News Grab an Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU With $116 Off While It's Still In Stock: Real Deals

[JarredWaltonGPU]

But... What do EVGA, MSI, PNY and XFX stand for? : D

EVGA: Excellent Very Good Adapters
MSI: Masterful Super Integrators
PNY: Pretty Neat, Yo
XFX: Xtreme Fast Xcitement

Pretty sure those are correct, but feel free to provide alternative definitions.

 

[InvalidError]

How about don't grab an RTX 3080 until it's a lot closer to $699, the price it's supposed to be, not $1,320. I guess that doesn't make for a clickbait headline to encourage people to follow sponsored links for heavily marked-up products though.

Yup, don't like the price, don't buy it.

There is no point in hyping a "$116 off" sale when the month-on-month pricing is trending down ~15%/month across most of the product stack and Nvidia just announced price cuts on its end, which should help sustain the downward trend.

You could always buy a GPU now, then return it at the end of the refund window to get price-matched against the price drop. Rinse and repeat until prices stop dropping at such a rate.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Yup, don't like the price, don't buy it.

There is no point in hyping a "$116 off" sale when the month-on-month pricing is trending down ~15%/month across most of the product stack and Nvidia just announced price cuts on its end, which should help sustain the downward trend.

You could always buy a GPU now, then return it at the end of the refund window to get price-matched against the price drop. Rinse and repeat until prices stop dropping at such a rate.

Nvidia most certainly did not announce any price cuts on its end, and in fact that's just a bogus Videocardz rumor. I suspected as much but still reached out to my contacts. Those who responded basically said what you'd expect: Contracts are made months in advance by executives, they're not disclosed, and with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the uncertainty that creates, it's unlikely Nvidia would be dropping prices right now — officially or unofficially. It's almost like VC took the retail price drops and turned that into an "Nvidia cuts prices" article just to drum up traffic.

I suspect the rate of decline will slow down in the coming months, as shortages still exist, demand is still high, and Nvidia likely isn't ramping up production on soon-to-be-replaced Ampere models.

The card at hand, meanwhile, is still officially down in pricing and so it represents a "deal" of sorts. If it were a 10GB model, it would be a much bigger issue, but the 12GB cards have always had similar to 3080 Ti pricing.

 

[InvalidError]

I suspect the rate of decline will slow down in the coming months, as shortages still exist, demand is still high, and Nvidia likely isn't ramping up production on soon-to-be-replaced Ampere models.

Not going to feel or look like much of a replacement if next-gen comes with the sort of massive price hikes I'm expecting. They'll exist as a new price class above most of what currently exists.

 

[jmc124]

The card at hand, meanwhile, is still officially down in pricing and so it represents a "deal" of sorts. If it were a 10GB model, it would be a much bigger issue, but the 12GB cards have always had similar to 3080 Ti pricing.

How are you still trying to make this argument? The 3080 12GB FTW3 is now showing as in stock at evga.com for $1299. What am I missing here? Did EVGA change their naming conventions and the black cards are some how more performant than the FTW series cards?

Between 'hey guys it's not my job' and 'it's not cool to retract posts' from a Senior Editor, it feels like a lack of journalistic integrity. So please, help me out on this one.

 

[jmc124]

EVGA: Excellent Very Good Adapters
MSI: Masterful Super Integrators
PNY: Pretty Neat, Yo
XFX: Xtreme Fast Xcitement

Pretty sure those are correct, but feel free to provide alternative definitions.

This was a joke right?

EVGA: This one appears to be lost to the past, but it seems likely that in 1999 it was eVGA for e Video Graphics Adapter. See EVGAWeb_ShaneD's reply.
MSI: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
PNY says: The first memory modules were traded between Paris and New York, thus forming the acronym PNY.
XFX says: The brand name was derived from the experience that every gamer desires; Extreme Effects.

 

[helper800]

This was a joke right?

EVGA: This one appears to be lost to the past, but it seems likely that in 1999 it was eVGA for e Video Graphics Adapter. See EVGAWeb_ShaneD's reply.
MSI: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
PNY says: The first memory modules were traded between Paris and New York, thus forming the acronym PNY.
XFX says: The brand name was derived from the experience that every gamer desires; Extreme Effects.

Obviously was a joke.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

How are you still trying to make this argument? The 3080 12GB FTW3 is now showing as in stock at evga.com for $1299. What am I missing here? Did EVGA change their naming conventions and the black cards are some how more performant than the FTW series cards?

Between 'hey guys it's not my job' and 'it's not cool to retract posts' from a Senior Editor, it feels like a lack of journalistic integrity. So please, help me out on this one.

Things change. Was the EVGA card in stock at $1299 4-5 days ago when this was posted? If so, that was only $20 cheaper than direct from Amazon, and most people probably have to pay at least that much in shipping for EVGA.com (it was $21 with ground for my address). If you have Prime and get free shipping, the $20 difference comes out in the wash. And as I noted in my article posted around the same, the rate of decline for GPU prices is pretty fast right now. So to summarize:

1. It's a "deal" in that it was in stock at a reasonable price (based off MSRP) at the time of writing
2. Ecomm and deals are a fact of life with websites like Tom's Hardware. Unlike YouTubers, we don't get directly paid for advertising or by views/clicks, and deals help make up a lot of the gap.
3. The story is several days old now. If we edited every deals post to try and keep up with stock and changing prices, it would be a full-time job all on its own.

