NVIDIA's RTX 4080 Problem: They're Not Selling & MSRP Doesn't Exist

[Mchart]

To me the 4090 'value' is a joke - Mostly because it's impossible for an average person to get one, even if you remove the $1600 barrier of entry. Many could possibly afford it, but because of it's position it's being scalped just like the 30 series cards were.

Also, most of us could never get a 30 series anywhere near normal MSRP. That was a joke. A 3080 was closer to $1k for most people, a 3080ti closer to $1400 for most people, and a 3090 closer to $1600 for most people.

I've said it before, but at least both the 4080 and now 4070ti are largely available. You can actually walk into a store and buy one. So a 4070ti for $850 isn't that bad considering the 30 series cards were impossible to get at their MSRP anyways (If you could even get one, everyone I knew in real life with these cards got them in pre-built systems)

Doesn't make the pricing 'correct' - But all of these reviews I see completely fail to account for actual availability to a consumer. Hailing the 3080 as the next coming of Christ because of it's 'awesome' pricing completely overlooks the fact that most didn't get the damn things at that pricing.

The only real outlier here to me as of right now, is still the 4080 pricing. It's just not worth the $1200 base pricing, althoug it seems nvidia is going to be stuck with that pricing since AIB's have no room to make any money off the 4070ti pricing structure.

 

[Sir Beregond]

In the US market it seem to exist some availability at $850 and less, even on online platform:

https://www.newegg.com/msi-geforce-rtx-4070-ti-rtx-4070-ti-ventus-3x-12g-oc/p/N82E16814137772?Item=N82E16814137772&nm_mc=AFC-RAN-COM&cm_mmc=afc-ran-com-_-PCPartPicker&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=afc-ran-com-_-PCPartPicker&utm_source=afc-PCPartPicker&AFFID=2558510&AFFNAME=PCPartPicker&ACRID=1&ASID=https://pcpartpicker.com/&ranMID=44583&ranEAID=2558510&ranSiteID=8BacdVP0GFs-.KzbexYE4SGFcu2nNI7D7g
https://www.newegg.com/zotac-geforce-rtx-4070-ti-zt-d40710j-10p/p/N82E16814500546?Item=N82E16814500546&nm_mc=AFC-RAN-COM&cm_mmc=afc-ran-com-_-PCPartPicker&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=afc-ran-com-_-PCPartPicker&utm_source=afc-PCPartPicker&AFFID=2558510&AFFNAME=PCPartPicker&ACRID=1&ASID=https://pcpartpicker.com/&ranMID=44583&ranEAID=2558510&ranSiteID=8BacdVP0GFs-D3leBpjUOj_j5lQjyV9Oog

While there is no 3080Ti under $1130 on pcpartpicker and no 3090 under $1295

Looking at my local Micro Center, they had a grand total of 2 MSRP models and several higher priced ones.

 

[cageymaru]

ASUS x Noctua RTX 4080 Graphics Card is 5 Slots Thick, We Go Hands-on
https://www.techpowerup.com/303148/...graphics-card-is-5-slots-thick-we-go-hands-on



Such a Thicc Boy might make you'll reconsider and just buy it!

More pics in the link. Visit them and support your tech blogs.

 

[Armenius]

It's actually fascinating. This is the first time I'm aware of that the top of the product stack is where the most value exists.

Historically, regardless of product, the higher you go, the less value you get - diminishing returns. Nvidia has accomplished the precise opposite: the 4090 is the best value per dollar, and the further down you go, the worse the value becomes.

It's actually a remarkable achievement.

When ray tracing isn't involved, the 4090 has the worst value at any resolution, statistically speaking. That is probably turned upside-down if you consider ray tracing, though.

 

[LukeTbk]

When ray tracing isn't involved, the 4090 has the worst value at any resolution, statistically speaking. That is probably turned upside-down if you consider ray tracing, though.

That with a $2100 price tag 4090, which we could assume that it has a lot of money for the extra performance with that price tag, but at $1700 or so would not be "bad".

I imagine the $950 price tag for the 3090 would stop to be a thing considering the more powerful 4070TI at $850 seem to be possible to find.

