5800x wasn't my preferred choice but I definitely took it over the 5600x when I got it day 1 after the 5900x was gone already.
Paid a bit of a premium to have it on release and not worry about what the future would hold for availability to get a 5900x, and still be ahead of the 5600x.
@syndalis which Meshify? C or S2? The new new one isn't out right?
0
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Have you had any issues flashing the bios on a B550 Tomahawk without a CPU installed?
Cuz that's what I need. I have an old poopy computer not something built in 2017. And no other friends who are hobbyists that I could borrow a 3100 from.
StragintDo Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered Userregular
I was thinking about building a PC for once for gaming and streaming but a friend of mine said that new motherboards are coming out next year and I should wait.
I've never actually built a computer so I don't know but are motherboards replaceable or is it better to wait?
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
0
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Motherboards are the most pain in the ass to replace, you generally do an entirely new build if you're looking to upgrade your motherboard.
Now is a fine time to buy, though! The X570 boards and 5000 series Ryzens are quite powerful!
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited November 2020
Some information is starting to circulate that the 6800XT launch was way worse than the 3080 in terms of stock available. Some retailers reporting entire countries (like the Netherlands) didn't get a single card. Australia got badly shafted as well.
If so that's an incredible misstep by AMD. Finally release a card that can compete and have it be effectively a paper launch when people are already spun up about bad launches and scalpers.
Some information is starting to circulate that the 6800XT launch was way worse than the 3080 in terms of stock available. Some retailers reporting entire countries (like the Netherlands) didn't get a single card. Australia got badly shafted as well.
If so that's an incredible misstep by AMD. Finally release a card that can compete and have it be effectively a paper launch when people are already spun up about bad launches and scalpers.
I watched two different techtubers today say that this was because of high demand and I'm like, "WHAT?"
Maybe demand is high but you have major supply chain issues across every manufacturer, regardless of product. It's almost like there was a global pandemic.
It's incredibly frustrating how naive they want to pretend to be about this.
In addition, insiders have been saying for a week now that AMD was handing way more GPU's to their partners than they were cooler units, and that their AIB partners' custom cards was where the supply was gonna be. Okay, then, let them sell them at launch. And if they're not going to be ready for that on time, move your launch date. I do not get this strict adherence to a launch date so that you can sell maybe 200 cards today, and then take the bad press of doubling down on Nvidia's fuck-up.
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
My guess is that they felt they needed to get the cards launched before 3080 and 3070 stock normalized. They were willing to take the short term PR hit to at least give buyers something to think about beyond just refreshing 3000 series stock pages all day.
Some information is starting to circulate that the 6800XT launch was way worse than the 3080 in terms of stock available. Some retailers reporting entire countries (like the Netherlands) didn't get a single card. Australia got badly shafted as well.
If so that's an incredible misstep by AMD. Finally release a card that can compete and have it be effectively a paper launch when people are already spun up about bad launches and scalpers.
I watched two different techtubers today say that this was because of high demand and I'm like, "WHAT?"
Maybe demand is high but you have major supply chain issues across every manufacturer, regardless of product. It's almost like there was a global pandemic.
It's incredibly frustrating how naive they want to pretend to be about this.
In addition, insiders have been saying for a week now that AMD was handing way more GPU's to their partners than they were cooler units, and that their AIB partners' custom cards was where the supply was gonna be. Okay, then, let them sell them at launch. And if they're not going to be ready for that on time, move your launch date. I do not get this strict adherence to a launch date so that you can sell maybe 200 cards today, and then take the bad press of doubling down on Nvidia's fuck-up.
I mean, it's not reliable in the way that stock numbers from companies is, but the card count on EBay when the 3080's launched was in the low hundreds, and the card count for the 6800XT is
Well
+2
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
The amount of scalping Amazon is supporting is just incredible.
