When the Gpu's prices will go down ?

[Troezar]

AI is a completely different "bubble" to those. It's not going anywhere for a very long time and while it may deflate over time, I can't see it going pop anytime soon.

I wasn't asking for genuine investment advice, more how Troezar thinks it's going to go pop.

I don't think it is going to go to zero value if that's what you mean by pop. However the majority of people seem to think AI mean General AI. They are chasing the gains not investing. Once they realise this the value will drop, pretty much what Kompucare said. You can get rich this way if you like to speculate but you need to know when to get out. When there's huge amounts of money involved always beware of anyone selling it as the next big thing. I've no doubt it will be a good technology but like the self driving cars they talked it up as if we had level 5 but we've got level 2. AI is going to be useful but it's not General AI...yet(watch the quantum computing space)

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So the question becomes how long can nVidia milk off it and how quickly do users or competitors move over to something else. That we don't know.

I just don't see it as a bubble as such, more a pretty standard trajectory for a popular emerging technology. I think they'll continue to make a good return in that sector for the next 5-10 years and it will continue to have a big effect on how their GPUs are marketed and priced.

Nvidia set the pricing for the RTX4000 series before all this talk of AI. Like with AMD dGPUs,miners and desperate gamers paid over the odds for Nvidia dGPUs. It's why we told people on here,don't pay too much above RRP for stuff if you really need it(ideally keep to RRP),because the next generation would definitely cost more. It happened after the 2017 mining boom,with Turing and even Navi MK1. If people want to use AI as an excuse to justify paying over the odds for dGPUs,then this is what will keep pricing high.

 

[Ayahuasca]

I don't think it is going to go to zero value if that's what you mean by pop. However the majority of people seem to think AI mean General AI. They are chasing the gains not investing. Once they realise this the value will drop, pretty much what Kompucare said. You can get rich this way if you like to speculate but you need to know when to get out. When there's huge amounts of money involved always beware of anyone selling it as the next big thing. I've no doubt it will be a good technology but like the self driving cars they talked it up as if we had level 5 but we've got level 2. AI is going to be useful but it's not General AI...yet(watch the quantum computing space)

I don't think the majority of people are assuming it's general AI at all.

Nvidia set the pricing for the RTX4000 series before all this talk of AI.

Pressing X to doubt on that one as well. While it may not have been discussed at the level of the current "hype", I don't believe for a second that there weren't big discussions happening on the technology behind closed doors at the time.

I'm not seeing anyone using AI as the sole reason for buying a dGPU at the current pricing either. What me and you buy has very litle effect when they're recording profits like that in the sector from big business buying thousands or tens of thousands of units on the same silicon.

 

[Troezar]

I don't think the majority of people are assuming it's general AI at all.

Not in computing circles but listen to politicians and captains of industry speak about it, it's obvious they think it some miraculous technology. Most, and I include the average citizen and investor, don't even understand the distinction between AI and General AI. Don't take my word for it, go and speak to people and see what they say. I don't have skin in the game so I've got no reason to big it up or do it down, I've just seen what's happened over the decades and most new technology is oversold to the uninitiated.

 

[Ayahuasca]

Not in computing circles but listen to politicians and captains of industry speak about it, it's obvious they think it some miraculous technology. Most, and I include the average citizen and investor, don't even understand the distinction between AI and General AI. Don't take my word for it, go and speak to people and see what they say. I don't have skin in the game so I've got no reason to big it up or do it down, I've just seen what's happened over the decades and most new technology is oversold to the uninitiated.

Have you got any examples of politicians or captains of industry speaking about current AI in the sense that it's general AI?

The "real world" discussions I've had with people on the technology have been quite different and people are well aware of the current limitations and what it can/can't do and I'm not hanging around with silicon valley folk, or even many people with a vested interest in it.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Pressing X to doubt on that one as well. While it may not have been discussed at the level of the current "hype", I don't believe for a second that there weren't big discussions happening on the technology behind closed doors at the time.

The same thing which happened with Turing. It came after the Pandemic/Mining boom,just as Turing came after a Mining boom.

In both cases,dGPU sales crashed and there was tons of stock which needed to be cleared out.

Look what happened through late 2018,as mining subsided. Turing was Nvidia trying to increase margins to compensate for lower sales(hence they went onto a cheap process node and hardly gave you a price/performance increase) and clear out old stock at as high a price as possible. It didn't work and sales crashed to a low into 2019. The Super range was released in 2019.

