PC Hardware Talk Megathread

[Meelapo]

In anticipation of the coming 50 series I sold my 4090. The person picking it up said that they were going to use it for machine learning. I’m not very knowledgeable in that area. What machine learning would one typically do with a 4090? Why would you want to do it? There must be some motive around doing machine learning to justify al the cost of a 4090. Just curious as to the what and why.

[accord1999]

The "cheap" price of the 4090 is the incentive; its professional sibling the RTX 6000 (which uses the same AD102 chip) retails for around $12K and the 4090 is generally competitive in compute/ML if your memory usage is within the 24 GB range.

[Meelapo]

Originally Posted by accord1999

The "cheap" price of the 4090 is the incentive; its professional sibling the RTX 6000 (which uses the same AD102 chip) retails for around $12K and the 4090 is generally competitive in compute/ML if your memory usage is within the 24 GB range.

Okay. But why would someone need this? What ML work would they be doing? I can’t wrap my head around it. Buying a GPU for something like bitcoin mining is straightforward; you’re using it to turn a profit. But with ML…are people using it to generate money or just create their own ChatGPT for fun?

[photon]

They could be running Stable Diffusion locally to generate artwork locally rather than in the cloud.

I wonder if there's any money to be made renting out GPU time to people, might be a market for doing that cheaper than getting them off of Amazon. Market might be limited though due to the memory limitations.

As you say they could be training their own AI or LLM for a project.

Or running an AI to win at poker online??

[photon]

5090 is rumoured to be 40% more than the 4090 was.. a $3000 video card???

I guess it depends on what a 4090 would sell for.. New ones are like $2500+ on MemEx. Would a used FE one be worth that much since some people might want that version?

Just wondering if I should do what you did Meelapo, get enough for the 4090 now before the 5090 is officially announced and the upgrade doesn't feel so bad.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Meelapo

Okay. But why would someone need this? What ML work would they be doing? I can’t wrap my head around it. Buying a GPU for something like bitcoin mining is straightforward; you’re using it to turn a profit. But with ML…are people using it to generate money or just create their own ChatGPT for fun?

Sorry for misunderstanding your question. I think photon's comment is probably the most likely, a content creator using it for their work.

Could also be a grad student using AI for their research and wanting to stretch their grant money, or an enthusiast who's self-learning about AI for their own personal interest or to enhance their resume.

Originally Posted by photon

Just wondering if I should do what you did Meelapo, get enough for the 4090 now before the 5090 is officially announced and the upgrade doesn't feel so bad.

I was just checking out prices for the 4090 and they seem to be completely out of stock at Memory Express, Best Buy and Newegg. You may be able to get a decent price for it; but the 5090 will probably also take awhile to be readily available so you could be stuck gaming like a console peasant for awhile.

[photon]

Yeah I guess that's the risk, though I did get a couple of metroidvanias for Christmas plus a new Diablo IV season is coming so my nephew's 2060 that I borrowed could probably get me by if I miss the first wave.

Maybe I'll throw it out there for high $$ and see if I get any bites.

[chemgear]

So CES is in a week and the 5080 comes first. Then the 5090 later. Hopefully people jump all over the weaker one first and the 5090 is easier to get.

[DownInFlames]

I'm hoping tons of people buy the Intel B580 so they stay in the market. Competition good!



I'm still boycotting Nvidia but I mostly play indie games these days so I'm not missing anything.

[Meelapo]

Originally Posted by accord1999

I was just checking out prices for the 4090 and they seem to be completely out of stock at Memory Express, Best Buy and Newegg. You may be able to get a decent price for it; but the 5090 will probably also take awhile to be readily available so you could be stuck gaming like a console peasant for awhile.

Originally Posted by photon

Yeah I guess that's the risk, though I did get a couple of metroidvanias for Christmas plus a new Diablo IV season is coming so my nephew's 2060 that I borrowed could probably get me by if I miss the first wave.

Maybe I'll throw it out there for high $$ and see if I get any bites.

Originally Posted by photon

Just wondering if I should do what you did Meelapo, get enough for the 4090 now before the 5090 is officially announced and the upgrade doesn't feel so bad.

I put it on Kijiji for $2300 and received several inquiries within hours of the post. I sold it the next day for $2200. So I think $50 less than what I bought it for which I thought was fine. Looking across Reddit and Resetera and eBay people seem to be paying $200-300 (US) above original MSRP. But those sales might be in higher demand areas compared to Calgary. I've also never used eBay to sell anything and it seems like shipping costs would be prohibitive. I may have been able to sell it for a bit more if I waited but I figured getting pretty much what I paid for it was more than fair.

My plan is to use the $2200 + $1000 I have with my PSA from work to fund the card. I truly hope it doesn't cost more than $3200 but if it does then I hope I don't have to fork over too much extra.

Availability is the only other huge thing. Getting the 4090 after the initial sales date was a pain. I ended up buying a Zotac, then an MSI from Best Buy before I finally finding an FE using Discord alerts. Memory Express was a waste as they wanted money upfront and said they were rarely getting stock in.

A friend of mine was able to buy one when Best Buy started selling them and he didn't have too much of an issue so I'm hoping it's the same this year. I'm glad the 5080 is coming out before the 5090 as that might give us a better indication which version as the best card in terms of cooling, fan noise, coil whine, etc. Of course, the 5090 will be a different beast but the 5080 reviews should give us a better indication which company has the best product. I'd still prefer the FE card.

