What is your "coping" strategy for the time until you can get a latest-model Nvidia/AMD GPU?

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I just looked at Ebay for 3060 Ti cards and it's obvious the scalpers rule there. So I've had to think how I'm going to cope before prices come down to something normal, whatever that means. And based on news reports, I don't expect to get that 3060 Ti until sometime in 2022.

What's your strategy?
 
Well in my main system I'll just have to live with my 2080. Not a bad spot to be really.

In my secondary system, the 3x GTX680 SLI config lives on, many years past it's prime. I originally went the triple-SLI route because it was too expensive to buy a new card during the first cryptocurrency boom. Now, because of the 2nd cryptocurrency boom, I can't even find a cheap used older card to stick in there. Thankfully the 3 cards actually work pretty well, but Nvidia already announced that there will be no new SLI profiles, and combined with no DX12 support, this is definitely the last hurrah for the 680s.
 
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MY strategy is to hope and pray that my ancient 660 Ti keeps working for another year. Otherwise, I have to buy the least expensive card I get get off Ebay or Craigslist. And probably a new cable for my 2020 model Dell display.
 
Well, basically what I've been doing since I gave up on PC gaming during the last shortage in 2015. Try to find stuff I can do that doesn't require a GPU. Compiling code, messing with virtual machines, spreadsheet macros... anything cool that CPUs can do on their own even when powered by integrated graphics. Honestly, most recent PC games aren't my taste anyway, so it's not like I'd have much to play even if I did have a card. Games like Nier:Automata not being updated for major bugs by the publisher for years after release and only having random hacky community patches that you have to break copy protection to apply were kind of the last straw after being priced out of the GPU market the last time I wanted to upgrade. It's an expensive hobby, PC ports of popular games are buggy and awful, companies don't support their games and rely on "the community," etc. In general nothing you buy ever works out of the box, and half the people playing games are chronic cheaters and brag about how they pirated their copy. Overall it's just a lousy experience that gets worse every year.

It feels like PC gaming's days are numbered for all but the richest gamers. Especially if we have to start paying workstation prices for graphics card because everyone uses tablets, phones, and gaming consoles now except for an ever shrinking group of people who want "the best," and have to compete for the high-end parts with professionals and anyone using the things for practical reasons who will pay big bucks. At this point, I'm willing to settle for using my computer as a computer, solving interesting tech/programming puzzles rather than playing games, and maybe picking up my 3DS or Switch when I need to play a game. I only really felt the void when I had to build a new PC recently and shove a 10-year old graphics card from my old backup PC into it just to play the titles I already own on Steam.
 
Your funny mate. Not everyone owning a pc wants or needs best. It's a multipurpose weapon. Most mates have mediocre gaming capabilities, medium difficulty graphics, apart for few elite who play 144frames at 4k.
But maybe all those "elite" are posting in this forum? :ROFLMAO:
 
My "coping" involved getting a water block for my 2080ti and adding it to my loop to overclock it harder to get better performance. Mixed results, but at least it looks good, lol.
 
What's your strategy?

I gave up and funded other hobbies, and my x570 system (which I basically don't use anymore) is just going to have to deal with the 1060SSC I bought last year. I actually got the email from EVGA yesterday for a 3070, but I didn't buy the card.
 
I just looked at Ebay for 3060 Ti cards and it's obvious the scalpers rule there. So I've had to think how I'm going to cope before prices come down to something normal, whatever that means. And based on news reports, I don't expect to get that 3060 Ti until sometime in 2022.

What's your strategy?
Uhh, just keep using my perfectly good old one?

I would expect most folks who postin the [H] video card forum would have a pile of older but still functional cars to use. I certainly do.
 
Uhh, just keep using my perfectly good old one?

I would expect most folks who postin the [H] video card forum would have a pile of older but still functional cars to use. I certainly do.
I can use the old one, but performance in Adobe Lightroom sucks big time. In recent releases, Adobe has been adding nice new features that want to have a fast GPU. I haven't seen it in writing, but Adobe seems to optimize for Nvidia architecture, hence my interest in a 3060 Ti, but I'm also thinking that a 3070 couldn't hurt.
 
