Not too happy about the Verified Actual Gamer Program

[akio123008]

To the OP: what do you actually need that card for? You still haven't mentioned anything apart from "developing software" but you may as well do that on a 900MHz pentium III.

 

In general:

I haven't bought a GPU in 5 years and I'm not planning to buy new one any time soon. I couldn't care less about the whole shortage, and to be honest I'm kind of fed up with all the "gamers" and other people whining about this. Maybe realise that there's more in the world than the latest graphics card.

 

At least, that's what I would have said, but you know what, Linus didn't. He apparently does actually care about your "need" for graphics cards, and decided to go through all the trouble of setting up this program - which isn't easy at all if your main occupation is making videos, rather than being an electronics retailer - just so that a bunch of (let's face it) spoilt people can get the latest GPU. You may as well appreciate that.

[AlexP11223]

44 minutes ago, TimsTips said:

It’s not winning or gambling. No laws against members only products.

You would have to pay for FP to participate, so it is similar to lottery.

 

And if it is old members only, then it would be not as good PR-wise for companies (and even less profit for LMG), they would be less willing to support that.

50 minutes ago, TimsTips said:

The method they chose is dumb. I agree with the OP that they just made the shortage worse. 

wut? This method excludes bots. In a standard store most of these GPUs would be sold to the bots of scalpers, or maybe even via more shady ways directly to miners/scalpers, or simply for a price much higher than MSRP.

[abit-sean]

At first I felt the same, I don't have clue about modern games and I don't watch the new LTT vidoes when they release. I generally have them on the background whilst I work. The only reason I needed a new GPU was for my family VR rig but I was lucky enough to buy a GTX 1660ti for £200 back in September which does the job okayish. That said I may just give in and buy a RTX 3000 from ebay as I am in posistion that spending £1000+ on a GPU doesn't really bother me. 

 

The really annoying thing is that back when I worked for abit I could just pick a new GPU and motherboard of the shelf for "home testing". We also had exchange programs with other manufactures for PSUs, CPUs and memory.

[AlexP11223]

1 minute ago, abit-sean said:

I don't have clue about modern games

The quiz was often focused on quite old games.

[LogicalDrm]

1 hour ago, TimsTips said:

Any method discriminates against some group. It’s not winning or gambling. No laws against members only products.

 

The method they chose is dumb. I agree with the OP that they just made the shortage worse. 

No, you don't understand why they can't do it for "Members Only".
Not when there's paid membership. If after paid membership you still don't have 100% chance of getting something, that alone is lottery. And there are more FP subscribers than items LMG has distributed so far. If it would be free membership, then it's fine. But that's what they are currently doing.

 

The latter part... How is someone distributing scrap compared to big retailers dumb or making things worse? If you think it's dumb, surely you have something better in mind?

 

Also to OP. If you are using or have used consumer products for business, suck it up. You have saved thousands of dollars in past by going GTX and not with Quattro.

 

Or another way. This is not taking anything from anyone. Just like any regular giveaway isn't taking anything away from you.

[abit-sean]

1 minute ago, AlexP11223 said:

The quiz was often focused on quite old games.

I don't have much of a clue about any games tbh, I'm happy to leave the VAG in the hands of people who need it.

[freeagent]

1 minute ago, abit-sean said:

I don't have much of a clue about any games tbh, I'm happy to leave the VAG in the hands of people who need it.

^^

 

Abit was awesome man. I sure do miss them. Any chance of a return?

[abit-sean]

8 minutes ago, freeagent said:

^^

 

Abit was awesome man. I sure do miss them. Any chance of a return?

That's a big NO. I think USI still own the name but it wouldn't be the same if they brought it back.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

26 minutes ago, AlexP11223 said:

The quiz was often focused on quite old games.

Oh there's a quiz?  I never looked at the VAG program cause, well, look at my signature, I'm good, but where can I take this quiz for fun?

[AlexP11223]

8 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

where can I take this quiz for fun?

Maybe they will publish them when the program is finished.

 

Currently only the quiz for the first drop was published by someone here

The next quizzes included more modern stuff and were harder to google.

 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

13 minutes ago, AlexP11223 said:

Maybe they will publish them when the program is finished.

 

Currently only the quiz for the first drop was published by someone here

The next quizzes included more modern stuff and were harder to google.

 

13/13!  ...But the KOTOR and Mario Kart ones were admittedly 'partially educated but also lucky guesses'

[abit-sean]

31 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

13/13!  ...But the KOTOR and Mario Kart ones were admittedly 'partially educated but also lucky guesses'

Only got 3/13, i'm glad I never enter VAG.

[KingslayerNana]

14 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

You do realse how they are testing that right? Its pretty easy to pas the quiz. More its a "Verified actual human" program.

 

This. I maybe knew like the answers to like 2-3 questions out of the 15. The rest was just googling/guessing things. You don't have to be a "gamer" to participate. Just need some dedication to check out their videos. And if you can't do that then well sorry there's no other way of getting something in super high demand right now at a reasonable price.

[RobLatour]

3 hours ago, akio123008 said:

To the OP: what do you actually need that card for? You still haven't mentioned anything apart from "developing software" but you may as well do that on a 900MHz pentium III.

 

In general:

I haven't bought a GPU in 5 years and I'm not planning to buy new one any time soon. I couldn't care less about the whole shortage, and to be honest I'm kind of fed up with all the "gamers" and other people whining about this. Maybe realise that there's more in the world than the latest graphics card.