 

[Blade-Runner]

Still no shortage of 4080s in my region, and even some retarded retailers selling the ROG Strix for as much as a 4090.....how fucking stupid can you be?! Have to wonder how long retailers will be prepared to sit on unsold inventory before they start complaining to AIB wholesalers.

 

[kamikazi]

must be rolling in his grave.

Wait, Anand died?

 

[Ehren8879]

Wait, Anand died?

Yup. After he left tech journalism to go work for Apple, he's now dead to us.

 

[Bigbacon]

if 4080 dropped to 800 or 900 right now. I'd buy one.

 

[Blade-Runner]

Wow this is just getting sad now.

https://videocardz.com/newz/msi-says-geforce-rtx-4070-ti-cost-is-not-as-bad-as-rtx-4080

Wonder if that is going to be their sales pitch for the 4060....please buy our overpriced entry tier card, the cost is not as bad as the 4070ti and 4080.

 

[Ranulfo]

It has triple the FPS, for triple the price! (*RT overdrive only)

 

[WorldExclusive]

Maybe I'm wrong but I feel like hardware power simply far exceeds user needs. Even at 4k, last gen cards are serviceable for the vast majority of use cases. More than ever do these cards appeal to people who are chasing the bleeding edge just for the sake. As someone who worked at a computer shop, I observed a lot of people have a tendency to "skip a gen", myself included. This seems like a particularly good generation to skip, at least at this moment.

4K, RT, VR and 3D/4K/8K rendering are good reasons to need more performance. Hobbyist professionals tend to desire the bleeding edge.
Would most people walk into a computer store to ask for the latest and the greatest every two years? No.

The only reason why 3000 series is seen favorably because people upgrading have surrendered to buying used. Pandemic 3000 series prices were at the same level 4000 series cards are now for 18 months straight.
New 3000 series cards are priced worst than the 4000 series right now. There are many gamers still on pandemic $1200 3080s and $800 3070s. They're just exhausted with the high prices and choose not to buy into another overpriced series. If the performance boost could be had cheaper they will upgrade.

Lastly, skipping a gen, IMO, has more to do with price to performance not being desired, rather than a set in stone behavior.
Everyone saw the 1080Ti and 3080 as great values. I don't think anyone would skip those cards at MSRP because that's how they roll.

 

[DPI]

Someone at MSI thinks they're hilarious. I'm sure this will end up deleted. Edit: yep
https://twitter.com/msiUSA/status/1611500515682291712

 

[Lakados]

Someone at MSI thinks they're hilarious. I'm sure this will end up deleted.
https://twitter.com/msiUSA/status/1611500515682291712

View attachment 540129

It is hilarious, I mean the AIBs are perfectly aware of how these prices are affecting sales and their marketing teams are more than knowledgeable about all the flack being thrown around because of them. They might as well lean into it because what do they really have to lose?

I will add that right now in Canada while none of my business suppliers have updated their inventory for the 4070TIs, the existing 3080 stock available to me for bulk business purchase is in the $1800 range, the 4080's are in the $1700 range and "retail" 4070TIs are in the $1300+ category.
Importers up here paid through the nose for the 3000 stock that is up here so it will always sit higher than the 4000's until they choose to sell them off at a loss, or make enough off the markups on the 4000 series to offset the losses on the 3000's when they do sell them off at their proper point.
This whole situation they are in is a perfect storm of funny and shitty. In that is sucks so bad you can only laugh at it.

 

[Flogger23m]

I give credit to MSI for having one at $800. Ventus, most basic cooler they offer but still 3 fans so can't be too bad. In stock as of now on their website if you absolutely need one.

Though isn't part of the reason for the high price to sell off old inventory? I'd think MSI would be happy that they can move their 30** without taking a huge loss on them. Unless they already sold out.

 

[Mchart]

I give credit to MSI for having one at $800. Ventus, most basic cooler they offer but still 3 fans so can't be too bad. In stock as of now on their website if you absolutely need one.

