Blog Features

Ghost Hunter YouTube

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Good Morning Friends! I took a much longer than originally anticipated hiatus from posting. When I got up Wednesday morning I just was not really feeling it, and then I was off both Thursday and Friday and did not post then either. For those who follow me because of Blaugust, I would say that it is a good idea to just go with the flow when you are not feeling it. Chances are you probably need a break from creating content and so long as you resume at some point taking a break is extremely therapeutic. I can’t necessarily say that I feel recharged, but I was ready to get back to the blog this morning. Over the weekend a discussion happened over on the “Twitters” about Ghost Hunter channels on YouTube and I said that I should really do a blog post where I dump some of my favorites. This morning is the realization of that statement and if you are thoroughly uninterested in the paranormal, today is likely going to be a hard pass for you.

Overnight Channel / TFIL

The Overnight channel is something that branched off of another channel called TFIL, and the premise is that they go all around the country and world to do ghost-hunting videos. Ghost Hunting YouTube is this spider web that branches out, and there are a number of collaborations that ultimately will lead you to other channels. Since this one was my “first” it will always have a special place in my heart, but as I have developed slightly more refined tastes it does come across as extremely over the top. Corey is a sweetheart though and seems to be a ghost magnet, and there have been a few moments that were genuinely shocking.

The Paranormal Files

This is probably the second channel that the YouTube algorithm sent my way. Overall I like this series but there are certain aspects that bug me. Firstly Colin is a little hyperbolic when it comes to his reactions to things going on. I do kinda dig that he is often out doing stuff with his mom, dad, and now wife so it creates this interesting dynamic. It bugs me that he calls his parents by their first name, but that is just a pet peeve of mine because I had a friend growing up that did that. The only time he called them Mom or Dad was when he wanted something. Anyways there are a lot of interesting places that this channel explores, but there tends to be an excessive amount of padding with background setting content.

Twin Paranormal

It was through Paranormal Files that I was introduced to Twin Paranormal, which is a group operating out of the Las Vegas area. Over time this has become probably my favorite group because they release content reliably and it has sorta become my thing to sit down and watch their latest video while eating lunch on Sunday after I finish editing the two podcasts. They have great energy and I really like the brother’s dynamic and their friend Wyatt. All of these channels indulge in quite a bit of hyperbole at times and this channel’s greatest sin is probably its video title and thumbnail game. The videos are much better than this would denote, but they are absolutely playing the algorithm game.

Paranormal Nightmare

This channel brands itself as a TV Series, which appears to be “broadcast” on Tubi, Apple TV, Prime Video, and Pluto TV. After watching several videos, the algorithm opened the floodgates at recommending channels that I had not encountered organically and this was one of the first. The group does investigations and has a religious aspect to it where their goal is to free the family from whatever “infestation” might be occurring. There have been some interesting situations in their shows of individuals who appear to wildly change their personalities that you would think might indicate possession. One of the more professional groups and unlike a lot of the made for the travel channel type crap, it is weirdly not super over the top.

Paranormal Quest

Another group of four guys more or less follows the formula that all of these groups follow. I think it was through this channel that I first encountered the Estes Method. For those who don’t watch a bunch of these channels, it is a thing where they have one person put on noise-canceling headphones and listen to a “spirit box” while another person often times in another room asks questions. The person who is “under” just shouts out everything that they hear through the spirit box regardless of context. When the questions and the “answers” line up it is really interesting, but oftentimes there is a fair amount of nonsense as well. A “spirit box” is essentially a device that scans through the radio frequencies and it is reported that spirits can stop the scan at specific spots to land on words or phrases.

Exploring with Josh

This is probably the most hyperbolic channel on the list. Josh has done a wide number of collaborations with other channels on this list to this point, and as a result, I periodically get fed his videos through the algorithm. If there is any group that I would accuse of playing things up for the camera, this is absolutely the worst offender. These are sometimes interesting but I absolutely do not watch every episode. One of the interesting things that come through these channels though is that often times different groups will do the same locations. It is interesting how many groups get the same results from the same areas.

Paranormal New England

As hyperbolic as Josh is… it at least led me to find this channel. I guess Paranormal New England is a group that he used to work with regularly, and their channel is a gem in the rough. Basically what you get is a lot of very lightly edited footage of investigations, that more or less feel like raw vlogs. They don’t release videos very often with something new landing every few months, but they are deeply interesting to watch. This is the sort of thing that I really love to see because it is way more serious than the “whacky adventures of ghost hunters” vibe you often get from YouTube channels.

