Haven't seen a line like this for a product launch probably ever. I've seen lines this big like, 30 minutes before one releases. But never 8 hours beforehand.
It's not as rare as people make it out to be, the steam survey proves that there are plenty of 3080 owners (0.86% of steam, which is a lot considering how many people use steam), it's just that there's REALLY high demand.
Had a coworker who got lucky in the refresh lottery for a 3080 launch edition at msrp.
we started high fiving, it was like winning a jackpot at a slot machine.
I just hope my 970 lasts another 6 years.
I thought about it but I assumed a lot of used GPUs would have been utterly thrashed by the previous owner for something like crypto-mining.
RTX 3080Ti. It is like ~5% faster than a 3080 non-Ti, but costs like ~30% more. But getting it at retail pricing is still almost half the price of what the scalpers want.
That's the only reason people are lining up. It's fucking impossible to buy any gpu right now.
comparing MSRP, it's about 10-15% faster and costs 70% (no typo) more - $700 -> $1200
edit: not to mention the base 3080 will already tank any PS5/XSX game that makes its way to PC, and good aftermarket models can overclock to probably reach the FE 3080Ti performance. the only real reason to get one is that extra VRAM
Yeah, it's likely not people upgrading from the 3080, it's probably people who wanted a 3080 or are buying in bulk to fucking mine bitcoin
I'm glad I got myself a RX 5700 XT in 2019 it'll hold me off for a few more years. I was using a 1050 ti prior to that so I'm not so bougie that I vomit as anything below ultra like some g*mers
As things are great deal honestly. I wonder if pcg*ming is dead long-term for the under 1000$ price point. My first rig in 2017 was 700-800 and was a great experience.
My sister for Christmas spent ~$1100 for a rig with a RX580. Which is insane to me
Right, people are using them to do puzzles that make bitcoins or whatever, someone tried explaining this to me once
Somebody contrived a type of math problem that can only be done by a computer chugging for like, fucking months. Doesn't really matter how that works. Once a specific computer solves one of these math problems, it's easy to verify that they're not lying, and actually solved it. So this big network of computers owned by Captain Planet villains declares that this person's account has +1 bit coin.
These bit coins are arbitrarily valued at a bunch of money. The high value is because people are excited about money laundering, and also price speculation.
That's pretty much all the important details.
The high value is because people are excited about money laundering, and also price speculation.
And because people spent a lot of money mining for that Bitcoin, so the feel like they are entitled to a relatively large sum of stinky fiat currency in exchange for it.
