Micro Center

[egriff79]

Just went to micro center for the first time and got some really good deals, but while I am waiting to get some help with a question I  am overhearing a micro center employee trying to sell a GPU to a customer the customer brought up the 8gb of VRAM enough. the micro center employee said "Oh yes it's more than enough for all modern games" I battling with myself to put in and when I started saying something to the contrary his boss whipped around and asks me if I need any help. so basically micro center knows 8gb vram is not enough for the future but they have a slew of 8gb cards that they need to get rid of when now every gamer is starting to figure out that 8gb is not enough to run high settings in modern and future games so they are going for higher VRAM. at some point, I see a huge crash in 8gb gpu's and it could be great news for budget builders.  those are just my thoughts what are yours?

 

[bezza...]

2 minutes ago, egriff79 said:

Just went to micro center for the first time and got some really good deals, but while I am waiting to get some help with a question I  am overhearing a micro center employee trying to sell a GPU to a customer the customer brought up the 8gb of VRAM enough. the micro center employee said "Oh yes it's more than enough for all modern games" I battling with myself to put in and when I started saying something to the contrary his boss whipped around and asks me if I need any help. so basically micro center knows 8gb vram is not enough for the future but they have a slew of 8gb cards that they need to get rid of when now every gamer is starting to figure out that 8gb is not enough to run high settings in modern and future games so they are going for higher VRAM. at some point, I see a huge crash in 8gb gpu's and it could be great news for budget builders.  those are just my thoughts what are yours?

 

i mean it could be that the guys budget did not allow for a higher vram card. or he chose to go for a 6600xt over a 3060 which is a upgrade

[egriff79]

That is possible I did not hear his budget, but I still think a crash in 8gb vram cards is coming with more and more games 8gb is no were near enough. I'm maxing out my 12gb in the last of us.

[NobleGamer]

2 hours ago, egriff79 said:

I  am overhearing a micro center employee trying to sell a GPU to a customer the customer brought up the 8gb of VRAM enough

Its ambiguious that "enough" could mean 1080p medium - So this isn't wrong on its face unless you know how specific the claim was.

 

4 hours ago, egriff79 said:

I'm maxing out my 12gb in the last of us.

At what settings & resolution?

 

4 hours ago, egriff79 said:

I still think a crash in 8gb vram cards is coming with more and more games 8gb is no were near enough.

When was the last time any GPUs had a price crash below MSRP because of newer games' graphical demands?

 

Maybe I'm out of the loop on the latest AAA games & their GPU VRAM demands, but what's your goalpost on resolution & quality for your 8 GB assessment? There's plenty of sources for last year that say 8 GB is often more than enough unless doing 4K gaming.

[seanondemand]

7 hours ago, egriff79 said:

That is possible I did not hear his budget, but I still think a crash in 8gb vram cards is coming with more and more games 8gb is no were near enough. I'm maxing out my 12gb in the last of us.

one would also hope that the microcenter employee is making a recommendation based on questions they asked about budget, customer needs, etc - if someone is looking to buy a $750 pc for their kid to play minecraft, or esports titles, then an 8gb card will be just fine. TLOU is 2023's "can it play Crysis" title, it seems, and a lot of people have no interest in playing it (although IMO they should just buy a PS5 for what it seems to cost for decent hardware to run it these days)

[Lurking]

They are buying a card today, and not at some future time. And most people are aware of the fact that electronics bought today will be cheaper tomorrow. But you still buy today since you don't want to wait. They just buy a GPU and play games. If you don't plan on selling it, it doesn't matter if there is a crash. 

 

Who knows what games or resolutions they said they play or what budget they have. Ultimately the sales person can just offer one of the cards they have in stock or can order. Even the 2 most knowledgeable and unbiased people could come up with different suggestions. So there is no guarantee your advice is the ultimate truth.

 

And that manager may not even have known what you said. They just saw you butting into someone else's conversation. 

 

If you wanted to say something, probably should have talked to the buyer without the sales person.

[it_dont_work]

12 hours ago, egriff79 said:

when I started saying something to the contrary his boss whipped around and asks me if I need any help

 

That sounds like the boss was helping provide good customer service by stopping a 'scene' 

[cmndr]

Outside of twitter and reddit, 8GB is probably enough for just about anything. 


As an exercise find the memory hungry settings, move them slightly and see if you visually notice the difference. 

More RAM is better. But there's plenty of workarounds with minimal real world down sides. 

I'm also biased, I've mostly been using a switch and my desktop isn't even plugged in right now. I only care about fun, not checking some box on the internet for someone that doesn't know me. 

[aisle9]

13 hours ago, egriff79 said:

Just went to micro center for the first time and got some really good deals, but while I am waiting to get some help with a question I  am overhearing a micro center employee trying to sell a GPU to a customer the customer brought up the 8gb of VRAM enough. the micro center employee said "Oh yes it's more than enough for all modern games" I battling with myself to put in and when I started saying something to the contrary his boss whipped around and asks me if I need any help. so basically micro center knows 8gb vram is not enough for the future but they have a slew of 8gb cards that they need to get rid of when now every gamer is starting to figure out that 8gb is not enough to run high settings in modern and future games so they are going for higher VRAM. at some point, I see a huge crash in 8gb gpu's and it could be great news for budget builders.  those are just my thoughts what are yours?