Exploring with Fighters

This is another channel that I stumbled onto through collaborations, specifically with Overnight/TFIL. Dan’s stuff is sort of hit or miss and he seems to do way more urban exploration/abandoned locations stuff than ghost hunting, but there are a handful of really interesting locations in the UK and Europe. Admittedly I don’t watch him that often but still someone I am subbed to that occasionally does something really interesting.

Mackie and Amanda

This is another channel that I stumbled onto due to collaboration. There was a series of videos where Amanda was recording with Twin Paranormal. Amanda is a medium and Mackie is seemingly one of those friends who is just down for any sort of nonsense. There is a massive backlog of stuff that I have not seen, but the few videos I have watched have been interesting. I really like the vibe of this group and they feel extremely relatable and don’t really fall into the over-the-top YouTuber rut as so many channels can over time. There is a deep sincerity with what they are doing and I dig that.

Lomar Mendz

The next couple of channels is recent finds. The algorithm fed me a series of videos that included Lomar and Chelsea as they were doing some Randonautica stuff, then I noticed they also did more than a fair number of ghost-hunting videos as well. Essentially Chelsea is in her words a “baby medium” and she is trying to learn to control it Lomar is just one of those “good dude” types that seem interested in exploring anything. There is a good-natured vibe to the channel, and while I have only watched a few things so far I do plan on diving back into the past content.

Exploring with Angelo

Another “Good Dude” type that I encountered through a series of videos he recorded with Lomar and Chelsea. I’ve not really plumbed much of his solo content, but it seems very interesting. Mostly throwing these channels out there because I think they are going to be ones that I really dig in the future. I don’t have much experience with either of the groups though.

Amy’s Crypt

This one is literally brand new to me. This was suggested by my friend Jae during our conversation this weekend and I have only had a chance to watch a single video. I often have one of these running in the background while I am playing games and then alt-tab over if things sound interesting. This is an Aussie couple that travels broadly and does investigations. So far I dig the vibe of the videos and they also seem to have a deep sincerity to them.

Madd Vladd – Skinwalker series

This one is interesting but also gives off deep “fake” vibes. I am throwing it in there just in case it eventually turns into something. The setup is that this dude is a gaming YouTuber with another channel and started having weird happenings in his backyard that open up onto an undeveloped area. Since Skinwalkers are the new hotness this video series for which there are only two currently, uses that titling. There were three months between the first and second video, which seems deeply suspect and makes me think there is maybe some “after effects” editing time happening. There are some fairly interesting things that go on. If you have an hour to sit down and watch with a deeply skeptical eye… it might be interesting.

[EDIT] – 4pm 10/17

Jasko

I so very rarely edit my own blog posts to add content after the fact, but I am going to do so today. Over lunch, I was looking for something to watch and stumbled onto this channel. I know nothing about it, but this video is interesting enough to make me subscribe. There is a point where there is this insane blood-curdling scream from out of nowhere, while they are deep in the woods seemingly alone. I opted to go ahead and edit it in because lord knows if or when I will make another post like this in the future.

Ten Favorite Vampire Films

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Good Morning Friends! This morning I am going to continue this “season of spoop” series where I dive into some of my favorite movies in horror subgenres. Earlier this week I gave you my rundown of zombie films, and today I am going to talk about the much sexier undead… Vampires. This list was shockingly hard to narrow down because I kept fiddling with one or two places swapping movies in and out of the list until I finally landed on the ten that I am happy with. Suffice it to say that vampires and vampire hunters are well-trodden ground when it comes to horror films. As someone who spent countless hours playing Vampire the Masquerade, this topic is very near and dear to my heart… so I hope you won’t ram a stake through it.

Again these are not necessarily in any particular order but I will be closing out the list with a few of my absolute favorites.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Much like a Zombie list has to include Night of the Living Dead, a Vampire list must pay homage to the original Bram Stoker tale that largely canonized the mythos for western society. There are many versions of this tale in cinema form, but it is highly unlikely there will ever be one quite so baroquely lavish as the 1992 rendition by Francis Ford Coppola. I have a feeling that this film was a bisexual awakening for many as it just exudes raw passion at times. If you ever have the chance you should totally check out the Mike Mignola comic adaptation from the short-lived Tops Comics imprint because it brings really plays with the over-the-top designs that this film brought forward.