 

At least, that's what I would have said, but you know what, Linus didn't. He apparently does actually care about your "need" for graphics cards, and decided to go through all the trouble of setting up this program - which isn't easy at all if your main occupation is making videos, rather than being an electronics retailer - just so that a bunch of (let's face it) spoilt people can get the latest GPU. You may as well appreciate that.

To be clear, I didn't say I need a card, I said I was building a new computer and wouldn't mind a decent graphics card to go with it.  For now I had to throw $s at an entry level card (as my machine will have and AMD chip in it) just so that I can hook up a monitor.   Money waisted, as I really do intend to get a half decent video card some day and when I do out will go the entry level one.  Also some years back I started down the road of trying to leverage an older GPU to improve performance on a program I was writing, and wouldn't mind  to see if I could do something now with processing large log files.  What I tried in the past didn't work out, but that's the sort of thing I enjoy playing with, so again I don't need a card, but would still like one.

[AlexP11223]

7 minutes ago, KingslayerNana said:

The rest was just googling

You spend much more time on that. The more answers you know, the higher is the chance to "win".

 

Also googling some of the image questions from the 2nd drop quiz would be difficult.

[Sauron]

15 hours ago, RobLatour said:

I'm a LT youtube subscriber, but more to the point also a developer who writes shareware and (mostly) freeware who is trying to build a new machine in support of that. 

I would suggest renting a VPS for now, it should be just as good for a developer as just having it in your system (I'm assuming it's something to do with machine learning if you need a gpu...?).

 

I agree VAG isn't really a solution but I don't think it hurts in any way, I doubt the number of cards they can actually get a hold of for it are enough to meaningfully impact availability outside of the program.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

12 minutes ago, KingslayerNana said:

This. I maybe knew like the answers to like 2-3 questions out of the 15. The rest was just googling/guessing things. You don't have to be a "gamer" to participate. Just need some dedication to check out their videos. And if you can't do that then well sorry there's no other way of getting something in super high demand right now at a reasonable price.

Oh....

I only had to Google a couple on one of them. (I wait a bit from the time it's posted to do it for fun)

[KingslayerNana]

19 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Oh....

I only had to Google a couple on one of them. (I wait a bit from the time it's posted to do it for fun)

Yea I game but I only stick with a few games (Dota 2, Apex, Path of Exile) so alot of them was stuff I have never heard of. But yea, if you got to the quiz fast enough you didn't need to know the answers to everything to get a chance. I was able to get the 5900x and I must have failed the quiz like 10 times.

[AlexP11223]

1 minute ago, KingslayerNana said:

I was able to get the 5900x and I must have failed the quiz like 10 times.

CPUs just have much less demand than GPUs.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

12 minutes ago, AlexP11223 said:

CPUs just have much less demand than GPUs.

Yeah, r5 and r7 skus are all in stock, and sometimes you can get r9s on newegg

[Middcore]

This is like the 2nd or 3rd "VAG is unfair, I need a new GPU because I'm a dEvElOpEr" thread where they never explain what development they do that requires a new high end GPU.

 

Linus's audience is largely gamers, so he's taking care of his own. He's not under any obligation to give everyone an equal shot at buying a GPU, or to cater to anybody else.

 

If you're a professional developer you should be able to either acquire a GPU through your employer or write the cost off as a business expense.

 

Edit: ah, I see our "developer" has now admitted he doesn't actually need a new card for work anyway. Just salty.

[KingslayerNana]

9 hours ago, RobLatour said:

To be clear, I didn't say I need a card, I said I was building a new computer and wouldn't mind a decent graphics card to go with it.  For now I had to throw $s at an entry level card (as my machine will have and AMD chip in it) just so that I can hook up a monitor.   Money waisted, as I really do intend to get a half decent video card some day and when I do out will go the entry level one.  Also some years back I started down the road of trying to leverage an older GPU to improve performance on a program I was writing, and wouldn't mind  to see if I could do something now with processing large log files.  What I tried in the past didn't work out, but that's the sort of thing I enjoy playing with, so again I don't need a card, but would still like one.

If you are in North America, buy an EVGA video card and register to sign up for the step-up problem. It lets you go into the queue for an upgrade and you get your purchase price credited.

[RobLatour]

9 hours ago, KingslayerNana said:

If you are in North America, buy an EVGA video card and register to sign up for the step-up problem. It lets you go into the queue for an upgrade and you get your purchase price credited.

wish I had known this, I bought my card last week -sadly not an evga card.

[AlexP11223]

15 hours ago, KingslayerNana said:

If you are in North America, buy an EVGA video card and register to sign up for the step-up problem. It lets you go into the queue for an upgrade and you get your purchase price credited.

In EU too I think.

 

But looks like this queue is slow too, still in September. https://forums.evga.com/Unofficial-3080-Step-Up-Queue-Thread-NORTH-AMERICA-m3091969.aspx

[KingslayerNana]

On 5/2/2021 at 12:37 PM, AlexP11223 said:

In EU too I think.

 

But looks like this queue is slow too, still in September. https://forums.evga.com/Unofficial-3080-Step-Up-Queue-Thread-NORTH-AMERICA-m3091969.aspx

Yea, I wouldn't go into the 3080 queue as I'm sure the lineup is huge by now. But lets say you get a card now and register for step-up, when the 3070ti/3080ti comes you switch your step up to those cards, then that should get you in a much better position.