Mr. Fox

LOL, I know, right? I only see a "Notify Me" link at the MSI Store page, no preorder, so maybe @win32asmguy can let you know how and where he did that. It may have been on the B&H Photo site rather than MSI. Knock it off, bro. I don't need that kind of bad influence. 🤣 I'm doing my best to keep a clear head. That's like talking about a love of liquor in the presence of a recovering alcoholic. I've talked myself out of it already, but temptation sucks.

I have no doubt as to the likelihood of some of the pallets mysteriously disappearing before they reached their final destinations. A lot probably disappeared before they got out of China. This is how many scalpers and criminal crypto mining operations get their inventory and it is usually an inside job somewhere along the path. I have been involved with claims on entire truckloads and shipping containers full of GPUs and other types of computers and electronics components being stolen.

It might be smart to just ride it a bit and not try too hard to grab a 5090 and see what actually plays out as 5090s begin to trickle into the hands of people that know how to use them. You know how the hype train tends to work. The YouTube circus usually swings back and forth between fanboys and haters and we don't know what is for real until real people get ahold of products we wonder about. I expect more people will soon figure out that paying bucks for no benefit is dumb and the value of used 4090s will plummet with the better-built versions of 5080 going for around $1200 or an FE for $999. While it is not the flagship, I think 5080 is actually priced to value in today's grossly inflated market. It is priced exactly where a 4090 should have been priced. First time in a very long time I have been able to identify a priced-to-value PC component. 5080 pricing is like an ice pick to the testicles of everyone that purchased a 4090 at or near its intended MSRP and like something worse for anyone that paid more. The 5090 would only be a good value if it were priced to match the intended 4090 MSRP. I think it is overvalued by around $1000 to be honest. It's sad that people are scrambling to pay that and allow them to get away with it, but that happens all the time. People are always eager to overpay for things they want because desire and passion always trump good sense. I am guilty of it and most of us here are, but I think I might have found the bottom to my tolerance in terms of volunteering as a victim for price gouging.

The only logical reason I would have to do it is to profit on the sale and have a nice chunk of extra money left over after purchasing the 5080. It would be of no functional benefit. But, that's a better idea (to me) than buying a 5090. 4090 is a better GPU than 5080, but they are close enough to the same performance that it wouldn't matter. I may actually consider doing that as long as I don't have to resort to selling it on eBag. I'd only offer it for sale in our marketplace here or at overclock.net.

Maybe I will sell my Gigabutt 4090 and buy a 5080 and use the leftover cash to buy gold and silver. At going rates I could probably sell it for $2,000 to a moron. There seems to be no shortage of them.

He is definitely a legend in his own mind. Here is a pictorial representation of abject stupidity in terms of pricing. Ridiculous.

He is rarely able to see things from another perspective. While he is often correct, he tends to be myopic.

It may have also been an issue with the monitoring hardware he was using showing erroneous data since it wasn't even released yet. MSI Afterburner and HWiNFO64 may not be getting accurate data or interpreting it incorrectly. Hard to know for sure. ASUS may have sent him a wonky GPU sample, too.

I only grabbed the screenshot and never made an effort to add it to cart since I had no intention of purchasing it and don't want to add to anyone else's frustration that is trying to. I cannot remember the last time I purchased something at Best Buy, in-store or online. As a general rule they do not sell PC products that I am interested in purchasing, and in the rare circumstance they do it is never in stock. I do not "dislike" Best Buy, but it never seems to work out that they are an option for me for the reasons mentioned above.

There are going to be lots of unhappy GPU shoppers. Local BB only has the least-desirable 5080 available, all others sold out and all of the 5090 show sold out. Looking at the stock at Microcenters being so low, it's probably accurate. I bet they had fewer than 5 at any store. I would not buy the FE even if I wanted a 5080/5090. Very undesirable design.

It's really insane. Great for those that bought one and don't want to take a loss at resale. But, really very bad for everyone else in the world. Anyone that sold a 4090 to help offset the cost of a 5090 probably would not be able to replace their 4090 without paying more if they changed their mind about 5090.

Don't sell your 4090 for less than what you paid for it new +10%. Or, don't even sell it. @electrosoft in 20/20 hindsight do you wish you had not sold your 4090?