John Carpenter’s Dracula

With Vampires comes the presence of hunters and hunter-focused movies. There are so many phenomenal ones, but one of my personal favorites has always been Vampires from 1998. Growing up Catholic, there has always been a certain amount of romance about thinking about the Vatican as a force that sanctions monster hunters. At its core, this is a prime John Carpenter film, and it has the same quirky irreverent flavor that his protagonists often do. I also have this thing for the whole concept of roaming packs of vampires preying on the outskirts of society.

Fright Night

I love this film, and honestly, I am surprised it does not get talked about more often. There was a not-amazing remake some years ago featuring Colin Farrell and the late Anton Yelchin, but for me, the best version is the 1985 rendition. Vampires in suburbia is another interesting trope, and this movie carries that out beautifully as bad things are happening under the nose of your average small-town folks. The special effects do not hold up to modern scrutiny… but it was a simpler time. I remember NOW Comics had a phenomenal run of Fright Night comics that originally retold the movie and then picked up continuing the tale from that point forward.

Underworld

I think the hardest part of the list was trying to determine which Underworld and Blade films I might include, and ultimately I landed on ONLY including the first Underworld film and unfortunately completely skipping Blade. For me, the film series will forever be connected because they are this latex-suit industrial-metal Matrix-infused Vampire action. While I enjoy all of the Underworld films collectively, I think the first one is still the best because it does not require you to watch the previous films to understand. As the series continued it felt more and more derivative, and while this was great for existing fans… the whole hierarchy of the Vampire and Lycan worlds and which period of time we happened to be in got a little fuzzy. Still a great series if you have never watched them, thought not exactly what I would consider a scary viewing experience.

Night Watch

I went back and forth on whether or not to include this film, because while Vampires absolutely play heavily into the unfinished trilogy, it is more akin to a Russian Nightbreed than anything else. Not knowing where else I might fit this movie however led me to slot it into the Vampire list. This is one of the most creative and lavish visions of the conflict between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. It very much comes across as a dark faerie tale as opposed to something clinging to the western Dracula tradition, and honestly… that makes it so much more compelling. As I said before this is part of an unfinished trilogy of movies but if you enjoy this I would highly suggest checking out Day Watch as well. Dusk Watch sadly seems to be completely dead in the water.

What We Do In The Shadows

Yes, this is a comedy, but it is also one of the best Vampire films ever created. There are a number of “funny” vampire films, but most of them are pure shit. This however is high art and has so many absolute genius performances. This has also turned into a series on FX that is in its fourth season. Taika Watiti is brilliant as always but my favorite will always be Matt Berry’s Laszlo Cravensworth. I am a huge fan of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace so I am just generally partial to Matt Berry characters. Definitely start with the movie and if you enjoy it, then consume the series posthaste.

Interview With The Vampire

I am a product of my age and this movie was released during my freshman year in college. I had read several of the Anne Rice books and was still deeply into Vampire the Masquerade, so you know this movie meant quite a lot to me. I still don’t exactly agree with Tom Cruise as Lestat but whatever… the movie was still enjoyable. I’ve not had a chance to watch any of the new series that retells the tale, but it is on my list of things to do over the “season of spoop”. Brad Pitt as Louis is still delectable. I used to roleplay as a vampire on Undernet IRC and I was deeply into the family dynamic of these stories, and wish I still was in contact with the folks who used to roleplay as my “childer”.

Innocent Blood

This film does not get near the attention it deserves. Another aspect of Vampires that I have always loved is the ones who only feed on those who deserve to die. This is a tale of mob violence told through the vignette of a huntress slowly taking down “the family”. There are aspects that do not hold up… like the special effects but this comes from the pedigree of being directed by John Landis. The movie also has a bit of a buddy cop meets rom-com vibe as our vampire joins forces with a cop to take down some accidental vampire mobsters. Unfortunately, I don’t think it is currently on any of the streaming services, and you will have to digitally rent it. It has been years since I have seen it so I might need to track down the DVD.

Lost Boys

This movie came out when I was eleven and I probably did not actually get to watch it until I was twelve or thirteen… but when I did it heavily influenced pretty much everything about me going forward. This is the film that made me completely hooked on Vampires. I was convinced as a kid that the comics shown in this movie were real, and went on a quest to try and find them… only to find out that they were simply props but that lots of other horror comics existed. This movie is VERY 80s, but I completely love the style of the vampires and the cool lair that they live in. This is probably the only movie that had “The Two Coreys” that still hold up today. I remember having a massive crush on Star… as did pretty much everyone. I think the Grandpa however will always be the best character. Phenomenal movie and maybe an even better soundtrack. Cry Little Sister is a truly iconic theme song.

