Read This Before Pre-Ordering Your Nvidia RTX 30-Series Graphics Card - Lifehacker

Nvidia’s new RTX 30-series graphics cards are beasts.

This card is allegedly faster than Nvidia’s previous flagship, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti—a card that cost $1,000, at minimum, at its launch.

There’s an absolute thirst out there for new graphics cards, because Nvidia hasn’t offered up a new line (microarchitecture, really) since the September 2018 launch of its GeForce RTX 2080.

I bet you’re going to see some sellouts come launch day (September 17), which means you might have to wait some time to get your hands on a new 30-series card.

Good on Nvidia for doing a lot of the initial work and throwing out some pretty charts to show how these new graphics cards stomp previous models.

The launch of the GeForce 30-series cards comes at a delightful time.

While you probably won’t see amazing cash deals for, say, Nvidia’s $1,500 GeForce 3090, you might at least be able to buy the graphics card and get some freebies—games, extra months to try a subscription service, a discount on other gear you might need (such as a new power supply), and so on.

I’m not one to say “wait for two months to save $50,” because that seems a bit silly, but given just how close we are to some major geeky sales events, it’s worth holding out for a little time if you haven’t fully convinced yourself to buy a new 30-series graphics card on launch day.

We won’t see AMD announce its counteroffer to Nvidia’s 30-series graphics cards until October 28, which means we have no idea what kind of performance to expect, nor how AMD is planning to counter Nvidia’s already-aggressive pricing for its 30-series graphics cards.

Even if you’re an Nvidia loyalist, I wouldn’t buy a 30-series graphics card until I’ve at least seen what AMD is prepping.

I wrote this article, and even I’m still contemplating a pre-order for a 30-series graphics card because I don’t want to be stuck waiting for months if there are inventory issues?

Of course, now you’re playing everyone’s favorite graphics card guessing game: How long can you hold out before the cards go out of stock at wherever you’re trying to purchase them.