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Poll: Ampere owners - do you own a FE/reference or AIB model?

Ampere owners, do you own an FE or AIB Model?

  • FE

    Votes: 156 67.8%
  • AIB

    Votes: 74 32.2%

  • Total voters
    230
Soldato
Joined
28 Oct 2009
Posts
5,261
Location
Earth
Is it true that once it's been added to your basket, you should be able to buy it without needing to worry about speeding through the checkout?

That's basically what happened when I got my RTX 3070 FE.

EDIT - ok, that's good to know, sounds like you get a bit of time.

I do feel you get some kind of basket protection once you added it can't confirm though
 
Soldato
Joined
14 Apr 2009
Posts
4,811
Location
Cheshire
Yeah, I missed my first drop as I was busy at the time, but got it on the 2nd less than 2 weeks after I signed up for alerts, sat drinking coffee on a Saturday morning browsing on my phone anyway. Not sure how unlucky you have to be to miss a year's worth of drops.

Pretty unlucky. Especially for the less in demand ones.

Not sure about the 3080Fe. Less unlucky perhaps? Once I started trying, in July I think, it took me 3 months. Tried only once in that time and missed out. All other times I was doing something more important and couldn't do it.

I only wanted the 3080FE. So had no back up alternative.
 
Soldato
Joined
19 Dec 2010
Posts
12,019
Aye it's easy to get an FE, it took me just 433 days to nab an FE.:p

Easy to grab an FE, no chance!

433 days? what way were you trying to buy one? Join a stock alert group, turn on notifications on your phone and even with minimum of time and effort, you should have got an FE card in a month. The only caveat I will add, is that if you wanted a 3080 FE and only started looking in the last 6 months, then it would have taken longer as the 3080FE drops slowed up a lot in the last 6 months(sometimes only once every three weeks). But for the first 6 months after release, 3080 FE drops were very regular.
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Jun 2019
Posts
7,868
I blame AMD for the lack of competition (barely bothering at all with reference models), but I suppose they are focusing heavily on console APU production, which apparently will be boosted further in 2022. I think Intel may improve the situation a bit. It will seem weird if they start putting out more graphics cards than AMD though...

AMD's GPUs are competitive in performance (quite impressive that RDNA2 caught up with Ampere) with Nvidia's but they produce a fraction of the amount that NV does.

I think AMD made a judgement about the size of the PC graphics card market, and decided it wasn't worth trying to compete with Nvidia on raw production /supply of graphics cards.

The lesson to learn, is perhaps not to bother much trying to get a GFX card the same year / following year of a console release, unless you've got the cash to splash.
 
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Soldato
Joined
3 Aug 2010
Posts
3,026
It just shows most of the AIBs are in the hands of miners and the majority of normal users made the sensible choice to try to source an FE card.
 
Caporegime
OP
Joined
4 Jun 2009
Posts
30,926
I got my 3080 FE back in January, first time having a go, iirc, was on dc part alerts for about 3-4 weeks and had it with the first drop I seen, only effort I went to was ensuring that my account details and billing stuff was all set up, logged into said site with dc in the background.

@Nexus18 you could do with a third poll option: both

I was considering it (as well as doing a "MSRP AIB" and "scalped AIB" options) but didn't see much point as the main objective of this thread is just to see how many here ended up with a FE given that we have many saying "unicorns", "nigh on impossible to get one" etc. etc. That and as you know, a good few bought an AIB to pass them over until they got a FE to only then sell on the AIB for a profit :p

It just shows most of the AIBs are in the hands of miners and the majority of normal users made the sensible choice to try to source an FE card.

But aren't nvidia suppose to only be selling their FEs to miners????? ;) :cry:
 
Soldato
Joined
28 Oct 2009
Posts
5,261
Location
Earth
It just shows most of the AIBs are in the hands of miners and the majority of normal users made the sensible choice to try to source an FE card.

pretty sure miners found away to get past the 1pc per customer , none LHR cards at MSRP are miners wet dream
 
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Associate
Joined
28 Sep 2014
Posts
67
AIB 3070 un scalped launch day pricing.




Lol, you are all making it sound like it's super easy to nab an FE, it is anything but easy to nab one, it's the luck of the draw being available to react at the right time.

Like many others, had a 3080 FE in the basket on launch day-September 17, 2020, wouldn't go through, eventually managed to get one 23 November 2021.