Near Dark

This is the best vampire film you have ever seen… or at least very few have actually seen it. This film absolutely is in contention for my favorite vampire film. What if I were to tell you that there was a Vampire film that included the best actors from Aliens, and was set here in Oklahoma? This tale goes in a lot of interesting directions but largely follows the story of a fledgling being inducted into this little tribe. Instead of relying on fangs, these vampires have to use more conventional methods of feeding off their victims like slicing them open with a razor. Instead of staying in one place, they travel around the country in a blacked-out RV to protect themselves from sunlight. The feel of the movie is deeply compatible with a roaming band of Kindred and I’ve always thought something like this would work extremely well for a Vampire the Masquerade setting. I think Shudder now owns the streaming rights to the film and I consider this a must-watch for anyone interested in Vampires because it is such a unique feeling take on the genre.

More To Come

Like I said at the start this one was really hard to narrow down to ten. There are so many great vampire films out there, and I am sure I have missed many of your favorites. Feel free to contest my decisions in the comments below. I am not sure where I am going from here, but maybe slasher films are the next sub-genre I tackle. As I am piecing things together in my head, there is absolutely a category of horror films that defy categorization. Not sure what I will do with those if I decide to tackle them at all.

Ten Favorite Zombie Films

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Good Morning Friends! I realize that the listicle is pretty much the lowest form of internet content, but excuse me while I engage in it. It is now the official month of “spoop” and as a result, I have been involved in several conversations already about horror film suggestions. First off… I consume a lot of horror films and it honestly might be my favorite genre. All of these discussions have made me realize that I have never devoted much effort to talk about the horror films that I really enjoy. Since I consume so many, it was going to be near impossible to create a superset of “favorites” but instead, I am deciding to break it up into sub-genres. Since I’ve always been a big fan of Zombies even before the Walking Dead spawned the popularization of the genre, I figured I would start here for my first in this series.

These are in no particular order and include serious films as well as more satire-based comedic horror.

Shaun of the Dead

I am not really sure what to say. This is maybe the best comedic horror film that has ever existed. Not only do you have the high art of an Edgar Wright film that is meticulously edited to the soundtrack, but also you have some of the best Simon Pegg gags. Let’s go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over.

Blood Quantum

I literally just watched this for the first time this weekend and it has already made its way to the list. It is a pretty interesting spin on the Zombie film genre, as it centers around a first nations reservation in Quebec. Essentially in this version of the zombie lore, Indigenous folks are immune to turning from bites… but they are of course not immune to being eaten. I highly suggest you track down this film and watch it over this spoop season, very good.

Little Monsters

Be warned this should not be confused with the similarly named Howie Mandel nightmare-fueled children’s tale from the 80s. This film came out in 2019 and gives us another excellent comedy zombie film genre tale of a deadbeat uncle who finally shows some focus and tries to save his nephew from a zombie-filled field trip to a petting zoo. Lupita Nyong’o steals the show with her portrayal of Miss Caroline the teacher willing to do anything to protect her flock of students, while also trying desperately to keep them calm.

Train to Busan

This is quite possibly my single favorite zombie film and is in pretty heavy contention among my favorite horror films. Be warned this is a South Korean film, which will require “reading the movie” with subtitles but it is well worth it. I largely lump this and the 2020 sequel Peninsula as a combined experience, and both should absolutely be watched. One of the most fast-paced films you will watch as the action picks up almost immediately and then never really stops until the conclusion of the film. Peninsula on the other hand is a bit more pensive but still contains a lot of furious zombie-killing action.

Fido

This is a gem from the early days of Netflix when we used to have to maintain our streaming movies in one giant queue. Fido is another comedic zombie film set in a world after the zombie apocalypse where things have reverted back to an almost 1950s existence. In this world, they utilize zombies as a form of slave labor, through electronic collars that turn them docile. However, events happen that lead to this going horribly wrong in this tale about a boy and his dog… except that dog is actually a zombie.

Night of the Living Dead Animated

If we are going to talk about zombie films, we have to give some respect to the original George Romero classic Night of the Living Dead. In 2021 my favorite version was released where they used the original audio… but crafted a full cell style animation movie on top of it. This version specifically masks some of the failings of the first… like the zombies maybe not really looking great compared to modern standards. This is now my preferred method for revisiting this classic, and if you have never watched it… I consider it required viewing for understanding how the genre evolved.

