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The Challenges of GPU Shopping in 2021 (Die Shrink Telegrams) (Patreon)

Published:
2021-04-20 17:45:10
Imported:
2021-12

Content

Tom & Dan have both recently been forced to make some GPU purchasing decisions they never thought they would make.  If 1 year ago you told us people would be paying $300+ for 5 year old Polaris cards...we would have had a hard time believing you.  But this market is insane right now, and that means making insane choices in what you buy.

We want to talk about it!  Write in below with the odd GPU purchasing choices (or questions!) you have had to maker in the past 6 months, and also feel free to bring up thoughts on RX 6700 XT vs RTX 3070.  Let's talk about the current bizarre state of competition in general.


To be read on the podcast you must be as concise as possible, use good grammar, and show thoughtfulness in your comment/question.

NOTE: You have ~6 hours to post in order to have your comment be considered.  

Comments

Anonymous

I recently bought a 6700xt for 900, only because I could sell my 1060 6GB that wasn’t doing amazing for 360 or $60 more than I paid for it when it was first released. During the extreme mining profitability, I some how got a Vega 56 for 250, mining for 2 months paid off the GPU, then sold it for 480. So I almost didn’t pay anything for a new GPU and passed on my limping 1060

Anonymous

I have a GTX 980 Ti and I have been wanting to upgrade but it doesn't seem like there is any reasonable upgrade path for me at the current prices. I only have a budget of about $3-400 and the only cards in that price range at the moment seem to perform the same or worse than what I already have. I want to be able to play VR games, so what kinds of options does someone like me have right now?

Anonymous

I paid $125 for a GTX 970, it died 2 weeks later. Now prices are so insane I can't even afford a card to handle basic 1080P gaming. Sitting on a GTX 750Ti until this whole thing blows over. For context I live in Canada where a third wave is in full effect and cards are going at 3x MSRP, there seems to be a correlation with Covid numbers and local GPU prices.

Anonymous

So far I have been able to get a RTX 2060 and a GTX 1650 by purchasing used PCs. Some people don't follow GPU pricing trends and are listing gaming PCs for "cheap".

Anonymous

Hi Tom and Dan, I got lucky with my RX 6800 and my 6800XT, back in January, I was trying to get a 6800, and I couldn't get one no matter how hard I tried but one day I get a call from my Ex of all people and she tells me she sees a 6800 in a local gaming store in Jacksonville, she was in there to buy a Nintendo Switch and she saw it in a show glass. It was a power color Fighter for $850, she bought it for me and I paid her back. Fast forward to March my friend needs to build a PC for his new engineering job, I told him if he can find a 6800XT, I'll sell him my 6800 for the price I bought it. 2 days later randomly shopping on Amazon I find a Red Devil 6800XT in stock for $1099 and bought it immediately.

Cheezehelmet

Was looking to upgrade from my 770 last fall and got a used 1080 with a blower style cooler for 420 canadian rubles. Been looking at local resale markets lately and have been seeing equivalent cards selling at $700 or higher. Almost considered reselling.

Anonymous

Do you think that the current PC market instability has had an impact on game devs targeted platforms? If they see so many people fed up with not being able to get a system, do you think devs will target just consoles or even mobile phones first, rather than deal with the PC market that has many people stuck without anything or on crappy hardware?

Anonymous

During the last mining hysteria, my GTX 980 died one month after the warranty expired, I replaced it with an RX 580 which I bought at the time for 550$, this same card was purchased from me, for 270$, cash in hand, after the customer merely verified the card works by playing some Destiny 2 with it. Recouping 50% of an over priced, middling card like the RX 580, was a surreal experience.

Anonymous

My twin brother bought a 3080fe through best buy online on launch day. When he picked it up at the store, and guy was willing to pay $1800 for it, cash. He took the deal and kept his 980. Crazy times.

Anonymous

I bought a 3070 to replace my 980 but it didn't fit in my case. So I was waiting on a new case but it keeps getting delayed because of the port of LA congestion. When I saw I could make back twice what I paid for, I ended up selling my 3070 again. Scalping? You could say so but I'm not in this for a profit. I put some of the money I made into a new standing desk. I'll wait longer to upgrade my Haswell Mobo and CPU to something later this year as well.

Anonymous

In February my Vega 64 died and I RMA'd it to MSI. When they finally acknowleged that they had received it, instead of a replacement card, they offered me $330 cash which was almost 80% of what I had paid for it new. What followed was a back and forth for almost 6 weeks, where they would talk about raising the offer on it, and I would respond that a cash payment would not help me since I couldn't buy a card to replace it for anything close to what they were offering. I held my ground and insisted on a replacement card of the same tier. Finally, my replacement Vega 64 arrived this week. You know that it's an insane market when the manufacturers are offering to pay you on a RMA, about what you bought a card for two years ago brand new.

Anonymous

I sold my rx 5700 xt is september in anticipation of ampere coming out and bought a cheap rx 570 as a temporary replacement. I expected my 5700 xt to go down substantially in value so I was planning to use the money from selling that towards a new gpu. Had I known there was a mining boom coming though, I would have kept the 5700 xt as I could have sold it for twice as much and as of now I have yet to find a gpu in the performance class I am looking. I probably could have gotten some gpu but I refuse to pay over 700 dollars for cards that are supposed to be under 500.

Anonymous

I've been looking to buy a 6800xt/6900xt since they were released but have only been able to find people reselling GPUs for almost double msrp. My watercooled 1080 ti is not really that bad but I would prefer to have more performance.

