This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
For me, I haven't bought a new graphics card in a long time. I have a RX 580 that I bought used for $200 CAD. My next upgrade will be my motherboard since I'm still using a 1150 socket and I'm stuck using DDR3 RAM and an outdated CPU (Intel i5-4460).
I can still play newish games at low settings and that's fine for me right now. I'm not buying a GPU at current retail price, fuck that. It's crazy that the best time to build a PC was 2015.
Same, I rocked a second hand GTx 680 from 2012-2013, which I upgraded to a second hand RTX 3060 12GB for a fantastic price, in 2024. Still rocking a DDR3 platform with the intel i7 4400K. And that's more than enough for most games with nice graphics on 1680x1050 :) (display probably 15 years old too). Eventually, I will be looking for some other second hand components to upgrade the rest of the system, but it does everything more than well enough.
Renpy becoming popular means there are tons of indie games, visual novella genre, with which you don't need a beefy graphics card.
I'd also argue that nice graphics is only one component of a good game, and "nice" is very loosely tied to computing power here.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
So Amazon has no limit on how much of the same produce you can buy, against scalpers? Make it percentage based for all i care.
I stood in line at Microcenter Thursday morning to get a 9070 XT. I arrived at about 8AM (an hour before they opened), and the line was already wrapped around the side of the building. They let people in slowly after opening (apparently so as not to overwhelm the sales staff), and I got near the front door by about 10. They were handing out vouchers, and they actually still had quite a few left, with almost all the different models available when they got to me. After I got my card and left, I looked back at the store and the line still wrapped around the side of the building.
Frankly, from my perspective, I'd say the availability of cards was "surprisingly good." It's just that there was so much pent-up demand, even "surprisingly good" supply wasn't good enough.
You want to know what the punchline is, though? Not expecting to have much choice in cards, and not having had time to research the differences between the ones made by different board partners, I ended up getting the "Gigabyte Gaming OC" version, which sounded good because it had a slightly higher max clock speed but was still $600. In retrospect, I should've gotten the PowerColor "Reaper" version because every other version is too wide to fit in my ITX computer case. [Womp, womp.] So now I have to decide between paying extra to replace a case that I otherwise like, or try to hope the cards actually do get restocked in a timely fashion (and still at MSRP) so I can attempt an exchange? I guess the moral of the story is, even if you "win" it's still a fucking pain in the ass.
The last card I bought was a Radeon Vega 56, also on launch day (7.5 years ago!) and I was also damn lucky to get it. I cannot believe that the GPU market has been continuously fucked up since then!
Well if you are getting a new case, and are into modding, I adore my fractal design node 202. It’s tiny, fits a 420W 3090, and you can duct the cpu/gpu to its vents with like $5 of foam strips. I have no case fans, yet the cpu/gpu idle with their fans off and barely spin up because they only suck in outside air.
The newer fractal ridge is a bit bigger, but should work much better with no modding since it’s more "open"
fractal design node 202
Won't fit. That case supports GPUs up to 310x145x47 mm, but the one I just bought is 288x132x56 mm. It's that extra width beyond "2 slots" that's the killer, both for your suggestion and my existing case.
fractal ridge
That one does fit the new GPU, but did I mention that I'm also still using a 3.5" drive and a full-size ATX PSU?
What I really want is something that has a layout similar to my old case, but literally just maybe half a centimeter wider:
The Silverstone Sugo SG09 and SG10 were awesome if you can find them. A bit bigger, but they support full PSUs, with the option for cheaper micro atx mobos. Cooling is good too.
Also, the node 202 width restriction is a bit conservative, it fits my much larger/thicker ftw3: https://www.evga.com/products/specs/gpu.aspx?pn=E2763314-163F-4391-8935-EA2C5DFFD06B
But like you said, no full sized psu.
I'll probably end up with a cheap Cooler Master Q300L, or maybe one of those Fractal Design tower cases with the walnut strips on the front if I decide to spring for it.
The main thing is, though, that I didn't want to have to buy a new case at all. I'm annoyed at having bought the wrong card because of the urgency of the situation and then not being able to easily fix my mistake.
I mean this in the most polite way possible, but why did you need a new GPU so quickly? Did the old one conk out?
Maybe I’m lucky, but no used GPU I bought has ever died. Ironically, only a new 6850 I had ages ago was kinda funky.
The entire GPU market has gone to shit.
It's unacceptable that there's new cards for sale (if you can even find one) that cost more than I paid for my 1080 Ti 8 years ago and have essentially the same amount of VRAM (12 GB vs 11 GB).
I thought that maybe the 9070 XT would be at least a reasonable option if I could get it for MSRP. Of course that launch ended up being another farce.
At this point it looks like I'm going to be riding my 1080 Ti until the bitter end. Sure, newer cards will wipe the floor with it, but I can't justify the current prices.
How was that launch a farce? I went with my friend to MicroCenter on launch day and he got one without any problems. They had over 500 cards in stock. We just made a line to get in, picked out the model and made another line at the cashier. Easy.
He paid MSRP.
It wasn't the same experience over here. All MSRP cards sold out instantly on all stores. Whatever was actually in stock were all at least £100 over MSRP, and they quickly sold out too.
I’m in this boat. I’ll ride my 1080 ti until it becomes unrepairable and dies. 🚀
You can always buy used. Even a 2080 TI would be a big step since you can use dlss with it, and prices for them are better now.
I would look for a used 3060 ti because it has 12 gb and has about the same performance as a 2080 ti or 1080 ti.
The 3060 TI is 8GB IIRC, the base 3060 is 12 but somewhat slower, probably not a worthy upgrade over a 1080 TI.
I forgot nvm
Honestly, I'm just keeping my money in my saving account. No way I'm spending my hard-earned money on overpriced stuff, I can wait a while longer, and I'm considering a Steam Deck as my daily driver. Not a beast, but not excessively priced either.
As much as I want a high end gaming PC, I’m fairly happy with the combination of ps5 for the heavier stuff and steam deck for everything else + emulation (including some switch) and streaming from the ps5 to SD for cozy gaming. I realize this is not a cheap combination by any means, but for the same price you’d get a PC that’s just barely above the ps5 in ability. I’ll invest in a PC further down the line
Same. I'm happy with my 7900XTX that I bought in 2023.
These days I only use Amazon for small things, and lately have decided to go back to individual specific websites for whatever it is I need. There's hardly even a price difference at this point.
I was looking to get a 7900 XTX, and then once the 5090 released all the sellers jacked the price up on the 7900 XTX to about $1500 USD
Naturally.
I'm not gonna lie, it's really tempting to just sell my 7900XTX for basically what I paid for it ($1000) and pick up a 9070XT for $600 instead. Easy $400 that I can throw at my motorcycle project.
In EU basically the retailers were using on the fly price adjustment to gauge their own customers. There were several models at MSRP but all models that were AIB OC versions started at 749-799€ and were dynamically adjusted upwards. I know personally of several cases where people bought and were charged for the early cheaper price and the etailer cancelled their order to fulfill 100€ more expensive prices they were practicing post hoc. We need to amend legislation to make any sale binding from the moment you're charged any amount. In CZ the seller Alza was doing this.
Sounds like an auction with extra steps.
Basically, they outscalped the scalpers...