Now look at dGPU sales? It's the same with Turing. Nvidia has over $5 billion in unsold inventories. So what they do? Jack pricing up for smaller chips,so they can make higher margins,and clear existing stock at minimal discounts to maintain the Pandemic/Mining margins.

I will quote this again:

Which is why all the people trying to spin "AI" makes high consumer dGPU pricing fine,because Nvidia does not need gamers,is the same as:
1.)Nvidia has mining in 2017 and 2021,meaning they don't need gamers
2.)Nvidia has a $250 billion VFX market in 2018,meaning they don't need gamers

Despite not needing gamers,they ended up releasing the Turing refresh in 2019 and Ampere MK1 in 2020,which seemed to restore some degree of price/performance. Most of the products sold to large AI customers are larger die products,with lots of VRAM. Its RTX4090 type dGPUs which are most under threat of being diverted.

A lot of the high pricing done by Nvidia,AMD or Intel is opportunistic but the moment it doesn't work as well you see the following:
1.)Free game bundles included
2.)Price reductions
3.)Rebates

All this talk being pushed that AI justifies the high pricing almost sounds like a marketing campaign. No different from the marketing campaign that the $250 billion VFX market justified Turing pricing. There were even AMD fans on forums trying to spin Zen3 launch pricing(which was high) was justified because AMD was selling the same chiplets in their commercial offerings,and they didn't need gamers.

 

[KompuKare]

I don't think it is going to go to zero value if that's what you mean by pop. However the majority of people seem to think AI mean General AI. They are chasing the gains not investing. Once they realise this the value will drop, pretty much what Kompucare said. You can get rich this way if you like to speculate but you need to know when to get out. When there's huge amounts of money involved always beware of anyone selling it as the next big thing. I've no doubt it will be a good technology but like the self driving cars they talked it up as if we had level 5 but we've got level 2. AI is going to be useful but it's not General AI...yet(watch the quantum computing space)

My point wasn't about General AI though.

That's a long way off anyhow and when it comes around it won't be on GPUs anyhow.

No my point was that for a market like this:

1. Where there is no Great Patent Wall
2. Barriers to entry aren't that huge
3. ASIC will always outperform General Purpose
4. Big players will bypass paying Nvidia just like ARM servers allow them to bypass paying Intel/AMD

Most of the ASIC investment has been into running trained networks but even training which is large a GPU-only thing for now, will eventually switch.

Could a lot training happen on the memory chip themselves? In which case, the bulk-silicon memory vendors might move in and they are used to surviving on far far lower margins.

 

[Ayahuasca]

snip

To me, that doesn't look like it's playing out or going to play out the same way as that situation at all but I guess time will tell.

 

[Troezar]

Have you got any examples of politicians or captains of industry speaking about current AI in the sense that it's general AI?

I can't give you a link but if you listen to the language of people with fears it will take over the world or will become sentient it's laughable. It's not thinking, not even close to it. It's a crafty way of selling a product, "look how powerful it is, it might take over the world, we need to regulate it". Guess who the regulations will favour? The big boys, which will freeze out the small players that Kompucare quite rightly says are in with a shout as things currently stand. You can see big tech circling the wagons right now.

 

[Ayahuasca]

I can't give you a link but if you listen to the language of people with fears it will take over the world or will become sentient it's laughable.

Again, from my experience, I haven't seen the majority of people discussing the technology in that way. I've heard some say something along the lines of what happens when it gets to that level, but nobody I know of thinks we're even close to that yet.

I think it's a bit naive to think big business, the ones driving these profits for nVidia in that sector are thinking along those lines. It doesn't need to be sentient for it to have a massive impact on almost every industry going forward.

 

[Troezar]

Again, from my experience, I haven't seen the majority of people discussing the technology in that way. I've heard some say something along the lines of what happens when it gets to that level, but nobody I know of thinks we're even close to that yet.

Well let's hope you're right and I'm wrong

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

To me, that doesn't look like it's playing out or going to play out the same way as that situation at all but I guess time will tell.

