Anyone has RTX 3080 or RTX 3090?

[Hotteok]

GPU prices are rocketing skywards.. 

[Myew]

GPU supply went extinct around 9~ months ago. As soon as the factories in China started shutting down very early last year, tech influencers started recommending upgrading ASAP before things went bad. I finally upgraded to an EVGA RTX 2060 KO from an ancient GTX 770, which I previously acquired used but was having trouble with crashes and poor framerate. I wanted to be able to do VR eventually as well. The RTX 2060 KO isn't amazing, but for $300, it's been good enough to run everything I want acceptably at 1080p on desktop or VR like Beat Saber. RTX also has the newer hardware video recording encoders, and the 2060 KO version has the same video rendering chip from the GTX 1080, so that's nice. But definitely not worth the $600-700 used it's going for on eBay now... it will likely not be until at least 2022, more likely 2023 before supply can anywhere near meet demand. Or the crypto market will crash again tomorrow and they might drop, who knows.

I honestly considered going for a 3070 or 3080 (there's no practical value in buying a 3090 over a 3080) with the stimulus checks the USA has been getting, but because I'm on disability, I can't deal with the taxes and other insanity involved with mining cryptocurrency to recoup the cost of investment. And then there's the problem of being able to find one and buying it, my lack of being able to get around or having a Micro Center nearby... It's not like I'd be getting a greatly better experience either, I'd have to upgrade my monitor from 1080p 144hz to the much more expensive 1440p 144hz to take advantage of the graphical horsepower, upgrade my CPU, etc etc... I don't care that much, mine's good enough. Well, I should upgrade my Ryzen 1600 to a Ryzen 3700 or Ryzen 5600, but that's another issue.

As things are currently here in the USA, the only affordable options for a decent GPU are buying a prebuilt from a reputable system builder like https://www.ibuypower.com/, or going for one of the newer RTX 3050-3060 laptops with a high TDP. Not on par with a desktop chip due to power delivery, heat and noise, but what else can you do. Not sure why many people think they need a 3080. I mean, they are above and beyond when it comes to being able to run games and video editing at 4k, but they're not a great value unless you are specifically subsidizing the investment with cryptocurrency mining... which is why they are impossible to find, because rich people buy literally all of them with bots to mine in factories.

Edited May 26, 2021 by Myew