To honor today as the first birthday of the 3080...and, let's face it, because I am a lazy amphibian struggling to make it to the weekend, tonight's intro will be the same as this morning's. Have a great weekend; stay safe!
[Apologies for the length of this intro (which will likely remain the intro through the weekend)…some folks may want to skip ahead to the summary table (below).]
1,892,160,000.
Unless
you’ve floated in space for a few minutes, or
sent some random civies to circumnavigate the planet 48 times, very, very fast, or
are busy making money at the expense of the mental health of the world’s teenage girls, that is a pretty big number. That is
approximately (I am not waking up at 6 am to post this) the number of frames that have transpired on my aspirational (but still vaporware) gaming rig since the 30 Series first launched at 6 am PT on September 17, 2020. (Narrator: assuming a 60-fps rate.)
That’s a lot of missed gaming. And while I mourn the lost opportunity to play the latest and greatest games with my family and friends, it hasn’t been all bad (but, trust me, it’s been bad…I’ve had enough of 27-fps
PUBG,
World of Warships and
Peggle to last…until at least the 70 series launch). This little tracking project started out as a personal table that I made to bolster my spirits in the face of multiple F5 battle defeats. I posted the table to the EVGA forums one day in response to a question about how far the queues had moved…and folks kept requesting it. And you know the rest….
I hope the daily summary has helped mitigate some of your frustration regarding the queues, removed a few milligrams of sodium from your diet (the EVGA forums and reddit threads can go sideways fast), and alleviated any concerns about having been skipped over by the Queue. Most of all, in addition to helping to plan for the arrival of your
invite to purchase email, I hope it has grown in you a love of (a) high-quality s’mores, (b) strained pop culture references in poorly-written detritus, (c) the camelus bactrianus and camelus dromedarius (who can pick just one?), (d) the drawing instruments of one, @EVGA_JacobF, doing his best
Jack Dawson impression, and (e) italicized parentheticals.
For me, the
NVIDIA Tech Launch Debacle of 2020-202X™ generated an unanticipated project to do with my daughter in the middle of a school-shuttering pandemic…teaching her about supply & demand, patience, international commerce and shipping, public service, a little more patience, salty saltmeisters (you EVGA forum members know who you are), s’mores, PC building, drafting players for our fantasy EPL team ("Angry Amphibians FC"), incomplete closed loops (untimely yelling down the hall, "bring a towel...make that two"), zen and the art of four-year old laptop maintenance (apologies to Mr. Pirsig), any trip to Hibernia requires a stop off in an ol' gamer's garden, “Our Watch on the Wall” references from the
Game of Thrones (“no, you cannot watch the first episode” (I am reluctant to talk to enewt jr. version 9.X about what Jamie Lannister does for love)), physical therapy regimes for F5-finger injuries, expletive-laden diatribes about bots and scalpers, a waffle addiction, more patience, how to identify and create direct links to product registration pages, a dude named
K|NGP|N, late nights brute forcing drop report summaries, the dangers of an open discord mic, online trolls, why not to get in a photoshop battle with u/nomoss, dusting an incomplete rig, strategies around the fast throw-in (unrelated to the Queue, but immensely important in youth soccer...we had a lot of time on hands when the servers were down on launch days and this was a topic to which we frequently returned during F5 battles), why a cat is little more than a chaotic-neutral walking static electricity power plant, scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel patience, and EVGA (pronounced by enewt jr. as “Ev-Ga”) -- a company whose products have been part of my gaming life for years, but one that I truly did not know or fully appreciate until this past year.
I cannot thank EVGA enough for taking the resource-intensive, risky and innovative initiative to create the Queue on October 5, 2020. That was not an easy decision – with lots of downside risk and little immediate financial upside (EVGA was going to sell every unit they released regardless of the existence of the Queue). But, to be honest, if any AIB was going to do it, it was EVGA. With their existing Step-Up program and top-notch customer service, EVGA was uniquely positioned to pull together a brand-new queue system, on the fly, in the midst of a…putting it mildly…
suboptimal and challenged technology launch (it was the "etail" business equivalent of switching out your SCUBA regulator, mid dive). As an exercise in crisis management and accelerating the growth of consumer goodwill within a captive audience, however, it’s a superlative exemplar.
Firm tail-wags all around for folks who bothered to read the intros (and didn’t immediately skip to see which italicized parentheticals popped in the summary). I am so appreciative to those that took the time to PM or post drop reports (these reports are the lifeblood of this effort (as a FYI, you can find your timestamps
here)), corrections to the recently posted summary, notes of encouragement and kind words, or just general acknowledgements of the assistance the summary provided; thank you all.
And with apologies to Apple (I am actually in the Epic camp, if it matters),
just one more thing: Longtime readers may recall that a mid-March 2021 intro was an open letter that read, in part:
Dear @EVGA_JacobF:
On behalf of those of us that remain uncarded almost six months into the NVIDIA Tech Launch Debacle™ (© NVIDIA 2020-2023), I humbly beseech you to consider the following product idea:
An EVGA t-shirt (to be sold exclusively on the EVGA.com and eu.EVGA.com websites) with text along the lines of:
- “I survived the Queue of 2020-202X”,
- “I survived the Queue of 2020-202X and all I got was this AWESOME EVGA GPU!”, or
- “I kept my watch, slayed the scalpers and secured my gaming goodness”.
(Admittedly this copy needs work. And hopefully, “X” ≠ “2” or even “3”.)