I'm definitely not planning on buying a 5090. There is just no value whatsoever in it at the current pricing. I think this is also going to keep the used resale prices of desirable 30- and 40-series GPUs at or above their original new price as they currently are. Very bad days to be a PC enthusiast of any kind. If I had to buy a new GPU the only one that makes a lick of sense based on price is 5080. That is more or less the functional equivalent of buying a rebranded 4090 with less VRAM for $1000-$1250 (excluding the A$$zeus priced-for-idiots options). Paying roughly double for 5090 while getting a 20-25% performance gain, at best, just isn't worth considering. I'm glad I have two 4090s and aa 3090 Ti. No need to do anything. This industry needs a hard reset on everything. The entire PC overclocking enthusiast/PC gamer realm has pretty much just turned into a gigantic clown show with grossly overvalued parts that are mostly sucky trash when you pull back the curtain. Looking at stock photos of 50-series GPUs online, a whole lot of ithem even look pretty chintzy. The joke is on consumer more than ever before.

That gives me the greatest amount of pause because I do like RT a lot. Even though I do not play games that often, when I do I gravitate towards FPS titles that have ray tracing and/or path tracing. It makes things look so much better and when the GPU does not support it I noticed immediately. Things look so much more cartoonish without it.

I agree with you 100%, but I don't think we will see lots of games that cater to owners of $2000+ GPUs with 16GB+ VRAM and 4K high refreshrate displays because we that have those things are not the norm. We are in the minority and that would limit game sales to a great degree. Game devs will make games that can be run in a satisfying manner on much weaker hardware for a long time because making money is the most important thing. Minimum and recommended system requirements will not likely require 16GB+ of VRAM because it would exclude too many customers. The other thing to consider is there is often very little visual difference discernable between medium and high or high and ultra settings in most games. So, while you might tap out the VRAM with all of the settings cranked to the max, toning down the settings a bit to fit within the VRAM capacity might have almost no distiguishable difference visually. Sometimes the only remarkable difference in the experience is a reduction in FPS. This is something those of us that can do will do, but not something anyone actually "needs" to do. As sad as I am to have to admit it, overclockers are even more of a niche minority than self-proclaimed "hardcore gamers" (whatever that means) and what overclockers want matters even less to game developers and hardware manufacturers. At the end of the day they don't care about what anyone wants, they just want to make lots of money selling us what they want us to have. The prevalence of 4-DIMM trash motherboards and near-absence of 2-DIMM boards is evidence that they don't really care about what is best or most desired by those who know what works best.

Sign me up to get screwed, LOL. Let me stand in line and wait for my abusers to have their way with me, please. How 'bout no. Hopefully none of those too far back in line to get what they want will have a come-undone and do something even more crazy than camping in line for overpriced products. The sense of entitlement is scary strong in some of the mentally under-developed and emotionally defective members of society. Edit: Excluding those with the A$$zeus ROG tax applied, looks like the AIB 5080 pricing is ~$1200. Not great, but also not totally unexpected. Paying twice as much for 5090 with such a small difference in results will be hard to rationalize as prudent. https://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.aspx?N=4294966937&NTK=all&sortby=pricehigh I doubt that will be a big problem. Game developers are not going to release games that only run well on $2000+ video cards. There wouldn't be enough game-buying customers to stay in business. It is very rare to see games that don't function at an acceptable level with GPUs that are 5+ generations old, or even older. The 1080 (circa 2016) still does a respectable job at playing most games well with decent quality settings below 4K. Most of the people buying games have older hardware and play at 1080p or 1440p. A ton of them are still using even weaker slightly newer products like RX 580 and GTX 1660 Super.

We are living in strange days, aren't we? Unprecendented obscene and absurd prices flanked by general disappointment with rather lackluster products. Lackluster is a lot more tolerable when you're not getting financially ransacked and shanked in the wallet. And, it's all of them in the mix, not just one shameless brand financially exploiting their popularity. Almost everything new is a poor value now and only worth about half the going price.

Fakeness is the driving force being everything AI. Perception versus reality. Key word: artificial. Fake does not necessarily mean bad, but fake is bad when you don't know the difference due to deception. Welcome to The Matrix.