Well seeing the super hyped, BS marketing of games like CyberJunk 2077 that is released with so many bugs, AI should be SI (Stupid Intelligence) that Dos Games could rival, Doom with monkey bars and climbing walls which all look the same plastered around (game did run rather well on launch though), other games that should have waited. MS Flight Simulator while utterly beautiful being held back by DX 11 single thread design, with more objects, textures then probably any other game for that single thread, you better have a uber fast CPU to get over 30 FPS. There are some very good games that came out or coming out but the mountain of not finished, overhyped junk is growing. It is not just a hardware obtainability issue any longer, it is the whole ecosystem appearing to collapse. Add on how AMD and Nvidia are treating their customers with Marketing BS from like initial RTX launch, availability, restrictions artificially placed on your GPU (which surprisingly many support). I would say if one is having issues getting the hardware and even the newer games that make it all worth it, find another hobby or entertainment or start working out or become a real master at something, maybe martial arts vice just using a joystick. PC gaming in general probably needs a wake up call.
 
My strategy was not to whine and go get what I wanted. Everything is purchasable if you put the effort into it. I managed to get 5 gpus and 3 ps5 for various friends/family without trying that hard.
 
My strategy was not to whine and go get what I wanted. Everything is purchasable if you put the effort into it. I managed to get 5 gpus and 3 ps5 for various friends/family without trying that hard.
Sounds good. And how much did you pay for the items you purchased?
 
Shit its summer time. I dont have time for games. Scalpers, miners, bitcoin can all suck it.
The house and garage need to be painted. Dbl hate.
The garden is getting planted. Hate.
Landscaping is getting redone. Hate

And im the old ladies bit.. um cheap labor. Itll be August before i have a life again but ill have a purdy tan.
 
I have no coping strategy other than upgrading everything else I possibly can until the day we see nvidia GPU light at the end of the tunnel. So I upgraded my motherboard to z490-class and cpu to i9 10900K/10850K levels of awesomeness while still running my old GTX 1070 with it. I do notice a nice snappness with the new rig though so I just dream of the day I can get a GPU that matches my latest beast.
 
To play my backlog of older games that I haven't played and that run at 4k with no problem. That's enough content to last a year or so.
 
You Kepler folks are going to feel the pain, with this eol driver!

https://www.techpowerup.com/282478/...drivers-9-years-after-release-support-roadmap

I have two newer cards I bought at msrp (GTX 960) and half-off NVIDIA mining clearance (1060), so I'm not-yet desperate!

I agree with noko, that a surprising number of Upgrade Enticements have been piss-poor games, with no longevity. The only game I bought in the last two years that really pushing the limit of that 1060 is Borderlands 3 - every other FPS since had been pathetic.

But if this years list of games magically improved, I'll get on the EVGA wait-list for a 3060!
 
You Kepler folks are going to feel the pain, with this eol driver!

https://www.techpowerup.com/282478/...drivers-9-years-after-release-support-roadmap

I have two newer cards I bought at msrp (GTX 960) and half-off NVIDIA mining clearance (1060), so I'm not-yet desperate!

I agree with noko, that a surprising number of Upgrade Enticements have been piss-poor games, with no longevity. The only game I bought in the last two years that really pushing the limit of that 1060 is Borderlands 3 - every other FPS since had been pathetic.

But if this years list of games magically improved, I'll get on the EVGA wait-list for a 3060!
I'm glad you have cards that you're satisfied with that still have a few more years of support left in them. 9 years is a pretty long run, and it's not like I didn't see this coming. I was expecting the EOL early next year, so this makes it 6 months earlier than I expected. I really can't even be mad, I got the full 9 years of support because my GTX 670 is from Kepler's launch. The people who really got cheated were the ones who bought a GTX 780 in 2015 or so... those people only got 6 years of support. The way this is working out is really weird... people who got a 750 Ti will get continued support because those were Maxwell cards, but anyone who bought the more expensive 780 will be out of support sooner because it was Kepler. Glad I didn't pull the trigger on a 780 in 2015, wouldn't have really helped me avoid this EOL date at all.

Oh, and I hope you manage to get that 3060, too. Good luck, man. You have a lot of hustle and you earned what you've got. Let's see though... if I did spend $1500 on a graphics card now, that's kind of spending the $500 I would have spent upgrading to Maxwell after this card was 3 years old, plus the $500 I would have spent upgrading to Turing after that card was 3 years old, and finally the $500 I should be spending this upgrade cycle. I guess that's not too bad, relatively speaking. :)
 
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I am still good with the RX 5700 .. Just thinking of pulling the 3700x for the extra 5600x I own and use the same x470 board.
 
Suggest you develop a copping strategy instead of a coping strategy,,I have copped well north of a dozen cards manually this way, excluding ones I canceled.
 
