Buy a Video Card Without Getting SCREWED
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,250 words · ~6 min read
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ah you know i love
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this shelf but
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kind of think of it when was the last time i actually bought
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a GPU i think it was i think it was during the last scrapyard wars
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you know maybe it's finally time to expand the
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collection you know i'm gonna go i'm gonna get
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caught up on street pricing here and get some new gpus
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wait i'm sorry what 1080s are going for
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850 to 1150 bucks
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1070 ti is at 730 to 975 vega 56s
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for just under to over a thousand dollars
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holy crap i mean there are cards out there going for
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almost a thousand canadian rubles that
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we declared not a great value at about
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half of that when they were released
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so thankfully i don't actually need a
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GPU that badly that whole thing was just a setup for this video well
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no but there are a lot of folks out there who
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do so for you we compiled a few tips and
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tricks to help you try and get a decent deal so you can get your game on
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speaking of a decent deal i fix it ifixit's protech toolkit gives you the
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tools you need to tackle any electronics repair challenge visit ifixit.com
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Linus at the link below and get yours today
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so this video is going to be a little bit different from our standard fare no
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performance graphs no sexy b-roll i
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probably won't even drop anything except
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some mad truths we'll start our journey at the local
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level this is memory express whose website
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even has a special notice on it about a
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GPU and power supply shortage because
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believe it or not retailers have been frustrated by the lack of supply too
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with that said it's not all bad news there's a very recent update on their
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site about restrictions being lifted on graphics card purchases so there may be
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some light at the end of the tunnel if that's any indication
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and did anyone actually realize that there was an ongoing power supply shortage
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anyway this still doesn't tell us when prices will actually stabilize
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so if you don't want to wait weeks or potentially even months to upgrade your
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potato for a game of fortnite we may need some other options so if
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nothing else by looking at retail pricing we can get a baseline for
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what to look for when we compare the launch price with
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the lowest price available on pc part picker we see a couple of obvious
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patterns here the most expensive gpus have the biggest
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markup which we might expect but we also
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see something peculiar the GeForce gtx
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1080 is by far the closest to its msrp
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and i'd even go as far as to say if you can find one at about this pricing go
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ahead and buy retail if you can another while you can tip by the way is
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that sometimes vendors will sell directly at msrp take NVIDIA for example
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where you can buy founders edition cards for way less as long as you are
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diligently monitoring their site and you're quick on the draw
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next we've got used sites like craigslist which are currently
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overflowing with second-hand gpus and
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prices are trending downward overall
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which you know what let me see that thing
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actually forget it this is ridiculous
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you can get deals now yeah but scalpers like
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this are all over the place often asking
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close to or even more than retail for
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never used or lightly used cards so
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just make sure you keep your bs detectors cranked to 11 until this blows
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over but if buying directly at retail
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is expensive and current gen used cards
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are going to be a minefield for a while what else can we do
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well some retailers are actually offering combo deals with steep
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discounts for graphics cards that are usually bundled with some other
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component that gamers would want like a headset a high-end CPU or a motherboard
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that kind of thing and while our luck at newegg today wasn't great with just 10 to 20 savings
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being typical some vendors like micro center are doing in-store only discounts
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with limited quantities available with that said though maybe we're
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barking up the wrong tree maybe what we want isn't a specific
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graphics card but rather a specific performance level
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and i think i know how we can achieve that we're going to go where the miners
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aren't going we know that the gtx 1080 is in most
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cases about 25 faster than the previous
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generation 980 ti however if we look at the price for the
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980 ti somewhere like ebay it's cheaper than even the cheapest
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1070. i mean and compared to the 1080 i'm
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talking like just over half the price
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and the hbm equipped fury x can be had for a similar price too as long as four
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gigs is enough vram for you and you have the power supply to run it
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and so you know moving down in the pricing tiers a little bit if you were
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after an rx 580 or 570 the performance
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difference between the 480 and 470 is so
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minimal that the price difference here makes that a no-brainer as well and
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depending on your needs you can even go further back like a maxwell titan x or
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titan black or even as far back as a gtx
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680 or Radeon hd 7970 if your goal is
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1080p gaming those things are around 100 bucks today about half that of a 1050 ti
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with slightly better performance do note though that
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older high-end cards like the fury will
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draw more power and lack new features like HDMI 2.0 atvc HDR and they have no
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hope of playing back content protected by play ready 3.0 drm and you also don't
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get a warranty when you do this well not usually anyway so buyer beware there but
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games don't stop to wait for GPU prices to drop and if you need the horsepower
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this seems to be the best way to go until the whole industry regains its
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senses unplug and play what does that even mean
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i'll tell you it's Corsair's lineup of wireless gaming peripherals including
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their dark core RGB se mouse which features one millisecond 2.4 gigahertz
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and low latency bluetooth connectivity their k63 wireless gaming keyboard with
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the same low latency connection options and cherry mx red switches with a blue
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backlight and their mm1000 which is a
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wireless charging mouse pad though it should be noted that the wireless
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charging version of the mouse will work with any qi wireless charging pad not
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just theirs which is pretty cool and you can check out the whole lineup at the
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links below oh i made it
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so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that
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like button or maybe check out where to buy the stuff we featured on ebay i
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guess at the link in the video description also link down there is our
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merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which
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you should totally join