I would think the graphics for the shirt would include a bunch of various models of EVGA 30 Series cards marching in a line over the body of an unconscious scalper, with “invite to purchase” emails flying overhead, the EVGA shipping crew working their butts off (thank you again!), and a clock counting down from 8 hours.
I would absolutely buy a few of those shirts (in either XL or XXL depending on the success or failure of my new lifestyle change). If you include a newt crawling on one of the cards or otherwise depicted in the scene (in a positive light of course; electric green is my best color), I would absolutely buy one for each of my family members (including the cat).
Do all of that and I have no doubt that you would need to create a new queue for this shirt series….
(Yup, I was not quite right in the head.)
So, on this unwelcome occasion of the
First (yes, it pains me to write that) anniversary of the 30 Series Queue, I’d like to let y’all know that EVGA recently reached out and worked with us on the design of a t-shirt to commemorate our Watch. (Narrator: Yay…I guess???) I understand from EVGA that this is just one of several t-shirt collaborations they would like to do with members of the EVGA community. The t-shirt will be available via the EVGA.com storefront in October (I’ll note it in an intro when it happens) and, while the design doesn’t include trampled scalper carcasses, it does – in my opinion – have a reserved dignity befitting this tremendous community of salty, s’mores-eating gamers and pc enthusiasts (with a little tail thrown in). I’ll post the mock-up of it next week (this intro is already unconscionably long).
The watch for a 30 series card has the potential to be a cold and lonely enterprise, full of disappointment and frustration...but at least for enewt jr. and me, it has been warmer, less solitary and tremendously less scary because of all of you.
Thank you for being part of this extended community, sharing our virtual campfire, and for not hogging all the s'mores supplies (we're looking at you, TRMV). We hope our efforts have helped you in some small measure and, along the way, provided a few laughs, groans, and random musings.
May your eventual UPS driver be swift, accurate and dexterous. Until then, we wish you fair winds and following seas....
enewt (and enewt jr.)
September 17, 2021
Somewhere on our watch…not yet to the gates of our Gaming Valhalla
As of 4:15 pm PT Friday, September 17, this is the status of the North American queues (bolded font represents movement from the morning of September 17; italicized parentheticals calculate the length of movement from the prior report)): Card SKU Most Recent Registration Timestamp to Receive an Invite to Purchase email Ultra3090 FTW3 Ultra 3987 01/12/2021 22:51:17 (148:47:02)
3090 XC3 Ultra 3975 10/06/2020 15:37:06
3080 Ti FTW3 Ultra 3967 06/03/2021 08:31:02 (00:00:30) 3080 FTW3 Ultra 3897-KL 10/06/2020 14:06:29
3080 XC3 Ultra 3885-KL 09/19/2020 13:17:59
3070 Ti FTW3 Ultra 3797 06/10/2021 06:46:563070 Ti XC3 Ultra 3785 06/15/2021 09:19:283070 FTW3 Ultra 3767-KL 12/02/2020 21:44:50
3070 XC3 Ultra 3755-KL 12/01/2020 18:12:143060 Ti FTW3 Ultra 3667-KL 12/01/2020 12:55:31
Gaming3090 FTW3 Gaming 3985 09/24/2020 16:12:06 3090 XC3 Gaming 3973 09/24/2020 00:00:003080 Ti XC3 Gaming 3953 06/30/2021 06:32:44 3080 FTW3 Gaming 3895 09/21/2020 09:57:19 3080 XC3 Gaming 3883 09/16/2020 11:14:32 3070 Ti XC3 Gaming 3783 06/30/2021 06:29:45
3070 XC3 Gaming 3753 10/29/2020 06:21:40 3060 Ti FTW3 Gaming 3665 12/08/2020 18:52:16
3060 Ti XC3 Gaming 3663-KL 12/01/2020 21:47:18 (00:09:29)3060 XC Gaming 3657 05/10/2021 11:29:30
Black3090 XC3 Black 3971 09/24/2020 00:00:00 3080 XC3 Black 3881-KL 09/16/2020 16:07:01 3070 XC3 Black 3751 10/29/2020 06:31:11 3060 XC Black 3655 02/25/2021 09:09:15
Hybrid
3090 FTW3 Ultra Hybrid 3988 12/29/2020 19:39:00
3090 XC3 Ultra Hybrid 3978 12/20/2020 05:03:483080 Ti FTW3 Ultra Hybrid 3968 06/03/2021 07:52:323080 Ti XC3 Ultra Hybrid 3958 06/03/2021 08:09:41
3080 FTW3 Ultra Hybrid 3898-KL 12/16/
2020 09:14:543080 XC3 Ultra Hybrid 3888-KL 12/10/2020 09:15:55
Hydro Copper 3090 FTW 3 Ultra HC 3989 04/15/2021 10:00:29 3090 XC3 Ultra HC 3979 06/23/2021 06:00:09 3080 Ti FTW3 Ultra HC 3969 06/03/2021 07:53:47 3080 Ti XC3 Ultra HC 3959 06/15/2021 10:27:43 (00:00:56)
3080 FTW3 Ultra HC 3899 06/23/2021 06:00:15 3080 XC3 Ultra HC 3889 06/23/2021 06:00:09 K|NGP|N K|NGP|N HC (Queue) 3999 06/15/2021 09:17:29 K|NGP|N Hybrid (Queue) 3998 03/09/2021 13:01:02K|NGP|N HC Kit 1999 07/16/2021 11:24:46
May your remaining wait be shorter than you anticipate; it is already longer than you deserve. Best of luck! twene
post edited by enewt - 2021/09/17 22:54:43