I tracked the bunch of justifications made over the last decade or so:
1.)AI market is higher margin,so gamers shouldn't complain about high prices,because they are not important.
2.)$250 billion VFX market,is higher margin so gamers shouldn't complain about high prices,because they are not important.
3.)10 years ago,supercomputer market is higher margin,so gamers shouldn't complain about high prices,because they are not important(Kepler).
4.)GTX200 series high pricing - also talk about commercial markets and CUDA
4.)Intel having quad cores for years. Gamers shouldn't complain because Intel had commercial markets which were higher margin,so consumer sales are not important.

If gaming is so low revenue/margin why didn't these companies go 100% into "higher margin" commercial markets a decade ago?

AMD is starting to realise it as well - notice how they also are copying Nvidia and Intel? If you can't beat them,join them. It works fantastically well on PCMR,who have taken it for so long, these companies think we are a bunch of apathetic whales. But they might be onto something sadly.

This is why Blizzard can sell Diablo 4 for £100,with an in-game cash shop,additional battle pass,etc and it will make a heap of money. You have gamers on forums making XYZ excuses why this is,and then defending the same company against how they treat their employees.

The market is this way because gamers made it the way it is.

 

[DeathStorm]

I'm not sure i summed it up like that. I'm pretty sure I said a lot more in previous posts.

Yeah you said a lot more but when you contradicted your original position that you never denied the versatility of PCs (after doing exactly that by saying you don't see the point because you personally prefer to use other devices) I expected you to deflect so didn't bother bringing it up.

"The own"? Do people say this? Seems I'm out of the loop with pc gamer lingo.

I'll translate, it's not as clever as you think it is but you already knew that.

And the last bit. I agree with. Judge the games and people's ability to enjoy them. Not stress too much over how many fps ya gettin.

One of the benefits of PC gaming is you get a lot of control over things like FPS, it's bizarre that I need to explain that on OcUK in a thread about GPUs.

 

[sityeuropa]

AI bubble, everyone chasing a quick buck. Wait for the reality that it's not what people think it is, a bit like self driving cars

It is not a bubble at all.

It is boosting my programming output right now with ChatGPT.

Also Midjourney has probably over taken a big percentage of concept artist jobs.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

My point wasn't about General AI though.

That's a long way off anyhow and when it comes around it won't be on GPUs anyhow.

No my point was that for a market like this:

1. Where there is no Great Patent Wall
2. Barriers to entry aren't that huge
3. ASIC will always outperform General Purpose
4. Big players will bypass paying Nvidia just like ARM servers allow them to bypass paying Intel/AMD

Most of the ASIC investment has been into running trained networks but even training which is large a GPU-only thing for now, will eventually switch.

Could a lot training happen on the memory chip themselves? In which case, the bulk-silicon memory vendors might move in and they are used to surviving on far far lower margins.

Even JHH seems to understand some of the competition which is coming:

https://archive.is/OuAE4

Speaking to the Financial Times, Jensen Huang said US export controls introduced by the Biden administration to slow Chinese semiconductor manufacturing had left the Silicon Valley group with “our hands tied behind our back” and unable to sell advanced chips in one of the company’s biggest markets.
At the same time, he added, Chinese companies were starting to build their own chips to rival Nvidia’s market-leading processors for gaming, graphics and artificial intelligence.
“If [China] can’t buy from . . . the United States, they’ll just build it themselves,” he said. “So the US has to be careful. China is a very important market for the technology industry.”

Even he knows there is a window of opportunity as companies like Nvidia(or even AMD to a lesser degree) have early mover advantage. So what is the backup market for companies like Nvidia then.....Oh Wait! PCMR.

 

[Ayahuasca]

This is why Blizzard can sell Diablo 4 for £100,with an in-game cash shop,additional battle pass,etc and it will make a heap of money. You have gamers on forums making XYZ excuses why this is,and then defending the same company against how they treat their employees.

The market is this way because gamers made it the way it is.

You seem to be jumping to extremes to try and justify your opinions.

D4 can be had for £60 and that's the version the vast majority will buy. The majority of those buyers won't be spending money on the in-game cash shop either, although some may purchase the battle pass.

So in reality, you have a small minority of gamers who are going all out in terms of expenditure and then trying to justify it online. Again, most of those "ballers" aren't justifying it to anyone, they just spend and forget.

The "whales" certainly don't help, but you can't blame gamers as a whole for the current situation. There have and always will be people who want the best or most of something.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You seem to be jumping to extremes to try and justify your opinions.

