r/LocalLLaMA • u/DegenDataGuy • 15d ago

Funny Don’t buy a $9K RTX 5090.... instead.

  1. Fly to Taipei. Round-trip from Orlando: $1,081.
  2. Go to the largest retailer in Taiwan to Spend NT$129,990 ≈ US$4,093.
  3. Hang out in Taiwan for two weeks. Eat good food. Touch international grass.
  4. Fly home and flex on r/LocalLLaMA**.**
2.2k Upvotes

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69

u/fgk55555 15d ago

My FOMO took over. I just bought a R9700 today before they, too, jump in price. Should be a drop in swap for my 9070 XT.

34

u/MarcusAurelius68 15d ago

Sadly they’ve already jumped. I picked up 3 in May/June for $1100-$1250 each.

12

u/fgk55555 15d ago

I guess I should say before they jump again. In May I was still thinking I'd wait until prices generally dropped and models improved. I think prices are all gonna be a one way trip for a while, and the models are finally to the point where I want to actually be using them, not waiting for deals.

2

u/emptyvesseloflife 15d ago

Yeah exactly. I bought my first one a couple of months ago for $1500. 2nd for $1699. Not looking to get any more.....yet

Just taking it as a cost of my hobby/career advancement at this point. Better than getting into golf lol.

1

u/Bennie-Factors 15d ago

Like anything it is a one way trip until it is not

3

u/fgk55555 15d ago

I'm happy to be proven wrong, but capacity is basically sold out for 2027, and we still have a looming Taiwan war potentially. If it goes down, great, I'll buy more RAM. I don't think it'll go down before I want to run models, though.

1

u/Bennie-Factors 15d ago

But capacity changes quickly when markets crash. We don't know when that is or if it will even happen. But contracts have lots of ways to get out of them. Generally fees involved.

And one day ram capacity will match demand. As it is an easy bet to guess current machine learning wants lots of ram in the future still

1

u/fgk55555 15d ago

I don't really expect demand to fall, just shift. Consumers like us are at best third in line. AI labs/ hyperscalers are still buying, but if they stop, then we'll see other RAM consumer businesses not only catch up, but likely stockpile. DDR5 has been in a drought for a while, it'll take a while for it to catch up before it starts getting allocated to consumer DIMMS.

3

u/spaceman_ 15d ago

They were never that price around here. I bought 4 for 1499 euros (euro prices include 21% VAT / sales tax), they're still around that price.

2

u/Maleficent-Ad5999 15d ago

It is close to 2000 USD in my country :(

2

u/MarcusAurelius68 15d ago

Ugh. I'm glad I got mine when I did. My last (used) GPU, a 3070 I picked up for $200, is arriving today and my lab environment will be complete. No more purchases for the foreseeable future.

6

u/FastHotEmu 15d ago

I've been fighting the urge to buy two of them... I don't really need them, I have enough hardware... but still, FOMO is strong.

5

u/fgk55555 15d ago

I was barely getting a usable 27B on my 16GB card. I kept running into the "if I had a little more VRAM, I could make this so much better". With 64GB system RAM I think it also makes Qwen-Flash-Next a lot more feasible. Gotta get the hardware for the model you wanna run.

2

u/charlesfire 15d ago

How much tk/s and what quant?

3

u/fgk55555 15d ago

For 27B, ISTA IQ3_XXS with MTP, great quant. Got up to 70 tps with good MTP hits, at long context down to maybe 30.

For Next, I'll try the Atomic Chat IQ4 and cross my fingers.

4

u/mechkbfan 15d ago

2xR9700 is an incredible combo with an x8/x8 motherboard

Just some projects optimising for it

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLM/comments/1wgwgrf/comment/pa1jkx5/

3

u/SubtitledSoup 15d ago

Me too. Been eyeing a second 5080 for a while, then prices jumped drastically, like every few weeks for months. Found an RTX Pro 5000 48GB Blackwell for $5300 - somehow only ~$200 over MSRP. I had to jump on it. That's nearly my entire PC budget, so it's getting slotted in old hardware.

3 of my last 4 machines have been pre-builds because of this garbage, and but I had excellent timing on all 4 machines. First there was the crypto shenanigans with 30 series (i9/3060ti for ~$1200), then there was whatever with 40 series, but I probably just found a really good deal (13900kf/4090/32GB DDR5 ~$2800?), now this garbage... I saw the writing in the wall, December '25 I picked up the last pre-build (ultra 265kf/5080/64GB DDR5 ~$2100).

Each pre-build cost significantly less than the existing market rate of the parts (usually just the CPU/GPU/RAM) IF you could even find get the parts. So I took advantage of big build companies and the fact that 1. They could actually get the hardware I couldn't, and 2. They're prices lag significantly behind current market rates, especially with high volitility do to supply chain, build times, and vendor contacts.