The Phanteks vertical GPU cable doesn't seem to be working but everything else is good. Installing the card in the PCI-E slot worked fine, so maybe the cable is just bad. I'm not sure if it or the GPU weren't fully seated but I'll deal with that tomorrow. I just wanted to get a baseline boot tonight and get back at it tomorrow after work. I'm not sure I cut myself at all so I may not have made the appropriate blood sacrifice for everything to work perfectly.
The AMD reference design sounds better than their old blowers but the margin on it probably isn't worth selling a small number of cards and delaying partner cards given the bad PR. Just launch the ref cards on the 24th. People can try again on the 25th*.
*ASUS indicated last week they thought the situation would be similar or worse than the 3080 for partners so I'm not hopeful the partner release will be any better.
The amount of scalping Amazon is supporting is just incredible.
Sadly it's rather tame in comparison to the other shit allow on their site. The number of ways sellers can mess with listings to game the reviews is nuts. Not to mention all the counterfeit goods. They're really a shite company.
I have to imagine once the production pipeline stabilizes and AMD can get mid-end SKUs out, the 6600XT and 6700XT are gonna be near-unbeatable as 1080p and 1440p raster cards, respectively. I am still a hardware generation or two away from even remotely giving a shit about RT/DLSS and AI stuff, cool as those are they still feel very early-adopter mode and will for a few years (edit: even 4k raster rendering barely feels mature to me, at least in terms of accessibility at anything below the top-market price bracket...)
my 5600XT has enough muscle to get me through another year or two 'til then, it's still a really handy 1080p raster card (especially considering this is my first time being able to play games on very high and ultra settings ever)! but I definitely built this Spring 2020 rig with a Big Navi upgrade in mind, so I'm keeping my ear on the ground and seeing how things mature
also very curious to see how RDNA2+/3 look down the line, but we'll get there in due time
I haven't built a PC in a long-assed time, so this is going to be a fun exercise tomorrow evening.
I basically had three options from the start of this journey:
1. Get a 6800 XT and throw it into an eGPU case and game on my MacBook Pro while retaining GPU support for MacOS. I shortcutted a little bit and got a 5700 XT to tide me over and to see how it performed. It's been "fine" but the 15-20% performance sacrifice for the 5700 would only be worse on the 6800, and Microsoft has become increasingly hostile to eGPU use whether you have a Mac in Boot Camp or even dedicated windows gaming laptops. There are entire forums dedicated to writing complex recipes to make things work stably and while I did accomplish it and have a Windows 20H1 install with latest Radeon drivers on a MBP 16" (something almost nobody has managed to do over there, so I will likely write a recipe to pay it forward), preserving this over time and upgrades is going to be a major fkn hassle.
2. Get an xbox series X. The performance of a series X would roughly match what I pulled off with the eGPU once I got the 6800 XT for RT, but that would limit the number of games I would have access to since Microsoft has committed full 1st party support on PC.
3. Build my own custom Xbox, basically. The Ryzen 5800x, Radeon RX 6800XT (if I can find it, otherwise I have no real issue going geforce 3080 if its around), and all the other parts I got will give me a more powerful xbox, with the same number of CPU cores and a shitload more GPU headroom. All my actual work will remain on the macbook, all of my "fun" will be on this thing.
Getting access to a Ryzen processor yesterday basically sealed my fate.
syndalis on
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
@Thawmus I do have a 2600 in a box that I still need to sell but I'm not sure if that will help you. >.>
I did some looking and I should be able to do it without the CPU on the tomahawk, same process I was attempting here, but hopefully far more successful with the tomahawk.
As far as using a 2000 series processor in a b550, officially they're not compatible. But everyone on reddit says they work fine. So it would probably post and let me into the BIOS.
For now I'm ordering the tomahawk, Amazon approved the return of my Aorus Pro last night, and we'll see if I have more joy when it comes in. If not, I'll come crying to see if you've been unsuccessful selling your CPU (but if you do sell it no sweat).
Where are you guys watching now for drops / what do you need to do to have a chance of grabbing a 3080?
I've got ATR Stonks open on mobile discord, and it's pushing Distill.io notifications, but do they lag / should you use Distill.io directly?