Coping with the GPU shortage hasn't been hard for me at all. My HD7750 card plays the majority of my PC games just fine. And I use my Vita for 95% of my gaming anyway so I'm getting by fine.
 
been repairing gpus for a long time now and been buying and fixing raped mining cards to put it simple gpu swaps and replacing vram chips

also found a fix for the space invaders artifacts the rtx cards get looks to be bad vram as well but thay still display vs the gtx 10 and 9 cards that give u blsck screen :p to make it worse vrams not cheap at 38$ to 50 chip when ur changing all the vram on the cards there will be lots of dead rtx cards so ill get my hands on one way or another lol


ps if any "gamers" need there gpus repaired pm me with some info of the problem to also got few fs if any one wants upgrades i also buy part cards to and repair and reball consoles to
20210516_193243.jpg
 
My coping strategy was to (temporarily at least) give up on desktop and go mobile.

I had a decent GPU (tuned AIO-cooled Vega 64) but my platform was garbage (FX-8320, ouch, but at least my board had NVMe). I was going to upgrade to 'Zen 3 and keep the GPU but I really wanted RTX features now that more games are using them and couldn't find a reasonably-priced desktop card so instead I picked up a Clevo laptop (in sig) with 8-core Comet Lake and a 2070 Super for $1300 at MC and sold the Vega for $640 on Ebay.

Sure I'm giving up some CPU performance vs getting a 5800X and quite a bit of GPU performance vs putting in the effort to play the "find a 3060Ti at MSRP" game but I chose a well-designed machine and tuned the piss out of it so it performs at the level of a desktop 2070 + 10700 non-K and vs my old platform I got a modest GPU upgrade, a colossal CPU/platform upgrade, and now my main system uses 1/3rd the power of the old one and is portable. Most relevantly to this thread, this was also the only way I'm getting an RTX GPU this year by way of simply walking into a store at my leisure and giving them my money without hunting around day after day like I'm searching for a rare artifact.

So, now I turn into a gaming laptop evangelist any time someone I know asks for gaming PC building advice. They're actually available, and at ok prices too.
 
My coping strategy is walking into my Microcenter and buying a 3080 without waiting in line, then promptly selling my 2070S, 2080ti for double what I paid. Then winning a few newegg shuffles here and there. Yes the situation sucks... but there are options given enough time and patience.
 
My coping strategy is walking into my Microcenter and buying a 3080 without waiting in line, then promptly selling my 2070S, 2080ti for double what I paid. Then winning a few newegg shuffles here and there. Yes the situation sucks... but there are options given enough time and patience.
By ripping off buyers on your old 2080ti you're only contribution to the GPU problem
 
My coping strategy is walking into my Microcenter and buying a 3080 without waiting in line, then promptly selling my 2070S, 2080ti for double what I paid. Then winning a few newegg shuffles here and there. Yes the situation sucks... but there are options given enough time and patience.
time, patience, effort, knowledge, funds, and luck. I'm glad some folks are still able to get cards but they're far from readily available and pricing is wack.
 
By ripping off buyers on your old 2080ti you're only contribution to the GPU problem

Oh man, I'm glad didn't mention how I got and paid for my other GPUs. I'm 110% part of the problem. ;) I paid my dues, and gotten 6 of my friends and my girlfriend exactly the cards they wanted... including two Asus Strix White 3080s for MSRP.
 
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My strategy was not to whine and go get what I wanted. Everything is purchasable if you put the effort into it. I managed to get 5 gpus and 3 ps5 for various friends/family without trying that hard.

Exactly. Cards weren't THAT hard to get in Q4'20. Now they are much harder to come by. But if you wanted one, you could have had one if you put time and effort into it.
 
It's easy. Don't buy a better monitor, and you won't need a better video card.

That was actually my exact strategy when the 2080Ti came out and I refused to pay Jensen's RTX tax. I dropped from a 4K monitor to 1440p and used my 1080Ti for a little longer. I don't regret it.
 
I gave up and funded other hobbies, and my x570 system (which I basically don't use anymore) is just going to have to deal with the 1060SSC I bought last year. I actually got the email from EVGA yesterday for a 3070, but I didn't buy the card.
Thing is, the cost of many other hobbies has skyrocketed over the past year as well. I was able to get most of my gear prior to prices going bananas, but weights (or anything fitness), kayaks, boats, skeet and target shooting... Hell, my aunt was complaining the cost of knitting supplies has gone up. They've all about doubled in cost over the past year and a half.
 
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