The RTX 3080 launched on September 17 at 9AM, around 3 weeks ago from time of writing. The sad part? It sold out in minutes, if not seconds. Where did they go? I wish I could say gamers were thrilled to buy the next-gen RTX cards with eye-watering performance and an unparalleled generational upgrade. Except I can't say that. The sodding price scalpers on eBay all snatched them up, probably many of the same gits that poached the Ryzen 3 3300X. Unlike the situation with the 3300X, we can't just pay $40 more for the next step up the performance hierarchy after we realize these scalpers are just preying on ignorance. The little blighters are selling GPUs on eBay for more than double, sometimes approaching triple their $699 MSRP. These scalpers operate by buying all the inventory on launch to control the supply. If, in some wild fantasy, there was a reserve of GPUs fabricated before launch that would be released gradually, alongside continuous production, then we wouldn't have scalpers. But that would be ridiculous, Nvidia had to launch Ampere ASAP to prevent AMD's RDNA2 from launching before it. Keeping a reserve of cards in supply to release a couple of weeks after the initial launch, potentially a larger number than the launch inventory? Daft! Why would anyone ever do that, unless, of course, they valued customer experience more than being technically first for everything?
Well, if Nvidia is mistreating me, then I suppose I could just buy AMD graphics... oh wait, for years cards branded AMD Radeon brand lagged behind Nvidia's GeForce cards in terms of performance, efficiency, and often even value. Radeon also doesn't have CUDA, which means you have to rely on the less efficient and less popular OpenCL if you want to accelerate your code. Forget about machine learning and neural networks, Nvidia runs the show there. See the problem yet? Monopolies are illegal for a reason, and while technically a PC gamer or computer scientist could buy an AMD card or use Intel HD Graphics (cringe), Nvidia has been the undisputed king of performance for the better part of the decade, and in all likelihood, the gap should only continue to grow. The answer? I would hate Nvidia to be split up, and that probably won't happen, but we need to see AMD bring the heat. Uncle Sam can't just decide to make a top-of-the-line GPU or spin up a company to rival Nvidia. Lisa Su, use your CEO powers to invest more money in AMD's GPU development, because even though I'm an Nvidia fan in terms of graphics, I'm only a fan because I don't want second best. Honestly, we don't want to go to Intel for graphics, do we?
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DanielI'm a software engineer, volunteer IT support, amateur blogger, casual gamer, and tech enthusiast. I also love cars and the great outdoors. Archives
May 2021
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