Mia

While it looks like things might stay bad for a while (especially in Canada, which only seems to get the leftover scraps of shipments from the US), I'm going back to play some of the classics. I'm playing Morrowind for the first time right now using OpenMW (an open source engine replacement that's less buggy than anything Bethesda's been able to make). There's a funny pleasure in seeing your semi-modern GPU just rip through rendering older games. In another podcast you said you felt that Half Life 2 held up quite well. Would you recommend it for someone who's never been able to get into shooters?

Steve Honaker

I was originally waiting on the release of the 6800 XT as a long time AMD purchaser. Then I saw the crypto hashrates for it and considering the current ETH prices made the call in January to purchase an RTX 3080 for $1050 from a guy on Craigslist. I have easily made back the difference from MSRP since that point and am rapidly approaching a full payoff for the card. Running 106 MH/s in my custom water loop. Since this card is being used about 90% of the timer for Mining I also intend to take an accelerated write off for the cards value on my taxes this year. No Regrets! My several previous GPU's 5700XT, RX 480 and a laptop with a 1060 have all migrated into the mining farm at my office since we don't pay for the electricity there.

Anonymous

In november last year I bought a waterblock for ASUS TUF 3080, expecting that I will buy a card until end of 2020 at the latest. However not even I was not able to buy a GPU untill now but also TUF line from ASUS is the rarest one among all other 3080 brands (at least here in Europe)....So a big experience for me not to buy accessories before you have a main product :-(

Anonymous

I have an Rx 570 4g and I was originally planning to upgrade to an Rx 6800. Now that that dream is shattered I'm considering an RTX 3060. on Newegg they are going for around 1,300 Canadian V-bucks. I can probably get it for employee pricing at a local computer shop I've been volunteering at. it already has cheaper prices than online. so I was wondering at what price would you start to consider an RTX 3060 in today's market?

Anonymous

Tom - Does anyone really believe it is worth it to upgrade if they already have a 2070/5700 from last GPU gen? In looking at the high power consumption, ridiculous prices with minimal gains, I'm thinking people have to be mentally challenged to buy UNLESS they have a real need/use case. Even if I did pick up a AMD 6800 for $1000'ish Cdn (yes this is possible where I live) I would never consider the Nvidia 3080 line due to RAM limits and huge power req's (thinking the spikes). I've been around for a long time and every time someone said, "that's enough video card RAM", they got burned and ended up upgrading and trying to justify how it 'was time' anyway. This 'just enough' thinking goes all the way back to the Voodoo 3D era.

Anonymous

Even tho I own a Vega 56, 5700XT 50th anniversary edition and a 6900XT I'm not selling any of them. I collect high end AMD reference cards. I have all of them up to the 49 295X2 Bought the Vega 56 and 50th brand new. I have been careful the the cards so they are still in good condition without scratches. I can get quite a bit of money for them but I don't think I can find these cards in this condition after the crash. Especially the 50th anniversary edition wl be hard to find. So now they are mining eth and heating house, currently with the solar energy I have from my panels . (did not use the heater this winter.). And this way I'm half wat getting the same amount of money back compared to selling them 4 months ago.

Cleansweep

I've tried to get a RX 6700 XT twice (once on product launch day) and once about a week and a half prior to this posting, and got nothing. I tried getting a bottom of the barrel RTX 3060 on launch. I've basically given up and spent about $30 to repaste and re-pad my six year old GTX 970, which hadn't really been maintained up until that point, because it was less futile than trying to fight bots and AMD's terrible website. And that was with signing up for Discord bots to get notified as fast as possible. My worst fear for the GPU market is that we're still going to be in this high demand/low stock situation when Intel releases its cards, either due to knock on effects of the current materials shortages or because crypto currency retains/increases its value vs the dollar. At this point, I'd gladly settle for a 12GB Intel mid-range part, but I don't know if it'll be any easier or cheaper to get than a reference 6700 XT.

Anonymous

While not entirely giving up.. I'm willing to be patient for prices to stablize somewhat to purchase and 6700XT/3060 at a price that I can live with. Maybe by Christmas ..

Anonymous

Hi Tom & Dan. The situation as it stands did push me to purchase a Reference 6800. By Christmas Eve 2020, my PC I built was ~18 months old, R5 2600, RX590, X470 platform. Performed well enough on CoD. I was in a very minor car accident a few months before and out of the blue, a cheque for a few thousand pounds turned up as compensation. As I'd been imbibing too much tech content, I decided to treat myself to a 6800 and a 3700X. I low-balled a scalper, got my GPU for RRP, along with a few other upgrades. Running a 1080P monitor wasn't ticking my boxes any more either so I spent the remains of the money on an Alienware 2721D. My reckless spending of that surprise cheque was with an eye to play CyberPunk. As we now know, it was released unfinished, it didn't last half an hour before I requested a refund on Steam. Now I've gone back to playing CoD MW and WoW. Guess I wasted my money? Though the one good thing was that I was able to use my old components to build my retired father a rig so he can play Flight Sim; so it wasn't a total waste.

Anonymous

The GPU shortage happened right as we were building a new computer for my brother. We got to the point Where we were looking at Integrated Graphics and seeing how they run some of his older games and Esport games. That ended up being the decision rather then pay up. We are in a Position that over 500 just isn't possible(and we won't do the well just Mine on it and that will make you break even. He will mine on it but to use that as a reason to overspend on your budget is not responsible)

Waqar Khan

Good afternoon Tom and Dan. I bought my Asus Strix 3090 back in November on RDNA2 release day while standing in line at Microcenter since 2AM. That was $1800 on that day. On Ebay that specific 3090 has sold as high as $3800. Since then I've sold my old GTX 970 and 1080 to a friend who lives across the country for $100. I'm still holding on to my 3090, mostly cause I keep missing when 6800s are up on AMD. As well I've grown fond of the card itself, just wish I could sell it and know that I have some sort of backup.