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

I deleted my queue spots after getting a 3090 from Best Buy last December. I had queue spots for all the 3080s except for the water block ones, but wasn't close to the front of the line. Good chance I'd still be waiting.

I feel mildly bastardly about something I did today though. Yep, hogging up Ampere cards. I entered the Newegg shuffle for the first time and they let me buy an EVGA 3060Ti XC for $480 + tax & shipping for my second rig. I'm kind of glad they offered the 3060Ti rather than a 3070Ti or 3080. It's enough for a second box and cost quite a bit less. Funny thing is it'd probably keep up with the 3090 at native res if the CPUs were equal. My main rig has a 4k screen and the second (older) one is running a 1440p screen. 1440p is right about 45% of the pixels of a 4k screen and a 3060Ti is just a bit over 45% of the cores and memory bandwidth of a 3090.
 
As someone who's work center's a lot around the latest gaming GPU's, I'd tell everyone that it's good to have patience. The manufacturing pressure and strain producers are under has resulted in lots of failing cards. Things are starting to improve, but the initial manufacturing runs were highly problematic. Especially from our friends at Gigabyte.
 
I deleted my queue spots after getting a 3090 from Best Buy last December. I had queue spots for all the 3080s except for the water block ones, but wasn't close to the front of the line. Good chance I'd still be waiting.

I feel mildly bastardly about something I did today though. Yep, hogging up Ampere cards. I entered the Newegg shuffle for the first time and they let me buy an EVGA 3060Ti XC for $480 + tax & shipping for my second rig. I'm kind of glad they offered the 3060Ti rather than a 3070Ti or 3080. It's enough for a second box and cost quite a bit less. Funny thing is it'd probably keep up with the 3090 at native res if the CPUs were equal. My main rig has a 4k screen and the second (older) one is running a 1440p screen. 1440p is right about 45% of the pixels of a 4k screen and a 3060Ti is just a bit over 45% of the cores and memory bandwidth of a 3090.
A friend managed to get a 3060ti so I looked up its performance.
It turned out to be around 2/3 the framerate of the 3090, pretty impressive considering its price and heat output.
A good card for 1080p and 1440p. Even UHD for some games.
 
A friend managed to get a 3060ti so I looked up its performance.
It turned out to be around 2/3 the framerate of the 3090, pretty impressive considering its price and heat output.
A good card for 1080p and 1440p. Even UHD for some games.
That's pretty impressive. Would the 3060 Ti be a better buy over the 3070? I've always liked to be in the mid range lol I mostly game at 1440p and also 1080p
 
The 3060 Ti and 3070 are both fair buys considering your budget or performance criteria. It's the 3060 that should be completely avoided. The 4 more GB for 12 GB is not worth the large loss in performance since these are 1080p cards (in modern games) anyway and 1440p drops the FPS too much on a 3060.
 
A friend managed to get a 3060ti so I looked up its performance.
It turned out to be around 2/3 the framerate of the 3090, pretty impressive considering its price and heat output.
A good card for 1080p and 1440p. Even UHD for some games.
I checked the benches too. Probably should have mentioned that in my previous post. Oops. 3090@4k and 3060Ti@1440p are usually pretty close to each other. 2/3s sounds typical at 1440p and max settings. You rarely get 100% scaling at the same res. I've seen plenty of benches where the 3060Ti does even better against a 3090 at 1080p & max settings. 75% seems common. Maybe the 3090 was getting CPU bound. I've also seen tests at 4k with raytracing enabled where the 3060Ti is about half as fast as a 3090. Most of those had the 3090 running at 40-60fps. Time to turn DLSS on. Thankfully most RT-enabled games support it.