For the time being, the Steam Deck is taking me through my gaming journey so far this year.

[Meelapo]

Some fun links for today:

AMD Keynote @ 12:00PM MST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJoaV5NnPtw
Nvidia Keynote @ 7:30PM MST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k82RwXqZHY8

[combustiblefuel]

Originally Posted by Meelapo

I *snip*

For the time being, the Steam Deck is taking me through my gaming journey so far this year.

How long ago did you sell your 4090? What model did you have? That kinda resale had me pondering If I should sell mine or not. I ordered a asus ryjun waterblock that's due to arrive today so I gotta rip my rig apart to install that. While it's apart I'm now debating putting the stock cooler back on to sell. I'm in a smaller town tho so I don't think it's going to move that fast tho. I also should have new monitor arriving today (asus pg32ucdp) as I wasn't planning on selling but that kinda resale pricing is almost too good to pass unless the 5090 is over 3200 . The plan was to keep the 4090 for the wife because I didn't think the 4090s were actually selling at those high prices .


Mmhmmm.. lots to consider now.

[Meelapo]

Originally Posted by combustiblefuel

How long ago did you sell your 4090? What model did you have? That kinda resale had me pondering If I should sell mine or not. I ordered a asus ryjun waterblock that's due to arrive today so I gotta rip my rig apart to install that. While it's apart I'm now debating putting the stock cooler back on to sell. I'm in a smaller town tho so I don't think it's going to move that fast tho. I also should have new monitor arriving today (asus pg32ucdp) as I wasn't planning on selling but that kinda resale pricing is almost too good to pass unless the 5090 is over 3200 . The plan was to keep the 4090 for the wife because I didn't think the 4090s were actually selling at those high prices .


Mmhmmm.. lots to consider now.

Good questions. I should have put them into my original post.

Posted: December 27th
Sold: December 28th

Model: 4090 FE. I had all of the original packaging including the shipping box.

I'm going to assume that you could probably sell your 4090 for a bit more if it's one of the third party cards vs an FE just because they were more expensive to purchase.

You may as well wait a few more hours to see what Nvidia announces tonight and go from there.

[combustiblefuel]

Originally Posted by Meelapo

Good questions. I should have put them into my original post.

Posted: December 27th
Sold: December 28th

Model: 4090 FE. I had all of the original packaging including the shipping box.

I'm going to assume that you could probably sell your 4090 for a bit more if it's one of the third party cards vs an FE just because they were more expensive to purchase.

You may as well wait a few more hours to see what Nvidia announces tonight and go from there.

It's a tuf 4090. I cam to that conclusion too. I'll probably just buy it out right and keep the 4090 as it will transplant in to the wife's water cooled build or the entertainment rooms water cooled pc.

I'm going to guess the prices are going to be so high on the new cards that selling a 4090 at any time will probably get decent money for a 24gb card.

[combustiblefuel]

Well got the asus 32 inch woled.

It is definitely a nice monitor and the dual mode is pretty cool after preliminary testing. The smaller size is going to need some adjustment from the lg 45 but 144 ppi vs 86 ppi is definitely an upgrade. Even the oled g9 and the flex 42 are only 104ppi.

The 480hz mode isn't that bad since it's about the same ppi I was using . I know you can't see that many frames but it's so smooth . It almost *feels* IMO like it slows down fast gameplay to make better decisions if that makes sense.
Overall pretty happy.

[chemgear]

$2000 USD it is. Too bad the Canadian dollar is being driven into the ground.

[photon]

$1999US for a 5090 and they say it's twice as fast as a 4090.. and they said the 5070 is supposed to be the same speed as a 4090.

5090 is $1999, 5080 is $999, 5070Ti is $749, 5070 is $549

Man the PCB on the new cards is crazy small:

[combustiblefuel]

Originally Posted by chemgear

$2000 USD it is. Too bad the Canadian dollar is being driven into the ground.

Yup, I paid 2400 for my tuf card 2 years ago.

Also who believes the 5070 is going to get 4090 performance? They kept saying it's with the help of Ai translation " If you use frame gen and heavy dlss4" .

I might believe the 5080 might keep up as most gens that's the case, but 4 positions down the lineup in terms as raw razterization? I don't know about that . Let's see some independent testing.


On the good side of things he did say there should be no problem getting any cards you want. Maybe that's why they waited 4 months later than usual. Just stock piled them all so they flood the market all at once then when AMD or Intel release better cards everyone has already bought a Nvidia card at every price range.

[photon]

One interesting thing is I was worried about the 5090 being too big, the 4090 barely fits into the case that I'm looking to do a smaller build in but they said the 5090 FE is a 2 slot card!

5080 is supposed to be 2x the 4080.

EDIT: Yeah I don't believe the 2x claims on pure rasterization, it's going to be with the AI and frame generation. I really don't like the frame generation.

[combustiblefuel]

So a founders 5090 is 2900 canadian .. yikes. Might be the only time I never buy a titian/90s class card.

I'm also going to watercool it of coarse .. I know ,I know completely unnecessary (probably) but that's just what I do .
So add a block plus an aib card price tax yikes..