I missed last week. Sorry about that. I'm not sure there was much to talk about aside from more wildfire stuff. This weekend though we have some launches to briefly check out.
Yes the 3080 and 3090 have launched and they look to be pretty excellent performers, especially the founders edition cards. A nice aesthetic and some truly proper cooling along with solid build quality have delivered a pair of really well received GPU's. If you could get one. The 3080 sold out in a matter of a few minutes after the launch went live due in part to bots picking dozens of them off shelves before actual human customers could blink. The 3090 being so much more expensive and niche, though still advertised as a gaming card, is more limited in stock so if you're looking for one of those you may also find yourself waiting. Nvidia has promised they're doing everything they can to combat and even cancel bot purchases and are going to restock every week with a major restock to come at the end of the month.
AIB's got their models out but there seem to be some issues with crashes under heavy loads. These crashes appear to be mainly caused by "cheap" build quality. I put it in quotes because it's not really cheap or low quality it's just below the minimum specs that Nvidia gave the board partners. This has to do with the bypass capacitors on the back side of the PCB. I won't go far into detail here, suffice to say that certain arrays of these capacitors leave a little to be desired and aren't quite doing enough to handle the electrical noise that the GPU puts off during clock switching and so on. It's causing crashes under heavy loads. This doesn't seem to be a huge issue unless you're overclocking but remember that every 3080 and 3090 overclocks itself to a certain point so it can happen at any time. A simple solution to this so far is to simply open up your preferred GPU overclocking software and lower the power limit slightly. Maybe drop it to 95% instead of 100%. Almost certainly there will be new VBios options from the AIB's that will help solve the problem. Unfortunately it will probably be in the form of an underclock to disallow the GPU to get to a speed where the power delivery becomes an issue. Though this is much better than constantly crashing, it's definitely not as good as the GPU you bought working as you may expect. It appears that at least a couple of brands so far have followed and even surpassed the specs that Nvidia handed out. Though it's hard to just put the problem off on AIB's alone since Nvidia approves all designs before they're allowed to be sold. If you're the owner of an ASUS Tuf 3080, you're probably out of the woods. Even better if you've purchased the MSI card. It's actually got a full array of the higher quality capacitors and you can expect it perform cleanly. Sadly, essentially everyone else may potentially have a problem. Here's hoping future builds will retool and buyers will have less to worry about. If you're curious about this issue YouTuber, JayzTwoCents takes a look and explains in a way most people will understand. If you'd like a more detailed technical breakdown, Buildzoid will give you what you desire.
Reservations for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S are also seeing some problems. Folks are receiving notifications that they may not receive their purchases right at launch. Frustration ensues.
What's the plan this weekend?
AJ: Panzer Dragoon, Metal Gear Solid and a bunch of Konami classics are all on GOG now! So, all of that...and, if there’s time left over, perhaps some Resident Evil 2.
Greywolfe: magic. and taking the weekend off from serious gaming. i beat rayman origins and i think it broke me a little inside. thanks, ubisoft.
Yoda: Some more Dota and Warframe. Also finally started playing Civ6. And my favorite US president is the leader this time! So I actually started out a match playing as the US for once lol
Scroo: I -think- I must be getting close to the finish of Kingdom Come Deliverance. This game just keeps on going. I'm hoping to start the new SnowRunner map but who knows if that'll happen. Probably more Deep Rock Galactic with friends. Likely I'll also be working some.