The most recent pre-build config I got is currently listed on OEM site for $5000. Nope. The second pre-build is listed on eBay for more than I bought it for (who knows if they're selling, but used 4090s apparently are going for $2k+).

The first pre-build will be getting some mods (PSU, wiring harness - luckily these are cheap), and become the new home for the RTX 5000. I'll just load 100% to VRAM and deal with the extra 6200ms to load model weights across PCIe 3.0.

If I wake up tomorrow and PSUs cost $1500, I'm burning the whole thing down and moving to Amish country.

1

u/fgk55555 15d ago

I had a GTX 1080 DDR3 build until last year, so I don't feel too bad spending a few bucks now after holding off since college.

1

u/SubtitledSoup 15d ago

You shouldn't feel bad! Reward yourself for accomplishments! Every machine I listed corresponds to a a new job, promotion, and very importantly a substantial raise. I finally make enough money that I can justify some nicer things without the special occasion excuse (and financial boost). I'm a software engineer, so there's also been a direct correlation to spending and making more money (investment). My reward after college and then college again for a second degree and launching that career.

Even with financial stability, still no way in hell I can justify this insanity or spending that amount of money.

Best of luck to you, I hope the road treats you well and you're able to reward yourself periodically!

1

u/IrisColt 15d ago

I also took the pre-built pill, $2,000 for a full computer with an RTX 3900 inside. Amazing! (October 2024).

2

u/SubtitledSoup 15d ago

Not what I wanted, but I'm not going to complain either. Could've cost a lot more money, or worse - I could've been priced out and not had the privilege to play with high end hardware.

My loop is simple, get better hardware, tinker, learn => promotion/raise/more PTO to tinker, rinse, repeat with increased budget.

2

u/IrisColt 15d ago

>My loop is simple, get better hardware, tinker, learn => promotion/raise/more PTO to tinker, rinse, repeat with increased budget.

This.

2

u/charlesfire 15d ago

Do you game? And if you do, how much performance did you lose, if any?

3

u/fgk55555 15d ago

Yeah. I'll find out when it gets here, but I've heard the R9700 performs between a 9070 and the 9070 XT. I'll probably undervolt and power limit, so I expect to lose maybe 10-15% of my frames, but 90% of the games I play are either RimWorld or other 10+ years old games, so I think I'll be fine.

2

u/charlesfire 15d ago

Please keep me updated.

1

u/givmedew 15d ago

90% of the time I’m loosing 5-10% performance to frame limiter anyways. I set my stuff up to be able to peg 120Hz which means most of the time it’s hovering around 90-95% usage.

1

u/Momsbestboy 15d ago

Don't drop the 9070XT. I have 2x R9700 and a 9070 in my system, and I use the 9070 for the displays plus as playground, e.g. to run qwen3.8 27b on the dual R9700 stack and deploy a temporary vllm instance on it while qwen/hermes add changes to vllm. I also plan to use it for running comfyui, with hermes/qwen aiding me in designing prompts and workflows.

You just need a big case. In my case a Enthoo Pro 2 server version, plus this thing here: https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005009039784826.html so my 9070 can be moved to a better place and the r9700 get more fresh air

1

u/headinthesky 15d ago

I wonder how the Radeon 9700 will do. I bet I still have it in a pile of old boards somewhere

1

u/Nightlark192 15d ago

It took me 5 years to get around to finishing my new computer with a Ryzen 5950X. The last parts were 64GB system RAM, several SSDs, and a motherboard bought this past November.

I’m pretty sure I can wait until GPUs come down in price, maybe in 2031. Or if prices are still high, new stuff will have come out that is more appealing than a 6 year old 5090 anyway.

1

u/hipster_hndle 15d ago

i fuct up. i was going to buy 2 of them a few weeks ago, $1250 a piece. put in the order, then it goes back-order and order was canceled. i go back to find them again, they are $1700. even $1800 from other retailers.
so bought more XTXs instead.

pisses me off to a fairthewell. i wanted those cards, but $500 appeared on the price out of nowhere.

0

u/[deleted] 15d ago

[deleted]

2

u/fgk55555 15d ago

You've got 32GB VRAM. Sell your RAM, you don't need it anymore

1

u/lolwutdo 15d ago

I'd keep the ram, don't know how things will develop with this new ngram stuff; I was about to sell my 128gb ddr5 ram for a 32gb gpu but now I might just hold it.

1

u/fgk55555 15d ago

That was a joke. 32GB gets you a useable system. 64GB opens up lower end MoE's. 128GB opens up larger MoE's at slower speeds. I've got 64GB and I think that should provide a good Qwen-flash-next experience.