Mobile checkout or PC?
Discord: ATR - STONKS, StockDrops, NowInStock (but NowInStock is laughably slow compared to the other two)
Twitch: Falcodrin (but they alarm on everything, while the discord folk allow you to filter), averagetechreviews (when the discord is being slow)
Websites: zotacstore (1 min refresh / verified login every few hours), store.asus.com (1 min refresh), Best Buy (lol / to verify login), NewEgg (to verify login)
I've got about 300 hours watched of Falcodrin, I've tried Zotac and Asus dozens of times, I can't even count the number of times I've tried to land a card on Amazon or NewEgg. I have yet to be successful, so somebody who has landed a card like Pixie or Cormac might have better advice.
I've only ever tried PC checkout. I set up PayPal recently, though I swore never to use them again after they facilitated the theft of $500 from me.
You've spent at minimum 15 man-weeks of effort trying to get a 3080? Fuck me! That's nuts!
Stream's up on my second monitor for about 12 - 15 hours a day. I'm not, like, watching it watching it. It's more like an alarm clock that goes off when there's stock somewhere.
...but, yeah. For the last two months, any time there's stock somewhere and I get a notification, I scramble to try to add it to my cart before the bots, scalpers, and other people do. I've pulled over when driving to try and get a 3080FE from Best Buy.
Frankly paying a scalper would have been more effective from a time management perspective, but the cost to personal wellbeing isn't measured in dollar signs and is therefore easier to ignore.
My two successes (3070 FE, 3080 XC3 Ultra) have been via Best Buy's website, entirely due to how they do their drops. When they have stock of 3080s, they trickle them out over a period of time, and you can't necessarily spam Add to Cart. So when I see BB drops of 3080s starting, I pull up the pages for the ones I want and manually F5 them.
When you see Add to Cart, click that, then it'll put you in a mini-queue and the button will go grey again. When they trickle out more stock, the button will return to yellow, click it again, and rush to checkout. The website says (and my experience tends to agree) that once you're in checkout (via this procedure), your card is reserved.
My two successes (3070 FE, 3080 XC3 Ultra) have been via Best Buy's website, entirely due to how they do their drops. When they have stock of 3080s, they trickle them out over a period of time, and you can't necessarily spam Add to Cart. So when I see BB drops of 3080s starting, I pull up the pages for the ones I want and manually F5 them.
When you see Add to Cart, click that, then it'll put you in a mini-queue and the button will go grey again. When they trickle out more stock, the button will return to yellow, click it again, and rush to checkout. The website says (and my experience tends to agree) that once you're in checkout (via this procedure), your card is reserved.
What checkout message and platform did you use for that? I've lost multiple 3080FEs after they were in my cart at BB (both PC and mobile).
My two successes (3070 FE, 3080 XC3 Ultra) have been via Best Buy's website, entirely due to how they do their drops. When they have stock of 3080s, they trickle them out over a period of time, and you can't necessarily spam Add to Cart. So when I see BB drops of 3080s starting, I pull up the pages for the ones I want and manually F5 them.
When you see Add to Cart, click that, then it'll put you in a mini-queue and the button will go grey again. When they trickle out more stock, the button will return to yellow, click it again, and rush to checkout. The website says (and my experience tends to agree) that once you're in checkout (via this procedure), your card is reserved.
I've gotten to this point at least twice and never has it made it past the initial checkout page. I've done the add to cart/greyed out wait/yellow again procedure, go through the rest of checkout and click to finalize and it tells me they're out of stock.
Where are you guys watching now for drops / what do you need to do to have a chance of grabbing a 3080?
I've got ATR Stonks open on mobile discord, and it's pushing Distill.io notifications, but do they lag / should you use Distill.io directly?
Mobile checkout or PC?
