On September 24th, the day of the RTX 3090 release, I was frantically trying to buy the EVGA RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra on Newegg. When that failed, I went to my MemoryExpress store in my small/medium size Canadian city at around 6:30am and waited until the store opened at 10am. There ended up being only 2 other people there. Once store opened, they said they had no cards in stock but that we could backorder them. So one guy backordered an MSI 3090 Gaming X Trio and I went for the FTW3 Ultra card.
After a couple weeks go by, I keep checking for stock online and seeing things sell out immediately. Frustrated, I finally caved and bought a 3090 Gaming X Trio from an eBay scalper for 66% above retail price, not to mention high expedited shipping cost and the import duties from having it sent from U.S. I would have went for an EVGA FTW3 Ultra but there weren’t many eBay listings for that card at the time for a price I was willing to pay.
Anyway, so after getting the card, I ended up cancelling my FTW3 Ultra backorder from MemoryExpress.
Fast forward to today, the guy who backordered the MSI card from M.E told me he received the card today. I’m not too surprised, because MemoryExpress did tell me earlier this month they were expecting a large shipment in late October. I just didn’t believe that any cards would be sent to my somewhat small city. I thought cards would only arrive next year.
Then later today, I got notified of 3090 stock on Newegg Canada, I’m talking MSI, Rog Strix, FTW3 Ultra, the whole bunch.
So basically I way overpaid for a 3090 MSI Gaming X Trio just to get it basically 19 days sooner than that guy did. NOT WORTH IT. And it wasn’t even the card I originally wanted.
To add insult to injury, I go on eBay and I now see 3090 MSI, Rog Strix, and FTW3 Ultra cards selling for like hundreds of dollars cheaper than what I paid.
And I think Moore’s Law is Dead was right about Nvidia’s forced scarcity tactic and then releasing a big chunk of cards at around this time after AMD’s announcement.
Basically no graphics card is worth overpaying for. Patience is always a virtue and I will never buy from a scalper ever again. Oh well, lesson learned.