VIDEO CARD TIME

I was lucky enough to get a 3080 at MSRP a few weeks ago and I'm very pleased with it.

Right now I'm not even considering the new AMD cards purely because they don't have DLSS. They may have an equivalent at some point, but who knows when or how many devs will support it.

Yay... the return of balkanized standards.

Waiting for reviews on the new AMD cards before committing to anything, but I'm leaning 3070 at the moment.

I'm on a 1080, and I continue the hunt for a 3080. AMD looks like they're going to be much more competitive now, but their benchmarks are very cherry picked and I'm still not confident in that there won't be issues down the road with those cards. If these cards turn out to be solid and they can keep that streak going, I'd consider getting an AMD card for the next card I buy.

Hoping to get a 3070 sometime soon, upgrading from a 1060, as I move from 1080p to 1440p.

I'm on an R7 240. What a weird card that is. It can technically play modern games well for about 20 minutes before it abandons ship.

One of these days, man. One of these days I'll have yesterday's hot new card.

Got a 1070 currently and waiting for 3080's to become available so I can build a whole new PC. I might keep my eye out on the reviews/availability for those new AMD cards though if the 3080 is still scarce into next year.

Luckily the game I was most looking forward to playing on a new PC was cyberpunk, so that delay bought me some time.

I am genuinely intrigued by the AMD offerings, but do want to hear what the reviews have to say. It's a bummer that all the new tech is so difficult to get your hands on. Maybe even do a cheaper build for now and upgrade in 2021

For real if anyone really wants an nvidia card. Find a Discord tracker server and just wait. I got mine a little over a week after they went live straight from Nvidia.

It's not a great situation but it's not nearly as bad as people are making it out to be. Especially once AMD launches and focus is spread out a bit.

@reap3r160: Nvidia is no longer selling direct. They threw up their hands and just pointed everyone at Best Buy.

Obviously it's not the end of the world if I can't find a card for a few weeks, but any retail situation that requires to to pay attention to stock tracking bots is pretty bad.

I'm also going to wait to see a few things before taking the plunge. I'm most curious to see what AMD's raytracing support looks like and how well it performs. I also want to see how their cards perform when stacked up against DLSS. Finally, I also want to see if AMD is any better with their driver situation.

I'm currently rocking a 2060 super and playing at 1440p 144hz, so I'm not in any desperate need of a new card. I would like to have one for Cyberpunk, though. If it actually comes out this year.

At this point everyone should wait until the AMD cards are reviewed. If anything they announced yesterday is accurate, the 6800XT should be very good.

I was really sold on the 30 series, but if the stock situation keeps up like this, I'd be happy with an AMD card. DLSS would be the only bummer if the performance actually holds up to what AMD is claiming (big if).

Without DLSS or some equivalent, it kind of doesn't matter to me how good their benchmarks are. The difference DLSS makes on performance is massive, so even if AMD is able to match base performance of equivalent Nvidia cards, without a DLSS type solution they are still very far behind.

I really like my 3080. Control is an amazing looking game with RTX on. I'm also amazed by how well nvidia broadcast works. No more keyboard sounds over discrod.

It seems like 'super resolution' (I think it was called) is going to be their attempt at something like DLSS, though they are being tight lipped about it. It's going to be based on DirectML, which is part of the open source FidelityFX suite. I expect it will start out considerably weaker than DLSS, but in time will get better as the software improves.

For me though, I'm still more of a fan on rendering in the resolution that I'm playing at so it's not a deal breaker for me. I'll go in the price/performance direction... unless DLSS becomes a thing in VR in the next several months.

All those cards would be an upgrade for me, but price wise an eventual 3060-ish range card would be more in line with what I'd be willing to spend. Though I did for a brief moment try to find a 3070 in stock this morning to see if that would spur on a new build! hahaha

Having recently played Control using DLSS, it's basically impossible to notice that it's not rendering at "real" 4K. It certainly looks a lot better than the checkerboard stuff we've seen on PS4 Pro games. And really, if you want to take advantage of high quality ray tracing features, you're going to need to utilize DLSS even on the newest cards.

If raytracing is not available in a game, doing native 4K at 60FPS and max settings is going to be more achievable. On my 3080 I get between 100-130 FPS in Destiny 2 at 4K completely maxed out, so that's a game I wouldn't use DLSS even if it was an option. However, Control absolutely needs DLSS to hit 60FPS at 4K with all the raytracing features turned all the way up. You won't be getting 4K 60FPS with full raytracing on an AMD card in Control without a similarly effective DLSS equivalent.

Also, as you mention VR is a situation where DLSS could be huge. Framerates well above 60 FPS in VR games is absolutely essential, as well high resolution to avoid the screen door effect. DLSS could allow VR games to push for more demanding visuals and features while still hitting those essential resolution and frame rate targets.

