M.2 seems easier for normies to mess up and SD cards have traditionally been significantly cheaper… plus a microSD card is smaller than M.2 by an order of magnitude.

I’m not so sure. Companies were definitely buying many up, but they typically stick to business purchasing channels like CDW/Dell/HP etc.

Consumer boxed cards sold by retailers might have went to some small businesses/startups and independent developers but largely they were picked up by scalpers or gamers.

I work in IT and have never went to a store to buy a video card unless it was an emergency need to get a system functional again. It’s vastly preferred to buy things through a VAR where warranties and support are much more robust than consumer channels.

Those genres aren’t really known for having brutal performance requirements. You have to play the bleeding edge stuff that adds prototype graphics postprocessing in their ultra or optional settings.

When you compare non RT performance the frame delta is tiny. When you compare RT it’s a lot bigger. I think most of the RT implementations are very flawed today and that it’s largely snake oil so far, but some people are obsessed.

I will say you can probably undervolt / underclock / power throttle that 4090 and get great frames per watt.

The 4090 basically never went for MSRP until Q4 2024… and now it’s OOS everywhere.

nobody scalped the 4080 because it was shit price/perf. 75% of the price of a 4090 too… so why not just pay the extra 25% and get the best?

the 4070ti (aka base 4080) was too pricey to scalp given that once you start cranking up the price then why not pay the scalper fee for a 4090.

Things below that are not scalp worthy.

The far cry benchmark is the most telling. Looks like it’s around a 15% uplift based on that.

Spotify is an evil company. They’ve started adding fake songs in to pay themselves instead of paying royalties to real artists.

It’s one of my biggest fears, but I guess there’s always piracy especially for old games.