RTX a4000 $1499 USD, Lenovo.com

[MountainDew]

Maybe not a GREAT deal, but Lenovo is selling this GPU lower than some being sold as used. I'm curious - do companies such as Lenovo and Dell do anything to the GPU before it's sold? The only thing that stands out to me is some verification process, similar to what they do with installed hard drives.
In short, would there be any reason NOT to buy this gpu from places like Lenovo, Dell, etc?

 

[yobigd20]

The only thing I know about these gpus is that they are single slotte and have terrible cooling fans and they run extremely hot, way hotter than the gaming equivalents (making them not so great for mining either , unless you're doing immersion cooling or something).

 

[TLN]

In short, would there be any reason NOT to buy this gpu from places like Lenovo, Dell, etc?

Cause for the same money you can get 3090 FE with almost double the Cuda cores, 50% more memory and memory bandwidth and less TDP limitations with better cooling and resale (shall you decide to get rid of it) value?

 

[MountainDew]

Cause for the same money you can get 3090 FE with almost double the Cuda cores, 50% more memory and memory bandwidth and less TDP limitations with better cooling and resale (shall you decide to get rid of it) value?

Same price? I'm seeing it's twice the price as the RTX a4000

 

[FlorianZ]

I have an RTX 4000 (the previous gen of what's linked here) in my hypervisor, passed through to a gaming VM. It's working great! It does run a little hotter than a gaming GPU would, but I don't have any issues with thermal throttling. It has good case airflow in a server chassis, though. Gaming performance is about equivalent to a RTX 2060 SUPER. I don't know where the A4000 falls.

 

[MountainDew]

what i'm really curious is, do vendors like Lenovo and Dell do anything to the gpu that would impact it in any way?

 

[FlorianZ]

Cause for the same money you can get 3090 FE with almost double the Cuda cores, 50% more memory and memory bandwidth and less TDP limitations with better cooling and resale (shall you decide to get rid of it) value?

I have yet to see a 3090 that you can actually buy for that price. It looks like this is closer to 3080 pricing territory. And even then you have to deal with wasteful form factors that don't fit anything, coolers that are just recirculating case air, and power connectors on the wrong side of the car. It's all a trade-off. Also, in the past Quadro cards have held their value way better compared to GeForce... but the market is kind of crazy right now, so who knows if that will still be true.

what i'm really curious is, do vendors like Lenovo and Dell do anything to the gpu that would impact it in any way?

I only have experience with Dell and they were essentially just rebranded PNY cards.

 

[TLN]

Same price? I'm seeing it's twice the price as the RTX a4000

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3090-24gb-gddr6x-pci-express-4-0-graphics-card-titanium-and-black/6429434.p?skuId=6429434

They're getting some in stock from time to time.
I got 3090FTW3 for ~1700 Out of pocket. Not apples to apples, (ftw3 is big card with 500w powerlimit) but still.

 

[FlorianZ]

They're getting some in stock from time to time.
I got 3090FTW3 for ~1700 Out of pocket. Not apples to apples, (ftw3 is big card with 500w powerlimit) but still.

Congrats, and that's a solid price for the card you got. But you're one of the lucky few: Most folks will not be able to buy these cards for that price.

 

[MountainDew]

I have yet to see a 3090 that you can actually buy for that price. It looks like this is closer to 3080 pricing territory. And even then you have to deal with wasteful form factors that don't fit anything, coolers that are just recirculating case air, and power connectors on the wrong side of the car. It's all a trade-off. Also, in the past Quadro cards have held their value way better compared to GeForce... but the market is kind of crazy right now, so who knows if that will still be true.



I only have experience with Dell and they were essentially just rebranded PNY cards.

Thanks - this would be going into a Dell... and I've been looking at their site but like everyone else (aside from Lenovo), they're sold out.

 

[TLN]

Congrats, and that's a solid price for the card you got. But you're one of the lucky few: Most folks will not be able to buy these cards for that price.

while I don't wanna argue about chip shortages, me and all my friends who are into pc/gaming got at least 3000 card. We all have 9-5 jobs to do, so none of us was ever camping at microcenter/bestbuy. None of use paid over retail as well. And only few cards came from MC. (I understand that it's not an options for lots of people).
I've seen FE in stock in BB few times in the past two weeks, but was unable to purchase myself (yet).