Zombieland

This movie is just a fun ride. One could think of this as the American version of Shaun of the Dead and then get into the whole debate about which is the best version of The Office. I think Zombieland stands on its own two feet however and it will be worth the watch. I’ve always been a big Bill Murray fan, and he nails his role in this film… as himself. It is just a fun road trip film with the key differentiator from that genre being that they are trying to avoid getting eaten in the process.

Land of the Dead

There have been a lot of sequels to the original Night of the Living Dead, but my favorite of these is Land of the Dead from 2005. Romero has always been less than subtle with the political armature that he builds his stories upon. “Land” is maybe the least subtle as the wealthy continue to live a life much like they did prior to the apocalypse in a gilded tower that is serviced by the struggling masses in a shanty town that has formed at its base. It features John Leguizamo in an excellent non-comedic role and Dennis Hopper as the maniacal ruler of this haven for “the haves”. From a sheer zombie lore standpoint, it plays with the normal rules of engagement quite a bit in interesting ways.

The Girl with all the Gifts

This is one of the most interesting additions to the zombie genre. It presents a relatively unique version of a zombie, and if you have never seen the film I won’t spoil the conclusion of how it works. Basically, the story centers around a military base where they are attempting to educate and care for a number of children that have been infected. With proper precautions, they appear to be normal children… but once those precautions fail they turn into ravening zombies with superhuman agility. This protected state however does not last forever, and the fall of this base is largely the start of our tale.

28 Days Later

28 Days Later is part of an unfinished trilogy and gave us the rabid “rage zombie” archetype that dominated so many other zombie films for a decade. The first film is by far the best, but I still greatly enjoyed the follow-up 28 Weeks Later. The intro is very reminiscent of The Walking Dead where a man wakes up from a coma in a world gone very wrong and tries to figure out how to survive. Danny Boyle of Transporting fame brings us his specific spin on the zombie genre, and it is rather good. I hope at some point they finish the trilogy with I would guess 28 Years Later pending they follow the pattern set by the first two films. I am not holding my breath however because it has seemingly been in preproduction hell for years.

More to Come

I am honestly not sure how many of these I have in me, but I am pretty sure at a minimum I will do one over Vampire films, Demonic films, and Slasher films. I MIGHT have a Werewolf or Ghosts one in me as well, but we will have to see how these all come together. Hopefully, you enjoyed the list, and if there is a zombie film that you feel I overlooked please drop it down in the comments below. I could have likely filled two “top ten lists” with Zombie films however because there are so many that I have greatly enjoyed.

Maybe Skip This Generation

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Yesterday was the big Keynote from GTC… which is a conference that Nvidia essentially made up in order to have a venue in which to sell their graphics cards. One of the hot debates from yesterday was whether or not CEO Jensen Huang was an AI character and rendered in real-time… seeing as the last generation he did the entire demo in a virtual environment. The larger talking point however was the price tag associated with this generation. As is often the case Nvidia focused entirely on the highest end of their graphics cards, namely the 4080 and 4090. For those who don’t remember the “90” series came on board the last generation and has effectively replaced the Titan nomenclature for their extremely high-end cards that are not necessarily targeted at gaming. The products announced yesterday:

  • GeForce RTX 4090 24GB – $1599.99 MSRP
  • GeForce RTX 4080 16GB – $1199.99 MSRP
  • GeForce RTX 4080 12GB – $899.99 MSRP

From there you can expect board partners to release variants ranging from lower ram versions that are likely cheaper and cards with extra features that will cost more than the founder’s edition cards. One thing that will be interesting to see however is how the lineup of third-party cards shakes out now that EVGA has decided to stop producing Nvidia cards… and graphics cards entirely. Based on some very terse comments released around that news… it seems that board partners are often losing money on the higher-end graphics cards due to the chip costs set by Nvidia, and the price ceiling placed on product families.

If you compare the pricing of the last several generations, you can see that the lowest-end version of the 4080 is an almost 30% increase over the cost of the MSRP of the previous generation. Unfortunately, as we all know too well, it was almost impossible to find a graphics card during most of that generation for anywhere close to that price point. The pandemic happened and made the market go wonky… with issues in the supply chain followed by an increased demand brought on by a boom in gaming. This was only increased by the fact that so many set out of the 2000 series completely due to a similarly high 16% price increase over the previous generation.

