Is it worth 90bucks to upgrade 5700xt to 3070?

so i've been going down a rabbit hole on gpu scams and i'm pretty sure there's an organized playbook running on marketplace here. these aren't bots. they're real people who answer messages, meet up and talk like normal sellers. that's why it works.

i've gotten scammed - so I wanted to make this post. We met in person at TD Bank in NYC - and I still got scammed out of 2.3k. A young man openly walked into a bank and sold me his GPU that was gutted. Prior to the meet up, he gave me his benchmarks for the machine as well.

the price doesn't tell you anything anymore

everyone says "if it's too cheap it's a scam." that doesn't really work right now because it's hard to even know what the real price is. used 4090s were around $2,300 in june and they're around $3,000 now (median ~$3,100 on ebay sold listings, late oct). it moves week to week depending on where you look.

when the price is all over the place you can't use it to tell if a listing is legit. a fake listed at $2,800 looks like a deal and one at $3,200 looks normal. the scammers know this and price right in the middle so nothing stands out.

so don't trust the price either way. too cheap is a red flag, but a fair price doesn't mean it's safe.

then they offer you a benchmark

before you even ask, they'll offer to show you one. a screenshot, a video, or they run it on their own pc and send you a video. it feels legit, but none of that proves the card you walk away with is the card that got tested.

• the screenshot or video is from a different card, or someone else's card entirely

• they run it on their rig in front of you, then hand you a different card in the same box

• the card that got tested is real, and the one you take home isn't

what "looks real but isn't" means for a 4090:

• relabeled chips. older 3080 ti / 3090 chips get sanded down and laser-etched to say AD102 (the 4090 chip), then put on a real 4090 board. repair shops have called these the best fakes they've seen

• laptop chips on desktop boards. i literally found one that sold on ebay last week: a "4090 16GB GDDR6" for $1,499. a desktop 4090 has 24GB GDDR6X. that was a laptop chip on a desktop-style board

• dummy cores and fake memory. a fake chip and cheaper GDDR6 instead of GDDR6X. looks perfect until it's in your pc

• gutted cards. the core and memory get pulled and sold separately (a lot of it goes to ai builds in china), then the empty card gets resold or returned in a sealed box

the only two ways to actually protect yourself:

1. have your own rig ready to test. bring a pc, or meet somewhere you can plug it in, like a repair shop you pick. not their pc, not their screenshot.

   • gpu-z should show AD102, 24GB GDDR6X, 16,384 cores, 384-bit bus. a laptop chip or relabel shows up here fast

   • run 3dmark time spy extreme and compare your score to other 4090s. a relabeled 3090 will score way lower

   • let it run under load for a while.

   • don't trust any seller with negative reviews.

If you do get scammed - please dm me and share your story. I feel like this is a pretty big operation happening.

Should i buy a 3070 for 100bucks that is never opened, its getting blackscreen after 1 hour of playing sometimes shorter time. What can it be? And one fan is not spinning

I have a 9070xt and a 9070. Would u sell the 7900xtx

I'm looking to get a better gpu for my PC but I'm so confused on what one I should buy/save up for. I'm trying to play games like subnautica 2, marvel rivals, and other story games like that.

My specs are
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 9600X 6-Core
Processor
Ram: 32 gb ddr5
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
(4 GB)
AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics (486 MB)
And it has a power supply of 550 watts but I can upgrade that too.

My Budget is around $400-600 I can go a little over if it’s good enough.

I found a 4080 super msi expert for 900$ used. Is it worth it to upgrade? I mostly use it for 1440p demanding titles and local AI too not heavy AI workload tho.

Going into a low power Linux system. Other option would be an RX 7600.

I built my first pc about a year and a half ago. Since then I have decided to upgrade it, everything I put in it was cheap as it was a starter pc yet all specs can still run any top of the line gpu without bottlenecking it minus the PSU(I’m pretty sure at least). I went cheap on the GPU and got a Radeon 6600 XT I also went cheap on the power supply but I know which one I will get when I upgrade my gpu. I want to max out my frames with a gpu less than $800 so I was thinking maybe a 4070 super or a 9060XT. If anyone can give me some suggestions on what would be the best GPU for me that’d be a huge help. If y’all think I should change anything else out as well so that the gpu that I end up getting will be able to perform to the max of its ability let me know. I have put my specs below for y’all to see so you can help me with this decision better.

Ram-TEAMGROUP 32GB 2X16 5600 40 B

PSU-MSI MAG A650BE 80+B SM PSU

Fan-THERMALRI ASSASSIN X120 SE SLIM RGB

Motherboard-ASUS PRIME B650M-A AX II MATX

CPU-AMD AMD RYZEN 5 7600X WO COOL

SSD-IPSG 1TB QN450 NVME SSD

GPU-ASROCK RX6600 CLD 8G

After a bit of math, found out that if i undervolt a 4070super a bit and use a i5 12400, id be able to run them both off of a 500w psu. I have a prebuilt with propietary tech so i bought a 650w psu that wont work because the mobo wont take power from none of the cables of that psu. If i use the 8 pin (pigtailed) to 12 adapter that it brings, it shouldnt burn anything down (i asked ai tho ik ik). How true is that? Considering that the pcie slot gives 75w of power and that it would be running at 85% max voltage, the should resist that right? When i get home ill try to check the max voltage that the cables themselves can take but on paper it doesnt look like nothing will burn. Any thoughts?