Though isn't part of the reason for the high price to sell off old inventory? I'd think MSI would be happy that they can move their 30** without taking a huge loss on them. Unless they already sold out.

I'm not aware of anyone having the higher-end 30 series inventory left. Everything you see at this point is old stock rotating around. Only new from manufacturer 30 series inventory left is 3060~ range cards and below.

 

[Ranulfo]

Steve calling out Nvidia's 4070Ti marketing BS



Hilarious that Nvidia admitted what we all suspected, i.e. positioning the 30X0 series as the mainstream option (presumably because they have a shit load of inventory they still need to clear out).

Heh, video referenced about Rainbow6 Siege hate from Tech Jesus:

 

[Comixbooks]

Someone at MSI thinks they're hilarious. I'm sure this will end up deleted.
https://twitter.com/msiUSA/status/1611500515682291712

View attachment 540129

It's not that Bad people just make it that way if your eating Pizza Pockets in the Basement and have no job everything is expensive.

 

[NightReaver]

It's not that Bad people just make it that way if your eating Pizza Pockets in the Basement and have no job everything is expensive.

Lol, okay. "You're just poor if you think prices are bad"

 

[NamelessPFG]

4K, RT, VR and 3D/4K/8K rendering are good reasons to need more performance. Hobbyist professionals tend to desire the bleeding edge.
Would most people walk into a computer store to ask for the latest and the greatest every two years? No.

The only reason why 3000 series is seen favorably because people upgrading have surrendered to buying used. Pandemic 3000 series prices were at the same level 4000 series cards are now for 18 months straight.
New 3000 series cards are priced worst than the 4000 series right now. There are many gamers still on pandemic $1200 3080s and $800 3070s. They're just exhausted with the high prices and choose not to buy into another overpriced series. If the performance boost could be had cheaper they will upgrade.

Lastly, skipping a gen, IMO, has more to do with price to performance not being desired, rather than a set in stone behavior.
Everyone saw the 1080Ti and 3080 as great values. I don't think anyone would skip those cards at MSRP because that's how they roll.

I'm in the VR enthusiast camp, stuck on the same GTX 980 I plunked down $315 for in November 2015 to prepare for Oculus Rift CV1 launch, and let me tell you, what originally started as enough GPU fell behind fast, with the GPU market getting so much worse over the next seven years.

I skipped SEVERAL generations; that's the main thing lessening the sting of today's $1,000+ GPUs. Now that the performance I want actually exists, it's a good time to step up in that sense, even if the prices are insultingly higher than they normally would be.

In fact, I was hyped for Ampere, but we all saw that button change from "Coming Soon" to "Out of Stock" instantly, all of them. That didn't change until mere months before Ada Lovelace released, by which point I lost interest in the last-gen stuff until it was sufficiently cheap on the used market. (It wasn't.)

I suppose with the money I saved by not buying GPUs for seven years, I could actually afford one of the new $1,000+ ones. Here's hoping for another seven years on the same GPU!

 

[Blade-Runner]

Lol, okay. "You're just poor if you think prices are bad"

 

[Blade-Runner]

Someone at MSI thinks they're hilarious. I'm sure this will end up deleted.
https://twitter.com/msiUSA/status/1611500515682291712

View attachment 540129

Bahahahaha! Hard to know if they pulled it out of sheer embarrassment or because they got a tap on the shoulder from Nvidia's marketing team. Last I checked MSI was getting absolutely rekt by the reply tweets.

 

[GoldenTiger]

I'm in the VR enthusiast camp, stuck on the same GTX 980 I plunked down $315 for in November 2015 to prepare for Oculus Rift CV1 launch, and let me tell you, what originally started as enough GPU fell behind fast, with the GPU market getting so much worse over the next seven years.

I skipped SEVERAL generations; that's the main thing lessening the sting of today's $1,000+ GPUs. Now that the performance I want actually exists, it's a good time to step up in that sense, even if the prices are insultingly higher than they normally would be.

In fact, I was hyped for Ampere, but we all saw that button change from "Coming Soon" to "Out of Stock" instantly, all of them. That didn't change until mere months before Ada Lovelace released, by which point I lost interest in the last-gen stuff until it was sufficiently cheap on the used market. (It wasn't.)

