re: Finch's Guide to Obtaining a GPU/CPU and Trading Thread

It’s possible, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Now, I don’t know if I would buy into the high end (3080+) this close to the end, but it I have an old card that barely works, I would grab a 3070 or so deeply on sale and then go from there.

There will absolutely still be bots, but damn, the 3000 series was a perfect storm. You had sky high demand due to both record crypto and Covid driving up interest in computer hardware. And at that point, there was zero bot protection and no order limits. So for the first month or so, bots bought everything. That drove demand even higher, which drove up prices, which drove more people to botting, which drove up demand…

I don’t think either AMD or NVIDIA want another shitstorm of bad press, so I think they are going to hold release a few weeks longer to stock up supply. I think retailers are going to start with very restrictive purchase limitations and bot protections.

Will everyone who wants one be able to buy a card? I very seriously doubt it. But two years ago, I woke up early and sat at my laptop hitting refresh on Nvidia’s site. And I watched the 3080fe go from “coming soon” to “out of stock” instantly. I genuinely don’t believe either company will let that happen again.

I recently bought and canceled one in Tuscaloosa. Thought a friend would want it and then couldn’t even make $50 on it resale, so said frick it

Jesus

quote:

---

I can’t be alone in Best Buy again. I was in there and decided to look at the GPUs. Well, they had a 3080FE in stock from an order that was cancelled. They asked if I wanted it. The answer was clearly yes.

ETA: I figured it was a sign that I was in there and that order was there. All canceled and stuff.

---

I can't remember offhand your level of tech sophistication, but if you want any help undervolting that bad boy, just let us know. The 3080FE loves the frick out of being undervolted.

ETA: Though I'll want Benny to take a crack at a tutorial first

quote:

---

Woot (Amazon) has a Zotac 3090 for $999. limit 3 per customer.

---

Why is it $500 below MSRP?

Thermals determine boost clock. For a bit of context, what is your gpu clock speed sitting around while you’re gaming at 80c?

Keep an eye on it. If you track your core clock during gaming (or during intense benchmarking), you’ll experience something called clock sag. Basically, your clock starts at X, and then as your gpu heats up, it starts to drop. Not uncommon for a 3080FE to start out around 1875mhz and then eventually get down to around 1800mhz once fully heat soaked.

By undervolting, you’re basically asking your card to clock higher at a lower voltage than default, which keeps it cooler. I can run a stress test or game for hours on end, and my core clock will sit at 1890mhz, which it draws at 900mv instead of the roughly (I’m not at home to check) 1050mv that clock is would normally draw. So I get moderately better than stock performance at moderately lower power draw and temperatures.

At its core, undervolting is a give and take between performance and power draw. You can get much better performance for the same power, much better temperatures for slightly reduced performance, or anything in between. Just depends on what your goals are. Ultimately, overclocking is good for benchmarking, but undervolting is better for gaming.

quote:

---

Posted by Message
Joshjrn

---

Thank you. Both of those posts make sense and I look forward to it. What is a good software to keep track of this? I usually just use Geforce Experience and watch the HUD.

I just downloaded MSI Afterburner. Working on EZBench.

From GeForce Experience, the GPU, running a 99% utilization, is at:

1890-1905 MHz
80C steady
2110 - 2121 fan rpm
297 - 314 watts
1.0 and/or 1.1 V