 

[jmc124]

Things change. Was the EVGA card in stock at $1299 4-5 days ago when this was posted? If so, that was only $20 cheaper than direct from Amazon, and most people probably have to pay at least that much in shipping for EVGA.com (it was $21 with ground for my address). If you have Prime and get free shipping, the $20 difference comes out in the wash. And as I noted in my article posted around the same, the rate of decline for GPU prices is pretty fast right now. So to summarize:

1. It's a "deal" in that it was in stock at a reasonable price (based off MSRP) at the time of writing
2. Ecomm and deals are a fact of life with websites like Tom's Hardware. Unlike YouTubers, we don't get directly paid for advertising or by views/clicks, and deals help make up a lot of the gap.
3. The story is several days old now. If we edited every deals post to try and keep up with stock and changing prices, it would be a full-time job all on its own.

I believe the card was in stock at EVGA when I first saw this, but it was also being sold by Amazon for the same price. The 'deal' wasn't even on the best-priced 12GB 3080 from EVGA on Amazon.

According to the threads timestamps, it took 42 minute for someone to point out the issues with the 'deal'. It's not like this sat for a week before anyone found it and they're now angry about old news.

EDIT: And I do get what you're saying. It makes me wish Tom had closed shop rather than sellout, but we all need to make a living.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I don’t see an end to any of this anytime soon in fact I see it getting worse and worse so don’t expect prices to be coming down probably ever

 

[helper800]

EDIT: And I do get what you're saying. It makes me wish Tom had closed shop rather than sellout, but we all need to make a living.

If you truly believe this then you do not understand the value of the public service Tom's provides to anyone that wants it for free. The pointless quibbling on your part about how a cheaper option existed at the time of the post even though it was also so temporary it was gone 1 hour or less after the post about this deal when this deal still had stock. Your argument is that the deal you found is essentially dealier than Tom's article even though they cost functionally the same and were both in the wind within a few hours of attention being brought to them. It is essentially trolling when you said Tom's shouldn't exist because they posted a temporary deal of a hot item.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

If you truly believe this then you do not understand the value of the public service Tom's provides to anyone that wants it for free. The pointless quibbling on your part about how a cheaper option existed at the time of the post even though it was also so temporary it was gone 1 hour or less after the post about this deal when this deal still had stock. Your argument is that the deal you found is essentially dealier than Tom's article even though they cost functionally the same and were both in the wild within a few hours of attention being brought to them. It is essentially trolling when you said Tom's shouldn't exist because they posted a temporary deal of a hot item.

This. 100%. My whole point in responding initially (the next day, not the initial post pointing out that it was the 3080 12GB and not the theoretically much cheaper 10GB model) was to basically say, "Look, we get it. Sorry you don't like deals posts. No one here really loves writing them, but we have a job to do. Don't like the deal, don't buy it. Simple as that." Just wait for Prime Day Deals and Black Friday Deals and Cyber Monday Deals! Our favorite times of the year! (Seriously, we hate them, but it's our freaking jobs so we have to do it.)

 

[cryoburner]

According to the threads timestamps, it took 42 minute for someone to point out the issues with the 'deal'. It's not like this sat for a week before anyone found it and they're now angry about old news.

To be fair, my argument would have been the same even if the card were a couple hundred dollars less. Selling a card that performs similar to the original model for hundreds of dollars more than that card's intended $700 MSRP is a poor value, and not something I would consider a "deal". Adding 2GB of extra VRAM to a 10GB card doesn't change that, as it's unlikely anyone would perceive any significant performance difference between the two. The only reason for doing that was to have an excuse to not sell cards near their original suggested pricing. Of course, resellers would have made it hard to get those cards near their intended price points anyway, though that doesn't change it being a poor value either way.

This was a joke right?

I'm pretty sure Jarred might be right on at least the PNY one. At the time their company was founded, "Pretty neat, yo!" was a widely used greeting among Parisians, so it only made sense to name their company that.

 

[InvalidError]

Adding 2GB of extra VRAM to a 10GB card doesn't change that, as it's unlikely anyone would perceive any significant performance difference between the two.

Those 2GB extra VRAM also come with two extra 32b memory channels for 20% extra bandwidth and concurrency which can certainly be handy, albeit only $100 handy at most instead of $500.

 

[cryoburner]

Those 2GB extra VRAM also come with two extra 32b memory channels for 20% extra bandwidth and concurrency which can certainly be handy, albeit only $100 handy at most instead of $500.

I'm aware that the extra memory chips provide a little extra performance, but again, not enough to result in a "significant performance difference" between the two. In graphically-demanding games at high resolutions, that typically only results in around a 5-10% difference in frame rates, and that kind of minor improvement generally isn't going to make for a noticeably better experience. For a gamer, the benefits of the extra VRAM won't likely be worth paying much for, and for someone that is needing lots of VRAM for non-gaming workloads, the 3090 might be a better choice. A $100 higher MSRP would probably be justifiable, but arguably not MSRPs in the $1000+ range. Especially since they seem to have essentially discontinued the original model in favor tacking on a small amount of VRAM to sell it at price points that make for a far worse value, assuming a card can be found near MSRP. Considering the cards would probably be marked up to similar prices by resellers anyway, increasing the MSRP may not have much of an effect on potential end-users in the near-term, but prices around those massively-inflated MSRPs are hardly what I'd consider a "deal".