- Aug 19, 2019
- 3,044
- 11,988
I had an acceptable 2080 (got it for a hell of a bargain), and mid-price hikes I got my hands on a 3090FE. Paid far, far more than I should have, there's no doubts about that, but it was absolutely worth it. The improvement in RTX performance alone made CP2077 go from slide show to fully playable with all the effects turned on and cranked up to max. If the 40-series cards have a decent RTX core boost to them as well, it must be buttery smooth now (at 3440x1440 resolution).
The crypto miners scraping up every card they could get, coupled with COVID devastating the supply lines globally, really put a hurt on the average gamer, there's no question, but during that same time (thanks, NewEgg!) I was also able to score both a 3070 and a 3080 at their proper prices, which I then passed on to others at no markup (because i was still working out the deal on my 3090 with a local resident).
If one is doing VN renders, rather than high-framerate gaming, I suspect the shortages impacted them a fair bit less, except as in the case when one's card has a meltdown and you've suddenly lost all your rendering power. The secondary problem here is that the companies have simply gotten greedy beyond belief. They were so accustom to that fine crypto market (despite them making token efforts to hinder it) and the scalpers clearing shelves that they decided to cut out the middle man and jack their prices up directly. Behold, the most popular coin at the time (Etherium) moves away from the GPU mining, dropping actual demand significantly, and people have no interest in paying ridiculous rates for new hardware that's priced as if it's still a scalper's market.
Even if I had the money to casually throw at a new card right now, I don't think I would. I'll wait at least until the 50 or 60 series cards come out, unless I start making stupid money again.