I suppose with the money I saved by not buying GPUs for seven years, I could actually afford one of the new $1,000+ ones. Here's hoping for another seven years on the same GPU!

I was prepared to skip Ampere myself after sitting down launch morning and seeing "coming soon" flip to "sold out" instantly. I skipped pascal and Turing.

I got lucky and got an evga 3080 ftw3 ultra hybrid (aio cooled) for $779 (coupon code applied) through the EVGA queue in Dec 2020. If I hadn't gotten that I'd have stuck with my gtx 970 sli until Lovelace probably given the huge prices of Ampere through most of its life.

I'm generally an early adopter (went 4k in 2014, oc'able high refresh 1440p in 2012-2013, 2560x1600 in 2008, and 1680x1050 in 2004). However I have skipped gens in the past. I'm skipping Lovelace simply due to not having any games I regularly play needing better than my 3080 until I go high refresh 4k (waiting for that perfect monitor still...).

That's despite thinking Lovelace 4090 is an amazing card I'd love to have in my rig, but I just don't need it right now.

 

[pillagenburn]

who gives a shit, there is such a glut of GPU's out there you might as well just go buy a 3000 series or even 5000/6000 series AMD and be done with it.

 

[GoldenTiger]

who gives a shit, there is such a glut of GPU's out there you might as well just go buy a 3000 series or even 5000/6000 series AMD and be done with it.

Where? They're all sky high from what I've seen lately new.... No, used is not the same.

 

[pillagenburn]

Where? They're all sky high from what I've seen lately new.... No, used is not the same.

Oh, I was talking about used Yeah new is a waaaaay different story for sure.

 

[DukenukemX]

It's not that Bad people just make it that way if your eating Pizza Pockets in the Basement and have no job everything is expensive.

I expect Nvidia to blame the decline of overpriced GPU sales on Millennials. Without crypto buyers to promote Nvidia's high prices, it's clear what direction GPU prices need to go. Nvidia being a publically traded company is what's keeping those prices high. Either Nvidia drops prices and loses stock value or lose sales and drops stock value. Either way the stock is going down.

 

[pillagenburn]

I expect Nvidia to blame the decline of overpriced GPU sales on Millennials. Without crypto buyers to promote Nvidia's high prices, it's clear what direction GPU prices need to go. Nvidia being a publically traded company is what's keeping those prices high. Either Nvidia drops prices and loses stock value or lose sales and drops stock value. Either way the stock is going down.

View attachment 540377

Here's an idea, NVIDIA... IF not having crypto miners sucks so badly for sales....

Why not start funding existing proof of work coin projects that are committed to proof of work mining?

*insert memes of gamers collectively puking here*

 

[NamelessPFG]

I was prepared to skip Ampere myself after sitting down launch morning and seeing "coming soon" flip to "sold out" instantly. I skipped pascal and Turing.

I got lucky and got an evga 3080 ftw3 ultra hybrid (aio cooled) for $779 (coupon code applied) through the EVGA queue in Dec 2020. If I hadn't gotten that I'd have stuck with my gtx 970 sli until Lovelace probably given the huge prices of Ampere through most of its life.

I'm generally an early adopter (went 4k in 2014, oc'able high refresh 1440p in 2012-2013, 2560x1600 in 2008, and 1680x1050 in 2004). However I have skipped gens in the past. I'm skipping Lovelace simply due to not having any games I regularly play needing better than my 3080 until I go high refresh 4k (waiting for that perfect monitor still...).

That's despite thinking Lovelace 4090 is an amazing card I'd love to have in my rig, but I just don't need it right now.

GTX 970 SLI? That raises another important point: for a long while, if you didn't need features that only a new GPU architecture could bring, you could just pile on matching graphics cards when they became affordable.

Alas, SLI/CrossFire support died off for pancake games over the past few years, making that second card sit idle when it shouldn't have to, and multi-GPU never really took off in VR to begin with even though having one GPU for each eye seems sensible.