Discord: ATR - STONKS, StockDrops, NowInStock (but NowInStock is laughably slow compared to the other two)
Twitch: Falcodrin (but they alarm on everything, while the discord folk allow you to filter), averagetechreviews (when the discord is being slow)
Websites: zotacstore (1 min refresh / verified login every few hours), store.asus.com (1 min refresh), Best Buy (lol / to verify login), NewEgg (to verify login)
I've got about 300 hours watched of Falcodrin, I've tried Zotac and Asus dozens of times, I can't even count the number of times I've tried to land a card on Amazon or NewEgg. I have yet to be successful, so somebody who has landed a card like Pixie or Cormac might have better advice.
I was in the ATR-STONKS and StockDrops Discord channels, but both my 5900x and 3080 TUF links were from ATR-STONKS.
Honestly, I just got lucky both times. I had notifications on my phone and PC (both buys were on the PC though) and basically just clicked on links as fast as I could. Granted, that only ever worked those two times because every other time I was either too late or ended up with an empty car at checkout due to the huge influx of traffic. I also missed a lot of drops because work got busy right as the notifications came in.
It's really all down to luck because I didn't do anything special that everyone else isn't also doing.
The first time you click add to cart and the button goes grey, there's a popup message that says blah blah wait a few minutes blah blah get to checkout something or other. Cart is not safe, checkout is supposedly safe.
For the 3080 I had to jump through an unbelievable set of hoops to actually finish the purchase (double card verification, turn down warranty, choose correct shipping option) and still didn't lose the card.
Edit: both my successes were on PC vOv Perhaps I just got lucky; I wasn't trying to get FTW3s or anything so maybe the cards I was buying were available just a little bit longer. But the 3080 took foreverrrr to get through checkout and even the Zotacs are selling instantly when they're available.
AbsalonLands of Always WinterRegistered Userregular
The 6800XT reviews seem to agree that it is swell for 1440/4K given the raw performance and the 16 GB of VRAM, but even if you somehow get it for the MSRP the lack of raytracing and DLSS reduces the value for money.
0
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
The first time you click add to cart and the button goes grey, there's a popup message that says blah blah wait a few minutes blah blah get to checkout something or other. Cart is not safe, checkout is supposedly safe.
For the 3080 I had to jump through an unbelievable set of hoops to actually finish the purchase (double card verification, turn down warranty, choose correct shipping option) and still didn't lose the card.
Edit: both my successes were on PC vOv Perhaps I just got lucky; I wasn't trying to get FTW3s or anything so maybe the cards I was buying were available just a little bit longer. But the 3080 took foreverrrr to get through checkout and even the Zotacs are selling instantly when they're available.
I was on my work PC.
I did everything you described as well, and still when I clicked to finalize the order the website came back with LOL NO STOCK SORRY NOT SORRY, IDIOT
Best Buy? More like Stupid Jerk Store Can't Buy, mirite or what?
Ultimately my success was due to a whole bunch of people on discord constantly asking each other if antonline was legit or not, not accepting the first 30 answers of, "Yes, they're legit." And I just accepted the first answer.
Granted, "preordering" from antonline is getting my Ryzen to me a bit slower than buying from Amazon or Best Buy (expected delivery Monday), but it was nice to be done and it's sure as hell better than the B&H preorders fared.
@Thawmus if your board is at least B550 you should be able to post, then update BIOS. If you want to have a backup, AMD will send you a loaner CPU: https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/pa-100 scroll to the very bottom.
+1
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
5800x wasn't my preferred choice but I definitely took it over the 5600x when I got it day 1 after the 5900x was gone already.
Paid a bit of a premium to have it on release and not worry about what the future would hold for availability to get a 5900x, and still be ahead of the 5600x.
syndalis which Meshify? C or S2? The new new one isn't out right?
@Infidel It's the C - I didn't need the extra space, the C easily fits the 6800 XT (and I am only getting one GPU anyways SLI is silly), and the motherboard I got (ASRock Taichi X570) has anything I would want an expansion card for anyways baked into the board.
This is going to be a fairly minimalist build. No exposed /visible drives, all cables behind the backplate, subdued and tasteful lightinhahahahha nah there will be ARGB everywhere.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
The 6800XT reviews seem to agree that it is swell for 1440/4K given the raw performance and the 16 GB of VRAM, but even if you somehow get it for the MSRP the lack of raytracing and DLSS reduces the value for money.