 

[MountainDew]

while I don't wanna argue about chip shortages, me and all my friends who are into pc/gaming got at least 3000 card. We all have 9-5 jobs to do, so none of us was ever camping at microcenter/bestbuy. None of use paid over retail as well. And only few cards came from MC. (I understand that it's not an options for lots of people).
I've seen FE in stock in BB few times in the past two weeks, but was unable to purchase myself (yet).

The reason for my interested in the a4000 is future proofing my Plex server. When I review Nvidia's Matrix, it checks all the boxes for encoding and decoding, as well as unrestricted number of sessions. But it looks like the 3090 could potentially do the same, so I may keep an eye out for it if stores get it back in stock.

 

[TLN]

The reason for my interested in the a4000 is future proofing my Plex server. When I review Nvidia's Matrix, it checks all the boxes for encoding and decoding, as well as unrestricted number of sessions. But it looks like the 3090 could potentially do the same, so I may keep an eye out for it if stores get it back in stock.

At this point any 3000 Series supports all the features (correct me if im wrong). I don't use plex but was lucky to get one of 3060Ti XC (20cm long card) back in February. Fits perfectly in my HTPC/Server computer. No need to go after top of the line 3090 honestly (leave that for gaming/overclocking).

 

[FlorianZ]

At this point any 3000 Series supports all the features (correct me if im wrong). I don't use plex but was lucky to get one of 3060Ti XC (20cm long card) back in February. Fits perfectly in my HTPC/Server computer. No need to go after top of the line 3090 honestly (leave that for gaming/overclocking).

Yeah, agreed. The encoder and decoder hardware is all the same across the series. Number of streams should only be limited by memory capacity and bandwidth - which may be different between cards in the series.

Are you sure you need a 3000 series for encoding, though? For example, a Tesla P4 is cheap, small form factor, only 75W TDP, has two NVENC encoders, one NVDEC, 8GB VRAM, "unlimited" streams and H.265 support.

 

[MountainDew]

Are you sure you need a 3000 series for encoding, though? For example, a Tesla P4 is cheap, small form factor, only 75W TDP, has two NVENC encoders, one NVDEC, 8GB VRAM, "unlimited" streams and H.265 support.

My decision was purely based on the NVIDIA matrix, and which GPU had "yes" checked across everything (including B frames). The RTX a4000 did that for both encoding and decoding (and it's a newer GPU).
I know I can potentially modify a GeForce card, but that's not for me. I just want to slap in a card and use it. And by going with a newer card, I'm hoping to get longer life out of it when compared to older cards that may check all the boxes, too.

 

[TLN]

My decision was purely based on the NVIDIA matrix, and which GPU had "yes" checked across everything (including B frames). The RTX a4000 did that for both encoding and decoding (and it's a newer GPU).
I know I can potentially modify a GeForce card, but that's not for me. I just want to slap in a card and use it. And by going with a newer card, I'm hoping to get longer life out of it when compared to older cards that may check all the boxes, too.

If you wanna use purely for plex and etc I'd suggest getting cheaper low end card that you can possibly return. Might be gen behind (I agree that newer cards likely to get a longer life). If that works for you (pretty likely) - you gonna save yourself $1000 or more. If not - turn that back in and get 3070/3080/3090/Quadro of your choice.

 

[itronin]

if this is really about encode and decode, don't want to mess with driver tweaks (p400,p620) and unlimited streams, and want a new card...
P2200 is a little more than 1/3 the price, will use less power, is bus powered instead of needing aux power. Yes, its Pascal so not the latest. But if it tastes great and is less filling why? If you are willing to buy P2000 used of the bay then you're talking about 1/4 the price give or take.

 

[MountainDew]

if this is really about encode and decode, don't want to mess with driver tweaks (p400,p620) and unlimited streams, and want a new card...
P2200 is a little more than 1/3 the price, will use less power, is bus powered instead of needing aux power. Yes, its Pascal so not the latest. But if it tastes great and is less filling why? If you are willing to buy P2000 used of the bay then you're talking about 1/4 the price give or take.

wanting b frame support limits the list of cards that have that capability (based on this matrix). P2200 doesn't support it.

 

[itronin]

wanting b frame support limits the list of cards that have that capability (based on this matrix). P2200 doesn't support it.

sorry didn't see that you previously mentioned b frame support.

 

[IamSpartacus]

The only reasons to get the a4000 over the Quadro RTX 4000 is the additional RAM. And if using this strictly for Plex, that should only be a factor if you plan to support a lot of simultaneous 4K transcodes. If not, get the RTX 4000 for half the price.

I personally use the GTX 1660 for Plex and it's more than enough but am considering replacing it with an RTX 4000 to get a PCIe slot back.