That could be why halo-tiered GPUs are more of a thing: you can't just SLI your way into top-tier performance any more. "The more you buy, the more you save" indeed...

 

[DukenukemX]

Here's an idea, NVIDIA... IF not having crypto miners sucks so badly for sales....

Why not start funding existing proof of work coin projects that are committed to proof of work mining?

*insert memes of gamers collectively puking here*

Joking aside you know Nvidia is hard at work finding a market for their GPU's. Imagine being essentially a toy company and then suddenly people are buying GPU's like crazy for an unintended feature of the GPU which is general compute. In 2015 Nvidia shares were worth $5, but when the crypto boom of 2016 happened it rocketed to $70 at its peak, and then dropped just as suddenly when the crypto market crashed in 2018 to $40. Nvidia tasted crypto blood and wanted more, so this is when Nvidia created RTX to try and justify their pricing. By this time Bitcoin was worth $3,000, so it was as dead as dead gets. When COVID appeared there was a resurgence of crypto and GPU demand, pushing Nvidia to peak at $330 in 2021. This toy company went from $5 a share to $330 in a matter of 6 years, all due to crypto. This is why the RTX 4080 costs a ridiculous amount because Nvidia doesn't have the balls to tell their shareholders that the only reason stonks went up was because of crypto. Rather then coming back to reality that they make toys for "entitled gamers", they wanna pretend nothings wrong by raising GPU prices even further. Because if Nvidia lowered prices, as you would expect with the downturn of the economy, their shareholders would get suspicious. Nvidia is just buying time to keep as many shareholders as possible until they find the next biggest fool to buy their overpriced toys. Maybe that guy living in his moms basement who doesn't have a job eating Pizza Pockets will inherit a bunch of money because his dad doesn't believe in vaccines and goes and buys an RTX 4080? I have no idea what Nvidia could possibly be hoping for at this point?

 

[Furious_Styles]

Joking aside you know Nvidia is hard at work finding a market for their GPU's. Imagine being essentially a toy company and then suddenly people are buying GPU's like crazy for an unintended feature of the GPU which is general compute. In 2015 Nvidia shares were worth $5, but when the crypto boom of 2016 happened it rocketed to $70 at its peak, and then dropped just as suddenly when the crypto market crashed in 2018 to $40. Nvidia tasted crypto blood and wanted more, so this is when Nvidia created RTX to try and justify their pricing. By this time Bitcoin was worth $3,000, so it was as dead as dead gets. When COVID appeared there was a resurgence of crypto and GPU demand, pushing Nvidia to peak at $330 in 2021. This toy company went from $5 a share to $330 in a matter of 6 years, all due to crypto. This is why the RTX 4080 costs a ridiculous amount because Nvidia doesn't have the balls to tell their shareholders that the only reason stonks went up was because of crypto. Rather then coming back to reality that they make toys for "entitled gamers", they wanna pretend nothings wrong by raising GPU prices even further. Because if Nvidia lowered prices, as you would expect with the downturn of the economy, their shareholders would get suspicious. Nvidia is just buying time to keep as many shareholders as possible until they find the next biggest fool to buy their overpriced toys. Maybe that guy living in his moms basement who doesn't have a job eating Pizza Pockets will inherit a bunch of money because his dad doesn't believe in vaccines and goes and buys an RTX 4080? I have no idea what Nvidia could possibly be hoping for at this point?

It's a bit of a reach to say they created RTX to justify their stock price. They do what every other manufacturer tries to do, create exclusive things that would make you want to buy their product over competitors. DLSS and Gsync are both examples of that.

 

[Hakaba]

I expect Nvidia to blame the decline of overpriced GPU sales on Millennials. Without crypto buyers to promote Nvidia's high prices, it's clear what direction GPU prices need to go. Nvidia being a publically traded company is what's keeping those prices high. Either Nvidia drops prices and loses stock value or lose sales and drops stock value. Either way the stock is going down.

View attachment 540377

Glad I got out in Q4 21. I would buy a FE 4090 if I could find one...