"All modern games", not "the future". Were you there when the salesperson and the customer were talking budget? Talking about what other hardware was in the PC? If the customer was rocking a Ryzen 5 5600X, a 4080 would be a really terrible use of funds. If all you're trying to do is play Cyberpunk at 1080p (and that's generally the case), a modern 8GB card will handle it.

 

I'd be curious to hear which Micro Center this took place at. I've spent lots of time at three different ones and a little bit of time at a fourth. I've asked advice and talked options at all of them, and I never heard anything that struck me as outright wrong or misleading at all. The salespeople are on commission, yeah, but the flip side of commission is that you lose that money if something comes back. It's in their best interest to tell someone that the RX 6600 XT they have their eyes on is probably not going to work for 4K TLOU. That's the thing about Micro Center; they employ knowledgeable people, and their compensation model encourages those knowledgeable people to not BS customers.

[tkitch]

FYI:  In most retail situations, trying to get in the way of an employee working won't go well for you.

 

If you talk to a customer separately?  not a huge deal, but getting in the way of people working is bad form overall.

[Guest]

8gb v RAM is fine. 

6gb is probably the minimum for AAA. 

 

To be completely fair though, you can probably do fine with a GTX 970 or 980 these days still. 

 

Gamers are fine with 1080p. 

I have a rediculous rx 6700xt with 12gb of RAM, but I really don't need it. 

If a GPU shortage didn't happen, I'd still rock my r9 390. 

For a number of years I was on Ryzen Apu which is about equal to a GTX 950. 

AAA games would run 30 fps at 720 low, but so what? 

 

Yes, a high end dedicated GPU is way better than anything integrated. 

But so many games run just fine on older stuff. 

Unless a company truly takes advantage of a card's capabilities, or is terribly unoptimized (I know what that actually means) you're golden on anything from probably even the GTX 700 series. 

[tkitch]

10 minutes ago, fpo said:

8gb v RAM is fine. 

There are games today that will not run full detail at 1080 with 8GB today.  

 

It's become a big talking point.  Hardware Unboxed has done some dives into this. 

[Guest]

Just now, tkitch said:

There are games today that will not run full detail at 1080 with 8GB today.  

 

It's become a big talking point.  Hardware Unboxed has done some dives into this. 

So don't use full detail? 

[tkitch]

1 minute ago, fpo said:

So don't use full detail? 

or get more than 8GB And don't have the VRAM limit.

If a 3060 will run a game, but a 3070 / 3070TI won't?
There's a problem.

[aisle9]

4 minutes ago, tkitch said:

or get more than 8GB And don't have the VRAM limit.

If a 3060 will run a game, but a 3070 / 3070TI won't?
There's a problem.

A problem for NVIDIA, not for Micro Center.

[tkitch]

2 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

A problem for NVIDIA, not for Micro Center.

*sigh*

no kidding.

[starsmine]

On 4/16/2023 at 10:17 AM, egriff79 said:

Just went to micro center for the first time and got some really good deals, but while I am waiting to get some help with a question I  am overhearing a micro center employee trying to sell a GPU to a customer the customer brought up the 8gb of VRAM enough. the micro center employee said "Oh yes it's more than enough for all modern games" I battling with myself to put in and when I started saying something to the contrary his boss whipped around and asks me if I need any help. so basically micro center knows 8gb vram is not enough for the future but they have a slew of 8gb cards that they need to get rid of when now every gamer is starting to figure out that 8gb is not enough to run high settings in modern and future games so they are going for higher VRAM. at some point, I see a huge crash in 8gb gpu's and it could be great news for budget builders.  those are just my thoughts what are yours?

 

8gb IS good enough for modern games and will be for the next couple of years. Stop acting like ULTRA is the only setting. Stop perpetuating FOMO around not running a game on ULTRA

 

[steelfoxy]

As a former sales associate i've heard many, many co-workers nearly scam people. I hate to admit it but most of them are looking for some sales based bonuses. It is wrong but as long as the sales are good, bosses do and will not care.

[Needfuldoer]

On 4/17/2023 at 12:16 AM, tkitch said:

FYI:  In most retail situations, trying to get in the way of an employee working won't go well for you.

 

If you talk to a customer separately?  not a huge deal, but getting in the way of people working is bad form overall.

Especially at Micro Center, where the associates are paid commission. (Their little bar code stickers are for tracking that.)

[My_Computer_Is_Trash]

On 4/16/2023 at 10:26 AM, egriff79 said:

That is possible I did not hear his budget, but I still think a crash in 8gb vram cards is coming with more and more games 8gb is no were near enough. I'm maxing out my 12gb in the last of us.

Wow, where is my modular vram? FRAMEWORK..........................come on..........................

[tkitch]

1 minute ago, My_Computer_Is_Trash said:

Wow, where is my modular vram? FRAMEWORK..........................come on..........................

basically can't work due to various factors.

[My_Computer_Is_Trash]

2 minutes ago, tkitch said:

basically can't work due to various factors.

Dont care.  Someone needs to make it.

[Needfuldoer]

20 minutes ago, My_Computer_Is_Trash said:

Wow, where is my modular vram?

It's back in 1997.

[My_Computer_Is_Trash]

1 minute ago, Needfuldoer said:

It's back in 1997.

Good thing I know a time traveler. @da na

2 hours ago, da na said:

wait what the hell

[da na]

16 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

It's back in 1997.

modular soundcard memory FTW