And as hard as it is to believe, it is really pretty much impossible to tell the difference during normal gameplay, it looks like real 4K. It's an incredible feature. I guess we'll see what AMD has in store, but they need something because DLSS is a massive gamechanger.

I'm wafting for the RX 6800 cards in Dec. Why? All 3080s are OUT OF STOCK, so what are you plalning to buy....air? And, maybe that is a "thank fracking god moment" for too many delusional DIY system builders. While 3000 series cards are out of stocks they can cool their heel while watching RX 6000 cards get tested.

After AMD card are tested, then everyone can make an informed decisions about hat to buy and why. Some people might still want a 3000 series card, and yiippy-skippy for them. Buy whatever toy want. Cheer om whatever team you want - have fun with it. But for gods sakes, at least see the competition.

Don't buy something you might regret with a big, fat Christmas "oh fudge" moment.

At this point, I'll take what I can get. Which will probably end up being a 3070 since supply is higher and I got in early with the EVGA queue. But the 6800 XT interests me.

I had been on the market for a new video card for a few months, finally got tired of waiting and bought a 2060S. A lot of people say that this is a terrible time to buy an outdated card, but I just wanted to stop the speculation of when these cards might be available, and actually play some games, for which the card I bought is more than enough.

Let the early adopters fight for stock, pay through the nose and beta test the drivers. It'll probably be early to mid 2021 when you can make an informed decision about cards which are actually in stock and at reasonable prices, at which point the Nvidia vs AMD debate is simply a question of better value for money.

I got a 2080ti last year so i'm good for a few years.

A lot of my work is tied to Nvidia but I always hope AMD gets a bigger share of the GPU market.

So for those of us going 3080, what are the current "you might have a chance at one" methods? I vaguely recall there were sites people used to set up alerts?

Not convinced I am gonna go hard on it (probably just going to wait in the EVGA queue) but interested in knowing my options that will likely just be a way to kill time while waiting in the EVGA queue.

Curious what the performance hit for RT effects on AMD cards will be like once we start seeing benchmarks for games that support it. Nvidia might have an upper hand with this by coming out the gate with hardware optimized for raytracing. It's hard for me to see myself going red on GPU's though unless AMD ever achieves a wide performance gap like Nvidia has had over AMD for years on the high end. I just don't want to give up Nvidia's better driver support and software suite that they have built out in a compelling way over the years...that and I love me some G-Sync. I wonder how much efficiency AMD will get out from an all red machine because they're touting efficiency gains when you use both their latest CPU's and video cards.

Good on AMD though for managing to close the gap (and surpassing Intel in some aspects) on both of their biggest competitors.

I also have a g-sync monitor, so I'm kind of stuck with nvidia for now. I'm going to save up for a couple months while I also try to remember how to build a PC and learn about all the other various components I'm going to need to get, it's been a LONG time since I build a new pc. Hopefully in the new year all these stock issues have been sorted out, and I won't need to jump through hoops to get the parts I want.

I have a 1440p / 144Hz gsyinc monitor. Currently undecided between the 3070 or 3080, but leaning towards the 3070 because the 3080 is like $1,100 CAD.

I'm upgrading from a 770, so this is going to be a pretty exciting jump in performance.

I bought a PS5 this year, and being in school money isn't great right now, but I had been thinking of upgrading my PC at some point in the future and the new cards all look great, I'm currently rocking a Ryzen 5 1600 and a GTX 1060 6gb, but im looking at probably an upgrade to the new Ryzen 5000 cpus, and a 3070. But to be honest, im good with my PC staying the way it is for now, until maybe Starfield (hopefully next year).

I'm on an RX590 and I'm actually thinking about just putting water cooling in it rather than buying a new card.

The thing is, I would need a new motherboard to take advantage of the architecture anyway. So even if I bought just like a 5700xt I would still be spending more than I spent on my pc.

My card can run some 4k stuff, but I have to undervolt and underclock it to keep it stable due to temperature. I figure an investment in water cooling CPU/GPU is "neato" and I get to keep it through new generations.

Probably won't actually do this because I'm a broke college student, but who knows?

I got mine using Distill, a browser extension that lets you set up your own alerts. The extension allows you to select any element on a webpage and alert you if it changes. I went to all the product pages for 3080s on various retailers and selected the webpage element that would change to "buy" or "add to cart" when they were available. I responded to an alert for a 3080 on Amazon and was able to get it.

The only issue with this method is that you need to have your browser open all the time, and the extension will continuously open and close a bunch of tabs in the background.

I also bought a 2080 Ti last year so I'm also good for a few years.

And here's me still rocking a 1070 Ti, like some kind of knuckle-dragging caveman.