 

[NamelessPFG]

Joking aside you know Nvidia is hard at work finding a market for their GPU's. Imagine being essentially a toy company and then suddenly people are buying GPU's like crazy for an unintended feature of the GPU which is general compute. In 2015 Nvidia shares were worth $5, but when the crypto boom of 2016 happened it rocketed to $70 at its peak, and then dropped just as suddenly when the crypto market crashed in 2018 to $40. Nvidia tasted crypto blood and wanted more, so this is when Nvidia created RTX to try and justify their pricing. By this time Bitcoin was worth $3,000, so it was as dead as dead gets. When COVID appeared there was a resurgence of crypto and GPU demand, pushing Nvidia to peak at $330 in 2021. This toy company went from $5 a share to $330 in a matter of 6 years, all due to crypto. This is why the RTX 4080 costs a ridiculous amount because Nvidia doesn't have the balls to their their shareholders that the only reason stonks went up was because of crypto. Rather then coming back to reality that they make toys for "entitled gamers", they wanna pretend nothings wrong by raising GPU prices even further. Because if Nvidia lowered prices, as you would expect with the downturn of the economy, their shareholders would get suspicious. Nvidia is just buying time to keep as many shareholders as possible until they find the next biggest fool to buy their overpriced toys. Maybe that guy living in his moms basement who doesn't have a job eating Pizza Pockets will inherit a bunch of money because his dad doesn't believe in vaccines and goes and buys an RTX 4080? I have no idea what Nvidia could possibly be hoping for at this point?

My guess is that they're banking on the booming AI/ML market - one that the $100,000+ DGX Station A100 is explicitly marketed to.

They may also be targeting other professional markets we're not thinking of.

As I understand, SiliconGraphics' biggest clients were not Hollywood CGI special effects houses or video game console devkits as we remember 'em for in the '90s, but simulations for big oil - where to drill, how to design their rigs to extract it better, that sorta thing. Relatively unglamorous, but very lucrative.

I would not be surprised if NVIDIA found a way to tap into a market like that after effectively toppling SGI from the bottom up decades ago.

Ever since CUDA debuted back in 2007 and made this GPGPU push that enabled GPUs to do more than just video games and CAD, NVIDIA's been pushing into other enterprise markets where they know their GPUs have a competitive advantage over CPU clusters, and CUDA itself ensures vendor lock-in so the clients can't be arsed to switch to AMD or anyone else.

That said, the crypto surge - something that's happened at least three times in the GPU market (and the first time, was mostly limited to ATI/AMD GPUs due to much weaker OpenCL performance on NVIDIA at the time) - is definitely something that cannot be ignored for consumer-class GPUs, especially the last two times when NVIDIA was equally in demand for Ethereum mining. Any stockholder that tries to pretend otherwise is delusional.

 

[Mchart]

My guess is that they're banking on the booming AI/ML market - one that the $100,000+ DGX Station A100 is explicitly marketed to.

They may also be targeting other professional markets we're not thinking of.

As I understand, SiliconGraphics' biggest clients were not Hollywood CGI special effects houses or video game console devkits as we remember 'em for in the '90s, but simulations for big oil - where to drill, how to design their rigs to extract it better, that sorta thing. Relatively unglamorous, but very lucrative.

I would not be surprised if NVIDIA found a way to tap into a market like that after effectively toppling SGI from the bottom up decades ago.

Ever since CUDA debuted back in 2007 and made this GPGPU push that enabled GPUs to do more than just video games and CAD, NVIDIA's been pushing into other enterprise markets where they know their GPUs have a competitive advantage over CPU clusters, and CUDA itself ensures vendor lock-in so the clients can't be arsed to switch to AMD or anyone else.

That said, the crypto surge - something that's happened at least three times in the GPU market (and the first time, was mostly limited to ATI/AMD GPUs due to much weaker OpenCL performance on NVIDIA at the time) - is definitely something that cannot be ignored for consumer-class GPUs, especially the last two times when NVIDIA was equally in demand for Ethereum mining. Any stockholder that tries to pretend otherwise is delusional.

