I have watched the RTX 3070 TI launch online live at German retailers.

At launch, I could access and refresh various sites. No card available. Neither RTX 3070 TI nor RTX 3000-series LHR .

After ca. 20 ~ 30 minutes, these 3070 TI appeared:

- Gigabyte Eagle €619 sold

- Inno3d iChill X3 €619 sold

- MSI Ventus €619 sold

- Gigabyte Gaming OC €1199 available

- Asus Strix €1499 available

"Sold" is a lie or maybe 1 alibi card each found a new owner at MSRP.

Another few minutes later, also the scalping cards have disappeared.

Simply speaking, the new cards do not exist in Germany.

Only scalping cards are, or pretend to be, available. For example, RTX 3080 for at least €1899 (plus postage, of course).

The way things are going we'll be lucky to see a new card at a reasonable price before Christmas 2022.

I did see Nvidia was producing "mining only" cards (no video output). I wonder if those would be usable for running AIs? Not that we'll be able to find those either...sigh.

Some youtubers pronounce 5700 as "fifty seven hundred" etc. I expect "five thousand seven hundred" or would understand "five [...] seven hundred". Is the first pronunciation, which should represent 50700, a common mistake, American slang or something else? If it is slang, then how do they pronounce 50700?

50700 would be "fifty thousand seven hundred"

5700 is commonly spoken as "fifty seven hundred" but "five thousand seven hundred" is more proper, especially when written on the "legal" line of a check.

"Fifty seven hundred" is a totally idiomatic (American, at least) English rendering of the number 5700; it is parsed completely analogously to "fifty seven thousand" but with one fewer zero. To take a particularly clear example, it would be painfully unidiomatic to say "the year one thousand nine hundred" rather than "the year nineteen hundred".

I would even consider "fifty seven hundred" to be preferable to "five thousand seven hundred" in most conversation, including academic contexts. It's shorter, and it characterizes the number more clearly (you just hear that it's 57 with a couple of zeros on the end, rather than having to add up 5000 + 700).

I might write out "five thousand seven hundred" on a check, but even there "fifty seven hundred" is completely fine.

(It's possible that it's an Americanism and is not used by British speakers, but it would surprise me very much.)

We also use this way of speaking in German: An Elo number of 1800 is usually pronounced as "Achtzehnhundert" (eighteen hundred).

"An Elo number of 1800 is usually pronounced as "Achtzehnhundert""

No. Apparently there are some who use this pronunciation; I don't and there are some others who don't. Achtzehnhundert is a common German pronunciation mostly of the years 1100 - 1999 AD but not of future years, such as 2100 - 2999.

Tiny correction:
"... of the years ... - 2099 AD!"

"20" = "zwan - zig" does also have TWO syllables only, like "acht - zehn".
"2" & "0" = "zwei" & "tau - send - und" has FOUR

From "21" = "ein - und - zwan - zig" (hundert) on we count FOUR syllables (at least), which makes that pronounciation less advantageous, compared to "zwei - tau - send - und - ein" (hundert).

_________________
The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

With DATES we normally leave pout the "hundred". Thus 1930-39 we might call the "nineteen thirties" and this woul be true of dates >1000 also.

"ten zero zero"?!

Don't be so childish, every rule has its exceptions.

The year "2000" might a two-thousander, just because "zwei - tau - send" is shorter than "zwan - zig - hun - dert".

The year "2001" might be a two-thousander, too, due to Stanley Kubrik's nineteen-sixtyeight epic film.

The following four-digit numbers will have a preference again to become split in pairs of too.
E.g. the current year is "zwan - zig - ein - und - zwanzig", not "zwei - tau - send - und - ein - und - zwanzig".

+ + + + + + + +

I suppose that in the history of linguistic use the usage of "thousands" only became necessary in fields and at times wherein / when numbers greater than 2,000 had to be mentioned on a regular basis.

_________________
The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

Prices have been caused by various factors. One of them is fantasy of retailers, as demonstrated for RTX 3080 SUPRIM X LHR 10GB or 12GB sold by Mindfactory:

€1099,00 2022-03-16 10GB
€1721,28 2022-04-07 10GB
€1377,00 2022-04-07 12GB

I have RTX 3080 laptop version and there was a moment yesterday when I thought if I could have paid for the "VIP cooling treatment" I saw advertised included with that MSI card. It is not that it is loud, I have noise cancelling headphones. Yesterday I burned my fingers on the laptop and it hurt and I don't feel this was the VIP cooling treatment.

Nvidia doesn't make the cards themselves and the price is certainly affected more by fantasies, colorful fans and funny claims than MSRP. Above all colorful fans

I take it that you haven't bought RTX 30XX card because of the price. Not a bad decision, really.

If I had an earlier dGPU, I would want to pay less for a new one. As I don't, I have been willing to pay a bit over MSRPs. However, there are limits. Mid 2020, I set 121% MSRP as the upper bound I would have paid until June 2021. Afterwards, I decreased the bound by 1.5% per month to March 2022, which is related to value decrement of time passed since launch and prospected number of years I would want to use a card. Since April 2022, I want to pay MSRP or soon less because the next generation will launch later this year. Prices of available cards have been at least €250 higher than I was willing to pay at any particular day. Letting me wait 1.5 years and then still asking €250 more than my already increased price offer is simply unacceptable.

Price has been the major reason. Other reasons include fake waiting lists while manufacturers prefer to be their own scalpers and fake availability when my prepayment of €904 in January 2021 was not fulfilled and instead cards were sold to miners (I got the money back but, of course, only after request).

Since launch in 2020, I have wanted to buy a DIY RTX 3080 desktop and failed due to astronomic prices. Since January 2023, I have considered every RTX 4080 or 4090 Laptop notebook but each manufacturer fails due to excessive greed, missing maintenance, bad keyboard, wrong display ratio, great noise, bugs or similar flaws. 2 1/2 years later, I have ordered the parts of a DIY RTX 4070 desktop!

The speeds of 3080 and 4070 are close. The MSRPs of 3080s are close to the price of my ordered above-medium model of a 4070, which would be outrageous gen to gen but efficiency has increased from 320W+ to 200W-, I do appreciate this factor 1.6 so can accept the constant price. 4090, 4080 and 4070TI would have a too high price, create a too large power bill and / or create too much noise and heat. 4070 better fits my needs.

The desktop's price will be about €130 more than I expected 2 1/2 years ago, also because a silent 1200W PSU could be substituted by a silent 700W. Considering the manufacturers' persisting greed, overall inflation, astronomic new notebook prices and typical price level of desktop components during the previous weeks, this is a bargain, relatively speaking. Today, not only my preferred GPU model has an acceptable price but also most other parts have reached local lows and availability.

The long waiting, price watching and buying process have been so exhausting that I do not feel happy. This may come when the computer will be running.

Now is a good time for buying a DIY desktop. If you prefer a notebook, you should wait for some months or even until Black Friday when prices settle down reasonably, especially outside the USA. Further slight price decrements might occur but any other major turbulence in the world could sky rocket all prices. One never knows the ideal time in advance.