I understand that Rorie has bigger demands due to his job and his setup with that crazy monitor - my monitor is just 1440p 16x9 - but I think I'm still at least a year or two away from my next big upgrade. The two most GPU-intensive games I've played the last year or so are RDR2 and Horizon: Zero Dawn, both of which looked damn pretty and ran well enough on my setup (RDR2 had a million infuriating technical issues, but resolution and framerate weren't the big problems for me).

I'll most likely go AMD. DLSS seems neat but very few games support it and I don't know how many that I want to play will in the future. I assume it'll mostly be "AAA" games and I only play a couple of those a year. There's a part of me that always wants to get the less popular product so I don't contribute to a monopoly. I've got a Vega 56 now that I got on sale and it's fine but I want something to go with my HDMI 2.1 TV.

I'm hoping to find the new AMD CPU's available so I can build a new system. I'm on a 6700k cpu and 980Ti at the moment and would like to get a top rig for a replacemnet (I build my own so no package deals for me). I'm leaning towards the 6800XT paired with the Ryzen 5900X cpu but honestly if I find a 3080 somewhere I'll probably get that and may go up or down on the cpu depending on availability. The 3090 and 6900XT price to performance don't make my cut even if I found one in stock.

I bought 3070, hopefully will be shiped to me before the end of the year ;).

I just got a 3080 (received my order from launch day last week) and coming from a 1080, it is a great and large noticeable upgrade. Of course if you don't already have a order in from launch day your hope of getting one easily are slim, at least where I am in Australia.

Like you I am running a G-sync monitor so the Nvidia card is the obvious choice for me.

Tried to get a 3080, no chance on launch day, but I did land a 3070 (reference model from Best Buy), should be here this Friday. Side-grading from an ASUS ROG STRIX 1080 Ti, which will have a new home in my unRAID server Windows 10 VM for some CUDA-powered transcoding action. So it's kinda two upgrades in one for me.

I also have a Vega 56 in my ten year old PC, but it's time to retire that PC altogether. Lots of decisions to make this Black Friday.

Just watched NVIDIA's video about DLSS 2.0...impressive! Hopefully AMD has something similar, and less proprietary. Competition is good.

I will most likely get a 3080 or a 3080ti when that comes out so I will be waiting a while maybe. The only issue I can see with the AMD cards right now is Ray Tracing performance, as they haven't showed those benchmarks. Also, it seems to get the full power of your card you will need a 5000 series amd cpu as well. (which will be fine for those making complete new builds right now). Power consumption is a big issue to, you are going to need at least a 750 watt psu now for anything but like the 3070 and lower.

If you are gaming at 1400p and not 4k then I don't think you really need anything but the 6800 or 3070 (even a used 2080ti or something). My 1080 can still get 60 fps at 1400p in most games with high or maxed settings (just no raytracing).

I said the 3090, but I know it's only lust.

Don't know. I would actually have an open mind if I heard better things about AMD support.

Edit; there's going to be a 3080ti?

Probably, but at this point no confirmation beyond rumors.

I have a feeling my 2080 S is gonna do me just fine for awhile. Getting that PS5 for Demon's Souls, tho.

I was one of the suckers that bought an RTX 2080 a couple months after it came out. But if I were in the market for a new card i would wait to see some real world benchmarks for the new AMD cards, If the performance is anything like they're telling us its going to be nuts.

Could just be market speak but the developers of Godfall just said their game will take 12gb of ram for full 4k textures, so if your gaming at 4k it MIGHT be beneficial to wait till the 6000 series or the higher tier 3080's come out for newer games.

I got crazy lucky last week and got an EVGA 3080 Xc3 from best buy during one of those drops that sells out in two minutes last week. It’s been in my PC since Friday and I still kinda don’t believe it’s actually in there. It’s been pretty good, though there are actually some issues with it. My case now gets so hot that my built is Qi charger gets too hot for my phone if I have it under load too long, and I had to scale back the OC on my CPU because the contributing heat in the case was causing hard crashes. Also, I’m bottlenecks by my cpu, losing about 20% of the cards potential performance. Which isn’t to say it’s still great. Metro and control both run maxed out at 4K over 60 FPS. Watch dogs legion chucks up sometimes, but like brads stream, I think that’s a game issue, not hardware. Horizon runs at 144fps, red dead 2 at 70fps mostly maxed. I had a vanilla 1080 for the past 4 years, so this is a big jump to 4k for me. I will need to upgrade my cpu to truly future proof my setup, but with what’s out now, it’s pretty good. I hope that scarcity let’s up soon so everyone that wants one can get one.

@tartyron: From what I've read even the top of the line cpu's right now will bottleneck a 3080/3090, which is why their 1080 and 1440p benchmarks or a much smaller upgrade than the 4k ones. At 4k and higher the bottleneck shouldn't make a real difference though.