Nvidia is basically the only player when it comes to vGPU right now. AMD vGPU support is a joke, and when you go to scale up any vGPU chassis solutions almost all are basically nvidia only.

 

[NamelessPFG]

Nvidia is basically the only player when it comes to vGPU right now. AMD vGPU support is a joke, and when you go to scale up any vGPU chassis solutions almost all are basically nvidia only.

I admittedly didn't know that, as someone who figured AMD would be a little more competent in that space.

NVIDIA used to gatekeep GeForce cards out of GPU passthrough via VT-d/IOMMU/SR-IOV in their drivers until fairly recently; AMD was historically favored for VM GPU passthrough homelabbing for that reason.

Even then, NVIDIA still withholds some of the vGPU flexibility from the GeForce lineup, from what I've read. I still need to brush up on the details.

 

[lopoetve]

My guess is that they're banking on the booming AI/ML market - one that the $100,000+ DGX Station A100 is explicitly marketed to.

They may also be targeting other professional markets we're not thinking of.

They are. The enterprise market used so many consumer cards they killed the "blower" models (they work MUCH better in rack servers) to avoid cannibalizing their enterprise hardware (which has required software licensing). I've designed R730/R740 systems around that - 6 2080TI blowers per rack server. All for AI Image processing work. That customer bought them by the pallet load. We tested the new RTX cards - 3 per system let them run "deeper" models (more VRAM), but not as wide (fewer cards/GPUs), and the wide part was what ended up mattering more - so they bought more 2080TIs.

As I understand, SiliconGraphics' biggest clients were not Hollywood CGI special effects houses or video game console devkits as we remember 'em for in the '90s, but simulations for big oil - where to drill, how to design their rigs to extract it better, that sorta thing. Relatively unglamorous, but very lucrative.

I would not be surprised if NVIDIA found a way to tap into a market like that after effectively toppling SGI from the bottom up decades ago.

They already are. That's another model - anything that can use CUDA engines for vector processing can be offloaded pretty easily.

Ever since CUDA debuted back in 2007 and made this GPGPU push that enabled GPUs to do more than just video games and CAD, NVIDIA's been pushing into other enterprise markets where they know their GPUs have a competitive advantage over CPU clusters, and CUDA itself ensures vendor lock-in so the clients can't be arsed to switch to AMD or anyone else.

That said, the crypto surge - something that's happened at least three times in the GPU market (and the first time, was mostly limited to ATI/AMD GPUs due to much weaker OpenCL performance on NVIDIA at the time) - is definitely something that cannot be ignored for consumer-class GPUs, especially the last two times when NVIDIA was equally in demand for Ethereum mining. Any stockholder that tries to pretend otherwise is delusional.

Bingo. There's a REASON so many supercomputers use piles of GPUs now. Turns out that hashing is a lot like other vector workloads (math is math!)

 

[ncjoe]

you can bet nvidia will be giving a free game bundled soon with these new gpus !

 

[staknhalo]

you can bet nvidia will be giving a free game bundled soon with these new gpus !

nah the promotion will be you have to buy Jensen a Steam game in order to purchase a RTX GPU

 

[pillagenburn]

My guess is that they're banking on the booming AI/ML market - one that the $100,000+ DGX Station A100 is explicitly marketed to.

They may also be targeting other professional markets we're not thinking of.

As I understand, SiliconGraphics' biggest clients were not Hollywood CGI special effects houses or video game console devkits as we remember 'em for in the '90s, but simulations for big oil - where to drill, how to design their rigs to extract it better, that sorta thing. Relatively unglamorous, but very lucrative.

I would not be surprised if NVIDIA found a way to tap into a market like that after effectively toppling SGI from the bottom up decades ago.

Ever since CUDA debuted back in 2007 and made this GPGPU push that enabled GPUs to do more than just video games and CAD, NVIDIA's been pushing into other enterprise markets where they know their GPUs have a competitive advantage over CPU clusters, and CUDA itself ensures vendor lock-in so the clients can't be arsed to switch to AMD or anyone else.

