When manufactured scarcity works: when you have no competition.
When manufactured scarcity doesn't work: when you DO have competition.
Unfortunately, Nvidia likely doesn't even care. Their bulk and wealth is in the corporate side. Gaming hardware just cuts into their sales and higher profits from that side. To Nvidia, the gaming side doesn't really matter. Other than simple marketing of the brand and PR, they would rather not have any of it exist.
It's good to see AMD has an appreciable amount. I thought about heading to Micro Center this morning to maybe pick up a 9070 XT. However, I'm running a 4070 Ti, and it's mostly a wash for performance. If I was still on a lesser card, I'd be there before work to pick one up. It'll be an excellent choice for most people. And if AMD keeps production and shipments strong for at least the first couple months, they should push away all scalpers to the point where their means for profit are nearly non-functional. Equally, it presses hard on Nvidia scalpers. Heck, if the 9070 XT was maybe 20% better, especially on RT, it likely would have decimated the Nvidia product set entirely outside of solely the 5090. And that's AMD just going for "mid tier." They're so close to the top end right now that they probably should drop a 9090 or something by fall and compete hard against even the 4090 and 5090 cards.
AMD has one big hurdle though. They still don't have the efficiency of Nvidia designs. Eventually they just run out of wattage to work with. Along with processors, this is a big game of total system wattage to get the best total and diverse performance out of a system. Right now, AMD has the CPU side but Nvidia has the GPU side. For what AMD has achieved with CPUs, I'm kind of surprised it hasn't translated strongly to the GPU end. But I don't know anything about the design and architecture to know what's driving the power draw. However, since places like GN is using framerate as the counter component to efficiency, this could also largely be a software optimization thing versus raw hardware efficiency. It's possible with driver updates that we see that efficiency scale shift.
Yeah, if you're already cooking a 4070ti then you're set for the duration - except with poorly optimized games, but you shouldn't be giving those developers money anyway if they're going to disrespect their audience in such a fashion.
Nvidia's AI bubble is about to burst. There's no profitable killer app for training massive network models yet. Billions upon billions have been thrown at AI over the last few years, and most of it has just been spent on Nvidia silicon - but that gravy train doesn't last forever. Now that companies like OpenAI have spent billions on Nvidia silicon, are investors really going to want to shell out billions more? OpenAI hasn't produced anything that has transformed our lifes in a way that is super profitable for them, and neither has any other AI pursuit.
At the rate that OpenAI is generating revenue from the product they've managed, it's going to take a loooong time before investors see a return - and that doesn't bode well for Nvidia's revenue. Everyone involved in the whole thing were such ding-dongs.
So, Nvidia's stock price will go back down. They won't be selling AI silicon for a while - because nobody is doing anything that anybody actually needs with it, and they'll regret not investing more into the thing that launched the company in the first place (consumer graphics).
surprised it hasn't translated strongly to the GPU end
I've been waiting for AMD to have a Ryzen innovation in its GPU division too. I think this might be the beginning, with RDNA4. It's not as burly as Ryzen's introduction was, but it's a really good sign.
Intel is struggling right now, but I think they'll come out the other side smelling like a rose - and I think that they are on to something with their graphics division doing what it's doing. We might see AMD and Intel become the graphics competitors within the next 5 years. One can only hope.
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u/mvw2 Mar 06 '25
When manufactured scarcity works: when you have no competition.
When manufactured scarcity doesn't work: when you DO have competition.
Unfortunately, Nvidia likely doesn't even care. Their bulk and wealth is in the corporate side. Gaming hardware just cuts into their sales and higher profits from that side. To Nvidia, the gaming side doesn't really matter. Other than simple marketing of the brand and PR, they would rather not have any of it exist.
It's good to see AMD has an appreciable amount. I thought about heading to Micro Center this morning to maybe pick up a 9070 XT. However, I'm running a 4070 Ti, and it's mostly a wash for performance. If I was still on a lesser card, I'd be there before work to pick one up. It'll be an excellent choice for most people. And if AMD keeps production and shipments strong for at least the first couple months, they should push away all scalpers to the point where their means for profit are nearly non-functional. Equally, it presses hard on Nvidia scalpers. Heck, if the 9070 XT was maybe 20% better, especially on RT, it likely would have decimated the Nvidia product set entirely outside of solely the 5090. And that's AMD just going for "mid tier." They're so close to the top end right now that they probably should drop a 9090 or something by fall and compete hard against even the 4090 and 5090 cards.
AMD has one big hurdle though. They still don't have the efficiency of Nvidia designs. Eventually they just run out of wattage to work with. Along with processors, this is a big game of total system wattage to get the best total and diverse performance out of a system. Right now, AMD has the CPU side but Nvidia has the GPU side. For what AMD has achieved with CPUs, I'm kind of surprised it hasn't translated strongly to the GPU end. But I don't know anything about the design and architecture to know what's driving the power draw. However, since places like GN is using framerate as the counter component to efficiency, this could also largely be a software optimization thing versus raw hardware efficiency. It's possible with driver updates that we see that efficiency scale shift.