It's on average ~7% slower than the 3080 at 4K. Not a huge amount, but meaningful if you're already on the boundary of 4K/60 at the settings you prefer. There are some games it wins at 4K, but it mostly lags behind. At 1440p it's a monster and if you don't need RT, or don't care about some Nvidia's value adds like NVENC and DLSS, I think it's the card to buy.
The 6800XT reviews seem to agree that it is swell for 1440/4K given the raw performance and the 16 GB of VRAM, but even if you somehow get it for the MSRP the lack of raytracing and DLSS reduces the value for money.
It's on average ~7% slower than the 3080 at 4K. Not a huge amount, but meaningful if you're already on the boundary of 4K/60 at the settings you prefer. There are some games it wins at 4K, but it mostly lags behind. At 1440p it's a monster and if you don't need RT, or don't care about some Nvidia's value adds like NVENC and DLSS, I think it's the card to buy.
That's a pretty fair summary. Although I'd add that if you don't care about maximum pretty at 4k, and are content with merely very pretty indeed, then it'd probably cope as well as you'd need or want it to.
Right now "the card to buy" is synonymous with "the card you can get". Neither 3080 nor 6800XT is going to be a disappointing card except in a "the 3rd supermodel in the sex-troupe I hired had chipped toenails and their eye-colour didn't match the firework show so my night was ruined" kind of way. These are absurdly powerful pieces of hardware.
+6
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited November 2020
Definitely. I think the decision points comes down to a) which one you can actually buy, which is neither right this second...and b) do you care about RT and some of Nvidia's extra features. The performance is so close, across so many titles and resolutions, that performance alone is just not a meaningful differentiating factor. Which is a super rad place to be as a PC hardware enthusiast.
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I mean, I'm also sweating over a custom keyboard build that's probably 6 months out, too, so it's not like I'm lacking for a hobbyist thing at the moment.
It's kinda great that every new card out there is a reasonable choice. I think nvidia's got a slight edge due to their value adds (especially for streamers, who can benefit from RTX Broadcast and NVENC), but there's not a bad choice out there. The worst thing I can think to say about any of the cards is that the 3090 is a comparatively poor value, but for folks who just want the most power you can't do better.
Posts
The 5800 makes sense if only for matching cores with the new consoles.
The 5900x feels like the odd one out IMO. 5950 is king if you want to spend that kind of money.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Paid a bit of a premium to have it on release and not worry about what the future would hold for availability to get a 5900x, and still be ahead of the 5600x.
@syndalis which Meshify? C or S2? The new new one isn't out right?
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Have you had any issues flashing the bios on a B550 Tomahawk without a CPU installed?
Cuz that's what I need. I have an old poopy computer not something built in 2017. And no other friends who are hobbyists that I could borrow a 3100 from.
I've never actually built a computer so I don't know but are motherboards replaceable or is it better to wait?
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Now is a fine time to buy, though! The X570 boards and 5000 series Ryzens are quite powerful!
If so that's an incredible misstep by AMD. Finally release a card that can compete and have it be effectively a paper launch when people are already spun up about bad launches and scalpers.
I watched two different techtubers today say that this was because of high demand and I'm like, "WHAT?"
Maybe demand is high but you have major supply chain issues across every manufacturer, regardless of product. It's almost like there was a global pandemic.
It's incredibly frustrating how naive they want to pretend to be about this.
In addition, insiders have been saying for a week now that AMD was handing way more GPU's to their partners than they were cooler units, and that their AIB partners' custom cards was where the supply was gonna be. Okay, then, let them sell them at launch. And if they're not going to be ready for that on time, move your launch date. I do not get this strict adherence to a launch date so that you can sell maybe 200 cards today, and then take the bad press of doubling down on Nvidia's fuck-up.
