this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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Yep, this basically sums up my experiences a couple months ago. I've been telling myself since about 2016 that I would save up to go all in and build a solid gaming desktop.
But then there were floods in southeast Asia hindering supplies where I lived. No biggie, they'd recover quick.
Then crypto took off and GPUs and some other hardware tripled or quadrupled in price. No biggie, it's a fad that will go away quick.
Then COVID destroyed production and distribution of computer hardware. No biggie, gives me time to save up more to afford these new crazy prices.
Then everyone needs GPUs for the AI craze, and prices went up even more. No biggie, I'll just...cope?
Finally, I was at the point of "Fuck it, I'm tired of waiting. I'm buying a 5080, even if it costs as much as 2 PS5s."
So I planned it out, made sure I had everything lined up to immediately snag one once they were available. And then day of:
Nvidia's store: Never had any in stock at any point.
Microcenter: In-store purchases only, and stores were given single-digit stock while hundreds of people queued up for days.
Newegg: Never loaded until their stock was all gone.
Best Buy: Had a very attractive "Add to Cart" button display for a period of about 10 minutes at random intervals throughout the day, which placed me into queues that all ended with me getting kicked out after a few minutes.
Amazon: Well, fuck Amazon, but they didn't have any either.
So then I thought, forget Nvidia. Just because their cards are dropping earlier in the year doesn't mean it's them or nothing. I'll just get an AMD card if Nvidia doesn't have stock by then.
And, well...here we are in this article.
PC gaming is the best deal, eh?
I assume that whatever you're running right now isn't terribly new if you've been thinking about upgrading for nine years.
The 5080 is a 16GB card. A quick skim on Amazon suggests that 16GB Nvidia cards are in short supply, but that you can get a 16GB AMD GPU without problems.
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/4982vs5721vs4917/Radeon-RX-7600-XT-vs-GeForce-RTX-5080-vs-Radeon-RX-7800-XT
They aren't quite as fast on the Passmark benchmark as the 5080, but they also cost a lot less (even if the 5080 were available), and I assume that they'd be a lot faster than whatever you're running now.
Could go with that (or something less-fancy) and then if you felt that you wanted to spend more for more performance, do so when GPUs become available.
To add a bit to the story, I did spring for a gaming laptop in 2021 because my 2013 MacBook was starting to show its age, and the model I bought came with a 2070 mobile GPU which has been fine playing newer games at modest settings at 1080p.
Laptops and prebuilts were basically the only affordable option in the pandemic, and I had a laptop need at the time. But for a while now it has still been a goal of mine to put together a good desktop. The last desktop I built was in 2010 (I snagged a GTX 580 GPU and felt like such hot shit then).
I’m so glad I built a high end computer last fall because I was lucky to afford it. Now my 4080 S used is now worth 600 dollars more than what I paid for it at MSRP.