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How To Get a RTX 3080/3090 Practical Advice (Updated 22/09/20)

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
OK fellow consumers and friends. I've been well-invested in this 3080 launch debacle, probably more than most since I already sold my RTX 2080 Ti so I'm now using an i9 9900K integrated graphics, GeForce Now, PS4 and Xbox Cloud Gaming for my kicks. 

As you may or may not know, Nvidia have acted pretty naively with the 3080 launch considering they should have expected bots and scalpers to take all the stock, and high demand after their own hype. However, thankfully they are revoking suspicious orders manually. You can see a stock checker for Digital River (European handlers) which seems to be rising hourly because this process obviously takes time.

The issue now then is how does Nvidia move forwards in announcing stock availability? They surely can't expect people to sit on their website and press F5 all day. How do they prevent the bots from taking all the stock again? In their statement, they did mention emails being sent out when stock becomes available, however faith in that system seems low considering the email notifications for the launch were sent out 1 hour after the launch time previously, by which time the stock was long gone. Perhaps then this will be the only way to buy from them via the email link so make sure you sign-up to be notified.

There's some reason to be encouraged though. Nvidia are looking into ways to prevent bot/scalper purchases even if adding a captcha to the store front. But bots can pass those checks, so I hope they figure something else out. Either way, I expect a 3080 relaunch in the coming days rather than them trickling out stock. How they handle it though is anyone's guess. Some retailers are taking pre-orders now but in a queue system, so you can take the gamble of pre-ordering now and waiting your turn. It could be weeks or months though. There's light at the end of the tunnel, as Nvidia is resupplying vendors daily. Yes, that's right, "daily" using their own words. This is encouraging then and means the wait might not be as long as you think. 

My advice though moving forwards then and especially if you are after a 3090 next week is to not put all your faith in getting the Founder's Edition cards and go for an aftermarket version. There is decidedly less interest in the 3090 though from my research, but stock levels are likely to be much less than the 3080. The problem I see with the Nvidia website is I think stock will naturally be extremely limited so even if you're not competing with Bots, your competing with like-minded consumers en-mass. I also don't believe Nvidia will have a tangible solution to the bot/scalper issue by next-week (but they have said they've improved things in a recent update to the store). Sure, it's easy to code re-captcha into a store-front but I am not confident this method can eliminate bots entirely. There is also no guarantee that their website won't "break" again like it did yesterday.

In my experience monitoring the 3080 launch, I found that alternative retailers offered the best chance of securing cards. Several hours after launch I saw pre-orders open for next day, and even a couple of cards in stock.  Some might suggest it's prudent to have more than one store page open in your browser. This might help. Getting alerts might help as well. There are several sites which offer this

Either way, the bottom line is Nvidia wants your business and if the bots/scalpers get them all, then the negative press shrouds them, so it's not a case of they are happy because they got the money anyway. There's enough legitimate customers to buy all the stock, and I would wager they prefer that and moving forwards against AMD who are poised to announce their own wares at the start and end of October. Now, some folks might want to wait for that and then make an informed choice (depending on the RX 6000 series specs). 

Also this is day one. Expect things to level-out over the coming weeks. Sure, the supply chains have been affected by COVID-19, but manufacturing still continues and there's plentiful resources available to large companies such as Nvidia.  Some people are concerned they won't have a new card for the release of Cyberpunk 2077. That's one of this year's most anticipated titles (and showcased during the 30 series reveal). I strongly believe that by the game's November 19th launch there will be plenty 30 series cards available. So a bit of patience will calm your nerves.  Also, word is that a greater amount of inventory will be available in October.

- Keep an eye on EVGA Jason's Twitter feed as he seems to announce when EVGA have stock US or EVGA have stock EUR. They are getting new drops every few days I believe. They are also manually reviewing orders and cancelling bot orders.


Happy Hunting.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.
34 REPLIES 34

kojack
MVP
MVP


probably more than most since I already sold my RTX 2080 Ti so I'm now using an i9 9900K integrated graphics, PS4 and Xbox Cloud Gaming for my kicks.


That's one reason why I never sell anything, I've always got backups. 🙂 I've probably still got my Nvidia Riva TNT here somewhere if I get really desperate.

Somebody wrote a bot script that fucks with scalpers on ebay. It makes fake accounts then starts an unrealistic bidding war on 3000 series cards, boosting the price way too high, then of course not paying.

qfvte4ubwxt4.jpg


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Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
In Other news, Nvidia rep said they will have more cards available this week but will be emailing people on the notify list rather than giving a time and release day. I assume they will have a counter-attack for bots in place. They will also be limiting to one card per customer and performing more checks at POS.

Other retailers are expecting more stock this week but in very small quantities. They expect September will remain pretty dry for new stock but expect more inventory in October.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

nalex66
MVP
MVP
When I bought my GTX 1080, I had to chase stock for about a month after release. I was hoping to avoid that this time around. Maybe I'll just forget about it for a few weeks and try again in October. (Or, maybe I'll keep checking stock at all the e-retailers several times a day until it drives me crazy.)

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


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RuneSR2
Grand Champion

kojack said:



probably more than most since I already sold my RTX 2080 Ti so I'm now using an i9 9900K integrated graphics, PS4 and Xbox Cloud Gaming for my kicks.


That's one reason why I never sell anything, I've always got backups. 🙂 I've probably still got my Nvidia Riva TNT here somewhere if I get really desperate.



Don't be hasty selling those TNT cards, it's only been like 20 years, but maybe I should consider selling my 2 Voodoo 2 cards in SLI, sometimes I do get the feeling that they have become slightly outdated  🙂 Then again, need them for Descent 2, GlQuake and the original Tomb Raider - and they still work  o:)

Back to the GTX 1080, also had trouble with that one due to miners in 2017, had to wait several weeks for it. Guess 3080 is nothing out of the ordinary. 

