are, $100 could still be a good bet, even for one of the older cards. Cards like the seven-year-old GTX 980 still cost several hundred dollars. At least a customer could benefit from winning and then returning an old card.