That said, the crypto surge - something that's happened at least three times in the GPU market (and the first time, was mostly limited to ATI/AMD GPUs due to much weaker OpenCL performance on NVIDIA at the time) - is definitely something that cannot be ignored for consumer-class GPUs, especially the last two times when NVIDIA was equally in demand for Ethereum mining. Any stockholder that tries to pretend otherwise is delusional.

Generally agree here.

Though personally, I doubt that these other markets are going to be able to fill the gap, however. And the reasons are (ir)rationality and expectations of return.

i don't think there is a market replacement for armies of rabid GPU miners. Every other market is far too rational and expects a clear cost/benefit analysis. GPU miners only vaguely expect these sorts of things, often via dubious online profit calculators, and are vastly less risk-averse.

I think crypto was/is an elephant in the room for NVIDIA (others as well).

The other variable here is that the Fed is probably going to start the money printer up here soon. I just don't know what GPU coin would take the place of Ethereum.

 

[DukenukemX]

It's a bit of a reach to say they created RTX to justify their stock price. They do what every other manufacturer tries to do, create exclusive things that would make you want to buy their product over competitors. DLSS and Gsync are both examples of that.

It's a bit of a stretch to say it wasn't. Remember the RTX 2000 series offered barely any performance improvements over the GTX 1000, but runs terribly slow when RTX is turned on. Even today RTX is a feature that most gamers just ignore due to the dramatic performance decrease and the barely noticeable difference with it on and off. DLSS and FSR were created to help justify RTX, because without these the Ray-Tracing performance is horrible. Nvidia did successful push the market into the Ray-Tracing direction with AMD, Intel, Sony, and Microsoft all behind it. Yet you barely see any games with Ray-Tracing as an option, and there's a reason for it. Remember Nvidia's RTX is now 5 years old, so it isn't a new feature. Why would Nvidia offer RTX when it didn't work and the market responded by not buying many RTX 2000 cards?

My guess is that they're banking on the booming AI/ML market - one that the $100,000+ DGX Station A100 is explicitly marketed to.

I really doubt that AI/ML can be as profitable as mining. It certainly does give investors hope, which is all Nvidia needs.

That said, the crypto surge - something that's happened at least three times in the GPU market (and the first time, was mostly limited to ATI/AMD GPUs due to much weaker OpenCL performance on NVIDIA at the time) - is definitely something that cannot be ignored for consumer-class GPUs, especially the last two times when NVIDIA was equally in demand for Ethereum mining. Any stockholder that tries to pretend otherwise is delusional.

Keep in mind Nvidia's stock history lines up pretty nicely with Bitcoin value history. Any talk about AI or server markets are the bag holders who bought Nvidia stock at $300 a share. You know, like Nancy Pelosi.

Generally agree here.

Though personally, I doubt that these other markets are going to be able to fill the gap, however. And the reasons are (ir)rationality and expectations of return.

i don't think there is a market replacement for armies of rabid GPU miners. Every other market is far too rational and expects a clear cost/benefit analysis. GPU miners only vaguely expect these sorts of things, often via dubious online profit calculators, and are vastly less risk-averse.

I think crypto was/is an elephant in the room for NVIDIA (others as well).

Nvidia like most publicly traded companies want to sell a possible future. As long as people buy the dip then Nvidia doesn't care. You'll know when shit goes down if Jensen Huang steps down and sells his shares. The poor selling overpriced RTX 4000 series is just Nvidia showing their shareholders that there is demand for their products because the 4080 and especially 4090's will sell. One could argue the 4080 is meant to push buyers towards the 4090, hence the poor sales. This is all to trick shareholders.

The other variable here is that the Fed is probably going to start the money printer up here soon. I just don't know what GPU coin would take the place of Ethereum.

I really doubt that. Since 2009 the Federal reserve has had interest rates nearly at 0%, which is what fed the stock market growth since. The Fed raised interest rates recently to stop inflation but it's also going to cause a lot of stocks to decline in value. If they turned on the money printer now then inflation goes right back up. At this point the only way to increase stock market value is a UBI, but we know that isn't going to happen anytime soon.