So, if (IF) it actually sells for $1200~ for non-FE options it looks like the 5080 is the only financially intelligent choice this time around. Even if it did not soundly beat the 4080S (which it does) the price would make it better than the 4080S or even the 4090 based on the minuscule performance benefit of the 4090 over 5080. $1000 less for almost as much. The gap in performance between 5080, 4080S and 4090 is too small for spending more to make any sense. But, if the price of leftover 4080S stock (if there is any) falls to less than 5080 then 4080S will make more sense. And, 7900 XTX won't make any sense unless it drops to the neighborhood of $600-$650.

I thought of that too. That would not be a smart naming idea from MSI, but I digress. Smart doesn't seem to fit anything in technology space. So, if they release any "Super" GPUs on the refresh MSI would have to call them Super Super OC, LOL. SOC even sounds hokie. Probably not enough of an overclock for them to tag it XOC. No, we cannot trust the leaker or Franky. But, I would bet on the leaker if I were forced to choose. So, if the 9070 XT is going to be falling into the 4070 Ti/4080 performance range it really needs to come in closer to $600 and the 9070 like around $500. Even if it were to match 4080 performance there would still be the missing features and comparatively weak ray tracing performance. Maybe it will help drive down the prices of 3090 Ti, 3090 and 3080 back to realistic values. What those cards are typically still selling for is just totally absurd. $2500 for a 5090 is retarded, but not more idiotic than $1500 for 3090, 3090 Ti and 4080. Ludicrous. That will make 9070 XT attractive if it is priced under $700. Maybe buy two of them for the price of one RTX competitor. Grab some popcorn. The next 45 to 60 days is going to be pretty entertaining. I think I'm good for this GPU generation. I'm hoping I can get lucky and snag another certified refurbished EVGA 3090 Ti FTW3 for $700 (paid $800 for this one from NewEgg) so I can revisit the SLI fun from the good old days. It would be interesting to see how 4090 and 5090 fare against 3090 Ti SLI.

This is a cool open bench other than the undesirable vertical motherboard positioning. (Horizontal whenver possible is always better, but it is still kind of neat product in terms of construction.) So, if the marketing email I received from MSI and the specs published on their web store is accurate, the 5080 GDDR7 speed will be faster than the 5090 GDDR7 memory speed. And, what's the deal with the silly "SOC" name they are tacking onto the end of some 5080 and 5090 SKU names? Is that just more stupid AI mumbo-jumbo to get people excited about something that doesn't matter and doesn't make it any better? Or, is there something about "SOC" that should actually matter to people that don't give a rat's butt about AI? Are they hijacking the traditional use of the acronym "SOC" to mean something different in MSI lingo? Not all of them are tagged SOC. If it actually is "System on a Chip" then why are only select SKUs labeled SOC? I haven't read or heard anything that suggests what MSI's use of SOC even means, so I asked here: Questions on MSI 50-Series (Blackwell) GPU Product Stack

All of the blocks and restrictions the Green Goblin has put in place have done a lot to create opportunities for user-induced damage to video cards. If the norm were that all GPUs we're unlocked like Galax HOF and K|NGP|N cards there would be no shunt mods or volt mods or firmware mods and cross-flashing issues. The average gamerboy would behave exactly like they already do in terms of accessing the BIOS and making adjustments... Paralyzed by ignorance and fear of the unknown, and always in too much of a hurry to play games to be bothered with anything more complicated than a one-click solution. The lockdowns and crippling tactics are what drive the efforts by the adventurous overclockers to have something awesome that should have been awesome (but wasn't) before they paid for it. Motherboard manufacturers would be financially crucified by enthusiasts and would never get away with the same kind of control freak nonsense, and I don't know why video card manufacturers are allowed to. Everyone keeps opening their wallet for overpriced crippled trash.

Thanks, Brother. Fun fact: next year my age and year of birth will be the same. I will have to wait another 100 years for that to happen again.

First one is very reminiscent of Ronnie James Dio. Funny to see a song about pizza, LOL.

My next build, if and when there is one, will likely be a HEDT with 3090 Ti SLI. New and shiny is looking less pretty all the time. Very valid points about why making a 5090 FE waterblock is going to be an unattractive proposition. I suspect this will be a side benefit for NVIDIA.