That's pretty impressive. Would the 3060 Ti be a better buy over the 3070? I've always liked to be in the mid range lol I mostly game at 1440p and also 1080p
The better buy is the one you can snag without getting scalped that's acceptable given your budget and performance requirements. :( I mostly play RPGs and strategy games, and don't play competitive shooters. I'm quite happy with 60fps, but like to turn up the bling. A 3060Ti should do nicely for me at 1440p. There are faster cards, but a 3060Ti is what I got in my cart and is quite acceptable. You'll need more power if you want to play competitive at 1440p in recent AAA games on a high refresh screen with the settings cranked especially if ray tracing is involved. At 1080p a 3060Ti should do nicely, but IMHO it's not a better buy than a 3070 if you can get a 3070 in your cart and check out. I just wouldn't skip a buying opportunity to save $100 the way things are right now unless you can't afford the extra $100. So, basically... it depends.
 
The vanilla 6800 is the better buy over 3060 ti, 3070 and 3070 ti .. it will be much much more future proof for similar money either MSRP, AIB pricing or SSRP (Scalper Suggested Ripoff Price) :)
 
The vanilla 6800 is the better buy over 3060 ti, 3070 and 3070 ti .. it will be much much more future proof.
Except for the price tag. AMD has let their AIBs run wild, but you can actually buy their stuff without hunting for it if you're willing to pay up. Like 6700XT starting at $800, 6800XTs in stock from Newegg for $1300, etc. Maybe I could find a 6800 in stock if I dug a bit more. NV seems to be holding their AIBs back on the "market adjustments", which means they sell out instantly when someone gets stock but if you're lucky enough to snag one you'll get a better price/perf ratio from NV.

Last December I felt a bit of buyers remorse for buying a 3090 for $1800 (tax incuded). Not anymore! Now I'm glad I did it after seeing what people are paying and going through trying to get cards in 2021. Plus it's the first top end card I've had. I figure if there was ever going to be a time to go big on a rig it was last winter, the winter of Covid. Masks? Social Distancing? Perfect excuse to stay home and game all night. :D
 
I pretend I'm gonna buy a new gaming laptop, ask the dealers for pricing, upgrade paths, etc etc... basically the whole thing until the "Add to cart" part.
 
I checked the benches too. Probably should have mentioned that in my previous post. Oops. 3090@4k and 3060Ti@1440p are usually pretty close to each other. 2/3s sounds typical at 1440p and max settings. You rarely get 100% scaling at the same res. I've seen plenty of benches where the 3060Ti does even better against a 3090 at 1080p & max settings. 75% seems common. Maybe the 3090 was getting CPU bound. I've also seen tests at 4k with raytracing enabled where the 3060Ti is about half as fast as a 3090. Most of those had the 3090 running at 40-60fps. Time to turn DLSS on. Thankfully most RT-enabled games support it.


The better buy is the one you can snag without getting scalped that's acceptable given your budget and performance requirements. :( I mostly play RPGs and strategy games, and don't play competitive shooters. I'm quite happy with 60fps, but like to turn up the bling. A 3060Ti should do nicely for me at 1440p. There are faster cards, but a 3060Ti is what I got in my cart and is quite acceptable. You'll need more power if you want to play competitive at 1440p in recent AAA games on a high refresh screen with the settings cranked especially if ray tracing is involved. At 1080p a 3060Ti should do nicely, but IMHO it's not a better buy than a 3070 if you can get a 3070 in your cart and check out. I just wouldn't skip a buying opportunity to save $100 the way things are right now unless you can't afford the extra $100. So, basically... it depends.
Have no budget but I always go for midrange cards. My last card was a 970gtx that I'm still using lol so it's been a long time since I got a new gpu so I'm ready to splurge just not scalper prices as you said.. I really don't need a new gpu asap as the games I pay my 970 can still handle especially after I upgraded the cpu to a 5800x. I'm also now debating whether to sell the 5800x for a 5900x since there in stock again, what you guys think?
 
The vanilla 6800 is the better buy over 3060 ti, 3070 and 3070 ti .. it will be much much more future proof for similar money either MSRP, AIB pricing or SSRP (Scalper Suggested Ripoff Price) :)
Unfortunately I run g sync so an AMD card won't work for me... Also I do allot of emulation and I read AMD cards are not as good as Nvidia for that...
 
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