I mean, it's not reliable in the way that stock numbers from companies is, but the card count on EBay when the 3080's launched was in the low hundreds, and the card count for the 6800XT is
Well
The Phanteks vertical GPU cable doesn't seem to be working but everything else is good. Installing the card in the PCI-E slot worked fine, so maybe the cable is just bad. I'm not sure if it or the GPU weren't fully seated but I'll deal with that tomorrow. I just wanted to get a baseline boot tonight and get back at it tomorrow after work. I'm not sure I cut myself at all so I may not have made the appropriate blood sacrifice for everything to work perfectly.
*ASUS indicated last week they thought the situation would be similar or worse than the 3080 for partners so I'm not hopeful the partner release will be any better.
Sadly it's rather tame in comparison to the other shit allow on their site. The number of ways sellers can mess with listings to game the reviews is nuts. Not to mention all the counterfeit goods. They're really a shite company.
my 5600XT has enough muscle to get me through another year or two 'til then, it's still a really handy 1080p raster card (especially considering this is my first time being able to play games on very high and ultra settings ever)! but I definitely built this Spring 2020 rig with a Big Navi upgrade in mind, so I'm keeping my ear on the ground and seeing how things mature
also very curious to see how RDNA2+/3 look down the line, but we'll get there in due time
I haven't built a PC in a long-assed time, so this is going to be a fun exercise tomorrow evening.
I basically had three options from the start of this journey:
1. Get a 6800 XT and throw it into an eGPU case and game on my MacBook Pro while retaining GPU support for MacOS. I shortcutted a little bit and got a 5700 XT to tide me over and to see how it performed. It's been "fine" but the 15-20% performance sacrifice for the 5700 would only be worse on the 6800, and Microsoft has become increasingly hostile to eGPU use whether you have a Mac in Boot Camp or even dedicated windows gaming laptops. There are entire forums dedicated to writing complex recipes to make things work stably and while I did accomplish it and have a Windows 20H1 install with latest Radeon drivers on a MBP 16" (something almost nobody has managed to do over there, so I will likely write a recipe to pay it forward), preserving this over time and upgrades is going to be a major fkn hassle.
2. Get an xbox series X. The performance of a series X would roughly match what I pulled off with the eGPU once I got the 6800 XT for RT, but that would limit the number of games I would have access to since Microsoft has committed full 1st party support on PC.
3. Build my own custom Xbox, basically. The Ryzen 5800x, Radeon RX 6800XT (if I can find it, otherwise I have no real issue going geforce 3080 if its around), and all the other parts I got will give me a more powerful xbox, with the same number of CPU cores and a shitload more GPU headroom. All my actual work will remain on the macbook, all of my "fun" will be on this thing.
Getting access to a Ryzen processor yesterday basically sealed my fate.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I did some looking and I should be able to do it without the CPU on the tomahawk, same process I was attempting here, but hopefully far more successful with the tomahawk.
As far as using a 2000 series processor in a b550, officially they're not compatible. But everyone on reddit says they work fine. So it would probably post and let me into the BIOS.
For now I'm ordering the tomahawk, Amazon approved the return of my Aorus Pro last night, and we'll see if I have more joy when it comes in. If not, I'll come crying to see if you've been unsuccessful selling your CPU (but if you do sell it no sweat).
I've got ATR Stonks open on mobile discord, and it's pushing Distill.io notifications, but do they lag / should you use Distill.io directly?
Mobile checkout or PC?
Twitch: Falcodrin (but they alarm on everything, while the discord folk allow you to filter), averagetechreviews (when the discord is being slow)
Websites: zotacstore (1 min refresh / verified login every few hours), store.asus.com (1 min refresh), Best Buy (lol / to verify login), NewEgg (to verify login)
I've got about 300 hours watched of Falcodrin, I've tried Zotac and Asus dozens of times, I can't even count the number of times I've tried to land a card on Amazon or NewEgg. I have yet to be successful, so somebody who has landed a card like Pixie or Cormac might have better advice.