D4 can be had for £60 and that's the version the vast majority will buy. The majority of those buyers won't be spending money on the in-game cash shop either although some may purchase the battle pass.

So in reality, you have a small minority of gamers who are going all out in terms of expenditure and then trying to justify it online. Again, most of those "ballers" aren't justifying it to anyone, they just spend and forget.

The "whales" certainly don't help but you can't blame gamers as a whole for the current situation. There have and always will be people who want the best/most of something.

Plenty of data to show microtransactions make more than the upfront cost of many games.

In 2020:

Despite recent controversies and uncertainty within the Blizzard community, the previous quarter was a fruitful one for the company. With over $1.95 billion in revenue overall between July through September, $1.2 billion accounted for microtransaction sales alone. The massive surge in additional monetary value comes from many franchises, but it was Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare that netted the most.

Activision Blizzard Microtransactions Netted Over $1.2 Billion Last Quarter

Love them or leave them, microtransactions are clearly paying off for Activision Blizzard.

www.gameinformer.com

In 2022, Activision Blizzard generated 5.89 billion U.S. dollars of revenues through microtransactions and downloadable content, subscriptions, licensing royalties from our products and franchises, and other miscellaneous revenues.

Activision Blizzard generated $1.82 billion in revenue from micro transactions in Q4 2022, total $5.38 billion in 2022.

So yes we can blame gamers for this. If it didn't work companies wouldn't put them in,let alone push up dGPU pricing. It works as people try and explain it away to XYZ reasons using more and more weird reasons. After all you are doing it and are not aware that you are because it has got so ingrained over the last decade.The marketing works.

 

[Twinz]

AI is evolving into a "black box" in that as it improves, it becomes less predictable. That's sort of the goal since if we could predict it's outputs, we wouldn't need it in the first place.

We are trying to get it produce outputs we otherwise wouldn't have been able to come up with ourselves.

So if we are "successful" with AI, then we can't actually know where it will end up.

Both our hopes and fears for AI are limited to only those possibilities that we can think of, yet the underlying effort is to build a tool that "thinks outside of the box".

When we consider that AI could spawn Terminator-like robots hell-bent on exterminating the human race, it's easy to conclude that we have nothing to fear.

The problem is that such an outcome is only one bad outcome on a list that we don't have access to.

AI can "think" of things we didn't think of. It doesn't have to "hate" us. It doesn't have to be "evil".

It just has to produce outcomes that are bad for us that we didn't see coming.

 

[Hedge]

Yeah you said a lot more but when you contradicted your original position that you never denied the versatility of PCs (after doing exactly that by saying you don't see the point because you personally prefer to use other devices) I expected you to deflect so didn't bother bringing it up.


I'll translate, it's not as clever as you think it is but you already knew that.


One of the benefits of PC gaming is you get a lot of control over things like FPS, it's bizarre that I need to explain that on OcUK in a thread about GPUs.

I don't think it contradicts it. But maybe it does if that's the impression you got.

In my opinion, just because my pc can send emails, browse the Internet, watch movies, play music, play games and do countless other things. I don't personally feel its the best at every one of them. It's best at some things. But my mobile and my TV tend to be my go to devices a number of them.

The bulk of my life is handled through my phone and the bulk of my media is consumed through streaming channels on my tv.

My pc is top dog for my music stuff no doubt. And my pc can actually give a better framerate than my console. But for overall gaming experience I don't think its actually better.

And yeah you don't have to explain your last bit. But I triggered you so go ahead.

 

[Ayahuasca]

Plenty of data to show microtransactions make more than the upfront cost of many games.

Activision Blizzard Microtransactions Netted Over $1.2 Billion Last Quarter

Love them or leave them, microtransactions are clearly paying off for Activision Blizzard.

www.gameinformer.com

So yes we can blame gamers for this. If it didn't work companies would put them in,let alone push up dGPU pricing. It works as people try and explain it away to XYZ reasons.The marketing works.

I didn't argue that microtransactions aren't a successful business model. It's not a massive surprise using Activision/Blizzard data when things like Warzone, Overwatch and Diablo Immortal are free to play.

However, again, you're referring to gamers as a whole as if it's the majority of the playerbase in those games who are doing it. It's not and even the ones who are, for the most part, aren't trying to explain it to anyone. I think you've got a warped sense of reality on this due to how much time you spend trying to explain XYZ on a forum.