[qball]

>The cheapest 3050 in Canada is $389. It is ~10% slower than a 1070ti.

Fortunately, used 1070s and RX580s are 150CAD (100USD).

The combination of board prices being completely out of whack, and the performance delta of the 3080 over the 3070/2080Ti (made worse by the fact that the 4090 is that leap again over the 3080) being as large as it is, means the value proposition in the middle has disappeared.

It's not that the 3080 isn't worth 700USD or that the current 4000 series cards don't have a similar price/performance ratio- because they very much are priced appropriately; it's that the cheaper new cards (especially the 3070) have a far worse ratio than the expensive ones do. This is also partially why the most popular gaming GPU on Steam is the GTX1650.

And with current-generation console games targeting the equivalent of that 1070/2060, buying anything less than a 3080 is an objectively bad decision, unless you're someone who plays a lot of competitive shooters and thus can benefit from an intermediate for high framerate reasons. (The fact that most of those games aren't particularly fun to play also hurts the hardware industry.)

[sokoloff]

I've got a couple of machines here (mine and the kids') with RX480/580s in them.

At this point, I think a buyer might as well get a new 6650XT (~US$260 plus tax) rather than trying to chase a 5-year old, used, half-as-powerful 580.