I've only ever tried PC checkout. I set up PayPal recently, though I swore never to use them again after they facilitated the theft of $500 from me.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
That's because AMD would rather you bought 6-core chiplets. The 8-cores they can use in Epycs and get mucho margin for.
...but, yeah. For the last two months, any time there's stock somewhere and I get a notification, I scramble to try to add it to my cart before the bots, scalpers, and other people do. I've pulled over when driving to try and get a 3080FE from Best Buy.
Frankly paying a scalper would have been more effective from a time management perspective, but the cost to personal wellbeing isn't measured in dollar signs and is therefore easier to ignore.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
My two successes (3070 FE, 3080 XC3 Ultra) have been via Best Buy's website, entirely due to how they do their drops. When they have stock of 3080s, they trickle them out over a period of time, and you can't necessarily spam Add to Cart. So when I see BB drops of 3080s starting, I pull up the pages for the ones I want and manually F5 them.
When you see Add to Cart, click that, then it'll put you in a mini-queue and the button will go grey again. When they trickle out more stock, the button will return to yellow, click it again, and rush to checkout. The website says (and my experience tends to agree) that once you're in checkout (via this procedure), your card is reserved.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I've gotten to this point at least twice and never has it made it past the initial checkout page. I've done the add to cart/greyed out wait/yellow again procedure, go through the rest of checkout and click to finalize and it tells me they're out of stock.
I was in the ATR-STONKS and StockDrops Discord channels, but both my 5900x and 3080 TUF links were from ATR-STONKS.
Honestly, I just got lucky both times. I had notifications on my phone and PC (both buys were on the PC though) and basically just clicked on links as fast as I could. Granted, that only ever worked those two times because every other time I was either too late or ended up with an empty car at checkout due to the huge influx of traffic. I also missed a lot of drops because work got busy right as the notifications came in.
It's really all down to luck because I didn't do anything special that everyone else isn't also doing.
For the 3080 I had to jump through an unbelievable set of hoops to actually finish the purchase (double card verification, turn down warranty, choose correct shipping option) and still didn't lose the card.
Edit: both my successes were on PC vOv Perhaps I just got lucky; I wasn't trying to get FTW3s or anything so maybe the cards I was buying were available just a little bit longer. But the 3080 took foreverrrr to get through checkout and even the Zotacs are selling instantly when they're available.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
I was on my work PC.
I did everything you described as well, and still when I clicked to finalize the order the website came back with LOL NO STOCK SORRY NOT SORRY, IDIOT
Best Buy? More like Stupid Jerk Store Can't Buy, mirite or what?
Granted, "preordering" from antonline is getting my Ryzen to me a bit slower than buying from Amazon or Best Buy (expected delivery Monday), but it was nice to be done and it's sure as hell better than the B&H preorders fared.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
@Infidel It's the C - I didn't need the extra space, the C easily fits the 6800 XT (and I am only getting one GPU anyways SLI is silly), and the motherboard I got (ASRock Taichi X570) has anything I would want an expansion card for anyways baked into the board.
This is going to be a fairly minimalist build. No exposed /visible drives, all cables behind the backplate, subdued and tasteful lightinhahahahha nah there will be ARGB everywhere.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
It's on average ~7% slower than the 3080 at 4K. Not a huge amount, but meaningful if you're already on the boundary of 4K/60 at the settings you prefer. There are some games it wins at 4K, but it mostly lags behind. At 1440p it's a monster and if you don't need RT, or don't care about some Nvidia's value adds like NVENC and DLSS, I think it's the card to buy.
That's a pretty fair summary. Although I'd add that if you don't care about maximum pretty at 4k, and are content with merely very pretty indeed, then it'd probably cope as well as you'd need or want it to.
Right now "the card to buy" is synonymous with "the card you can get". Neither 3080 nor 6800XT is going to be a disappointing card except in a "the 3rd supermodel in the sex-troupe I hired had chipped toenails and their eye-colour didn't match the firework show so my night was ruined" kind of way. These are absurdly powerful pieces of hardware.
Shits just gon have to wait.
I'm mega excited to see what AMD does next.