Aye it's easy to get an FE, it took me just 433 days to nab an FE.:p

Easy to grab an FE, no chance!



It does but don't kid yourself on and I'll even go to say that it ****** folk off when they are trying to buy one hearing it's easy, when the reality is yes AMD don't give a flying **** about UK sales, Nv are drip feeding FE's!

@Nexus18 you could do with a third poll option: both

Speaking from personal experience. I got MSI 3080 preorder from here on the release day.

Switched it to Vision 3080 to skip a que when overclockers still allowed it.

Canceled that since I got 3080 FE in mid October. Got 3080TI recently and sold 3080.

I have never used any discord or other stock alerts. 433 days seems to be a a long time if you were actively looking for it.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
12 Jul 2005
Posts
20,488
Location
Aberlour, NE Scotland
I gave up on ever getting a FE card so when Gibbo did the forum special on the Gigabyte RTX3070 Vision OC for £600 bit the bullet and bought one. It was a lot more than I wanted to pay but felt that I had little choice at that point. It is a excellent card although very power hungry so it's now been undervolted which has made it boost higher. The cooler was very good and very quiet but I have a custom loop so got a Bykski block for it which performs brilliantly.
 
Associate
Joined
22 May 2015
Posts
1,937
Location
Manchester
I gave up on ever getting a FE card so when Gibbo did the forum special on the Gigabyte RTX3070 Vision OC for £600 bit the bullet and bought one. It was a lot more than I wanted to pay but felt that I had little choice at that point. It is a excellent card although very power hungry so it's now been undervolted which has made it boost higher. The cooler was very good and very quiet but I have a custom loop so got a Bykski block for it which performs brilliantly.

And looking back, I'm sure you don't regret it as the way things went, it turned out to be a good deal.
 
Soldato
Joined
7 Dec 2010
Posts
8,222
Location
Leeds
I have had both but stuck to AIB cards for my personal work builds as I find them better for my use and had bad experience with fe cards 3090s as they had issues with cooling, coil whine and fan rattle or noises. The 3090s were all for workstation at work in sli/nvlink setups we ended up replacing them all with blower cards or 3 fan AIB models. I also own a 3060ti fe that turned out a good card without the issues the 3090 fe cards had but again that is sat in a sff build for living room gaming for now, it was meant for my son but he didn't want it and wanted a 3080..:rolleyes: so he's using my spare 3090 for now that was sat spare in case one of my 3090s in sli/nvlink I use for work decides to die as good old nvidia didn't standardise the nvlink placement on cards so they are all different and if one dies you need to find same model again to sli/nvlink :rolleyes:.
 
Man of Honour
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21 May 2012
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Dalek flagship
Looking at the result of the poll NVidia selling FE direct seem to have nearly 2/3 of the market.

The question is are NVidia limiting the supply to AIB partners/retailers or is there something else shady going on in the supply chain.

Are AIB partners sending their cards in bulk direct to the big miners?
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Mar 2010
Posts
13,008
Location
Under The Stairs!
@Kaapstad

Taking a look at your Ampere owners threads, would be clearer metric to use for your question imo.

At most the FE ties on the 70ti at 5 each, at worst there is more than double AIB 70 owners than FE, but overall, there's way, way more aib users than FE users across the ampere range from your data.

Ampere roll of honour threads:
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Oct 2019
Posts
11,656
Location
Uk
Are AIB partners sending their cards in bulk direct to the big miners?
I think we know the answer to that by looking at the OCUK back orders after release when shipments of cards were arriving in the 100s but once mining took off in January the shipments dried up.
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Mar 2008
Posts
3,203
Location
Norn Iron
Got my 3070 FE direct from Nvidia in one of the early drops.Only notification i had set up was just following a twitter group and when i got the message there had been a drop of 3090 and 3070 FE's. Thought i had missed out as the site was getting hammered and the checkout seemed to have issues but it was fine :D
 
Associate
Joined
19 Sep 2020
Posts
212
I think we know the answer to that by looking at the OCUK back orders after release when shipments of cards were arriving in the 100s but once mining took off in January the shipments dried up.

They do sales to other companies(b2b), not just to end users.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Sep 2003
Posts
3,492
Location
Somerset
I have a 3090 FE but it's sitting in a box unused as I refuse to use EK's **** water block and have been waiting for an age for a custom one.
If I could swap it for one of the Palits on OcUK right now I'd be off like a rocket as I could use a Heatkiller block
 
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