Maybe being sold out is a sign from the Gods or similar Divine Powers trying to tell impatient mortals to wait for Big Navi and the 3080 20GB  o:)

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

Luciferous
Consultant

kojack said:



probably more than most since I already sold my RTX 2080 Ti so I'm now using an i9 9900K integrated graphics, PS4 and Xbox Cloud Gaming for my kicks.


That's one reason why I never sell anything, I've always got backups. 🙂 I've probably still got my Nvidia Riva TNT here somewhere if I get really desperate.

Somebody wrote a bot script that fucks with scalpers on ebay. It makes fake accounts then starts an unrealistic bidding war on 3000 series cards, boosting the price way too high, then of course not paying.

qfvte4ubwxt4.jpg




Would have loved to see their greedy little faces when they first realised it was fake ?

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
EVGA has said that this week they are expecting 1000s of new stock for distribution. They also said they are changing the design of the card where the red marking will be replaced with black after lots of complaints.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary

GeForce RTX 3080 Launch: What Happened? You Asked, We Answered.

By NVIDIA on September 21, 2020 | Featured Stories

Last week's GeForce RTX 3080 launch was simultaneously the best GPU launch ever and the most frustrating.

The reception to our NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPUs has been off the charts and driven interest to heights we’ve never previously experienced. A few examples compared to our previous launch -  4 times the unique visitors to our website, 10 times the peak web requests per second, and more than 15 times the out clicks to partner pages.

We expected the best ever demand for the RTX 30-series, but the enthusiasm was overwhelming. We were not prepared for this level, nor were our partners. We apologize for this.

Our community has asked questions in the past few days since the launch. Jensen’s personal email has been flooded with requests to help. He wants everyone to know he is working with the team.

What happened? I was really excited for the GeForce RTX 3080, but the launch has made it near impossible to find one and this is really disappointing.

The demand for the GeForce RTX 3080 was truly unprecedented. We and our partners underestimated it.

Over 50 major global retailers had inventory on the day of launch. Our retail partners reported record traffic to their sites, in many cases exceeding Black Friday. This caused crashes, delays and other issues for their customers. We knew the GeForce RTX 3080 would be popular, but none of us expected that much traffic on the first day.

What’s the overall GeForce RTX 3080 stock situation?

The GeForce RTX 3080 is in full production. We began shipping GPUs to our partners in August, and have been increasing the supply weekly. Partners are also ramping up capacity to meet the unprecedented demand. We understand that many gamers are unable to buy a GeForce RTX 3080 right now and we are doing everything we can to catch up quickly. Keep checking in with your favorite retailer to be notified of availability. You may use the GeForce RTX 3080 product finder to find available cards at local retailers.

Why does availability start with such low inventory? Why not wait until more cards are produced?

We have great supply - just not for this level of demand. It is typical for initial demand to exceed supply for our new GPUs. Our global network of partners are ramping as hard as they can to get the new GPUs to the more than 100 million GeForce gamers around the world. Our philosophy has always been to get the latest technology into the hands of gamers as fast as possible. As we race to build more GeForce RTX 3080s, we suggest not buying from opportunistic resellers who are attempting to take advantage of the current situation.

What changes are you making to the NVIDIA Store moving forward?

As with many other etailers, the NVIDIA Store was also overrun with malicious bots and resellers. To combat this challenge we have made the following changes: we moved our NVIDIA Store to a dedicated environment, with increased capacity and more bot protection. We updated the code to be more efficient on the server load. We integrated CAPTCHA to the checkout flow to help offset the use of bots. We implemented additional security protections to the store APIs. And more efforts are underway.

You said the NVIDIA store would have GeForce RTX 3080s at 6 a.m. on September 17th, why did the store immediately go from “notify me” to “out of stock”?

At 6 a.m. pacific we attempted to push the NVIDIA store live.  Instantly, the NVIDIA store was inundated with over 10 times the traffic of our previous generation launch, which took our internal systems to a crawl and encountered an error preventing sales from starting properly at 6:00am pacific. We were able to resolve the issues and process orders later than planned.

I saw individuals who use bots/scripts celebrating the purchase of multiple GeForce RTX 3080 GPUs! Did bots get all of the available supply?

No. While individuals using bots may have shown images of email inboxes filled with confirmed orders, NVIDIA has cancelled hundreds of orders manually before they were able to ship.

Why did the NVIDIA Store not have any preventative measures in place to battle bots (i.e. CAPTCHA,etc)?

The NVIDIA Store had many behind-the-scenes security measures in place which proved sufficient for previous launches. This is the first time that we have seen bots at this scale and sophistication. Since launch, we have been quickly working on numerous security upgrades, including CAPTCHA. We will also continue to manually monitor purchases to help ensure cards get in the hands of legitimate consumers.

Why did NVIDIA send “Notify Me” emails knowing that RTX 3080 FE was out of stock?

We intended for “Notify Me” emails to go out at 6:00 a.m. with the targeted start of availability. Due to the extreme demand and site traffic, we were unable to properly process orders on time. The emails were held back until the errors were resolved later than morning. Still, inventory sold out very quickly, so we were sold out by time most people opened their emails. In retrospect, we should not have sent the “Notify Me” emails.

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Thank you for listening, and thank you for your continued support as we navigate through this. We are excited that you are excited about the GeForce RTX 3080 and we are committed to do everything possible to catch up to the demand as quickly as we can.



System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
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Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
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Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Well this makes me much more confident getting a 3090 on Thursday. Not because of slower bots, but more people holding out for the 3080 instead of buying the 3090.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.