I lucked into buying a reasonably priced prebuilt system for my birthday last year. It was a good call for me personally because I needed to completely refresh my system, as I was still using a 5th gen Intel platform. However at least part of my logic behind the purchase was that if anything went really wrong, I could at a minimum flip the graphics card and make more money than I paid for the system. At that point, I had checked Ebay and the 3080 was selling through at around $2500 each. However, a lot of things have changed since then. Firstly the supply chain issues have cleared up a bit, and the demand for chips has lessened to the point where most card manufacturers have cards in stock. Combine this with some very public crashes in cryptocurrency and the recent move of Etherium from proof of work to proof of stake… and the third-party market is deluged with used cards. If I were careful I could probably pick up a 3080 right now for under $500, which is a significant change in the market.

There is also the problem that a lot of the features that are being added to these new RTX cards are not actually being used by the bulk of gaming. Ray tracing has yet to really take the world by storm, and Nvidia banked during the 2000 series that gamers would favor higher resolution gaming as opposed to higher framerate gaming. In February of 2021, Steam passed 50,000 games listed on the platform and available for sale. There is a curated list of all of the games that feature “RTX On” support and right now currently that list only contains 132 games. While Nvidia keeps pioneering new AI features on their cards… it is highly unlikely that we are going to see the benefit of them anytime soon. Sure I love the AI ability to knock out background noise on my microphone or clip out the background when I am on a video call but I am not running any heavy processing routines on my card. Instead, I am still spending most of my time running games at 1080p or 1440p at which point I favor framerate over raw rendering detail.

Don’t get me wrong… I think a lot of the things demonstrated in the keynote were extremely cool. However, I also think that most of those things don’t really factor into my usage pattern for the cards. Nvidia has gone hard on AI research and simulations, and the vast majority of its presentation was focused on that market. Gamers are no longer the key demographic that they are chasing as a company and likely have not been for a very long time. So my advice would be that unless you are one of those folks who just have to have the newest and shiniest thing… maybe you should skip this generation of graphics cards entirely. The price point is tied to an artificial anchor of demand that is not going to hold up in the long run. That price is anchored to the eBay highs of the pandemic and a desire to squeeze more profit from the consumer as a result.

You can snap up some pretty reasonable deals in the after-market right now on 3000 series cards, and that is honestly more cards than is needed to get you through to the next major graphical update. If you follow the trends, 4k gaming has not really taken off as anyone had hoped for either. As I said before gamers tend to be favoring running games at a lower resolution but 144hz or higher frame rate. Right now mining cards are flooding the market because it is no longer profitable in the least to run a graphics card setup. There have been numerous videos covering the fact that so long as the cooler is still functioning properly, it is perfectly fine to buy a mining graphics card for gaming performance.

The 2000 series was the last time that gamers largely gave a generation a hard pass, and it was not necessarily for the same reasons. While there was a much larger jump in price point, it was more a case that the performance increase was not all that significant over the 1000 series. The 4000 series on the other hand seem to be a pretty massive leap in performance over the 3000 series… but it isn’t performance that we really need yet. The price point of 4k high refresh gaming is still pretty steep when it comes to monitors that are largely still in the $700 range. Whereas you can pick up a 1440p panel for around $200 and at the most popular sizes of around 27-inch displays… there isn’t much noticeable difference between the two. You really need to get up into the 40-60 inch display range before 4k has a clear advantage over 1440p.

Basically I think the 4000 series is really cool, but way to costly for what it is giving us. Get a cheap/used 3000 series card and call it good and wait this generation out.

Update – 9/21 4 pm

When I made my post this morning I did not have all of the information, or at least I took some things for granted. If you have two cards that are 4080s… and announce them as the 16GB version and the 12GB version, I go into that assuming that is the key difference. They are apparently just completely different cards, and today there has been a lot of speculation that the 4080 12GB was originally intended to be announced as the 4070. Why this matters, is that the 4080 12GB is essentially a worse card than the existing 3080 cards. While the boost clock is higher, the RTX 4080 12GB only has 7680 CUDA cores, whereas the existing 3080 series has 8960. That is a difference of over 1280 CUDA cores, which seems at least on paper to be a significant loss in horsepower as compared to the current generation. I am not sure if the clock and memory speed differences make up for it, but it does not look great.

That also means that the true generational price comparison is not that 12GB thing being called a 4080, but instead the 16GB model that has the much higher CUDA core count or 9728. That also means that the price difference between a 3080 and a 4080 then is an over 70% increase as opposed to the 30% mentioned earlier. This honestly just keeps looking like a worse deal, and I again stand by my statement that you really should be looking at getting a 3000 series card while they are dropping in price with the incoming wave of new cards, instead of looking at the 4000 series.