Springtime is coming for RAM (and Graphics Cards?) Consumers

That's because unemployment and moratorium ends for a lot of people and that will likely force people to tighten their money belt. I also wonder how successful these GPU's are selling when the GTX 1060 is still nearly 10% on Steams Hardware Survey. Not just the 1060 but 1050Ti, 1650, 2060, 1050, 1660Ti, 1070. In that order, ascending order. Where's all the RTX 3070's and 3060's that I hear Nvidia is making more than ever? RTX 3000 series is hardly showing up on that survey. At some point GPU manufacturers will have to lower prices for a lot of reasons.
 
DukenukemX said:
That's because unemployment and moratorium ends for a lot of people and that will likely force people to tighten their money belt. I also wonder how successful these GPU's are selling when the GTX 1060 is still nearly 10% on Steams Hardware Survey. Not just the 1060 but 1050Ti, 1650, 2060, 1050, 1660Ti, 1070. In that order, ascending order. Where's all the RTX 3070's and 3060's that I hear Nvidia is making more than ever? RTX 3000 series is hardly showing up on that survey. At some point GPU manufacturers will have to lower prices for a lot of reasons.
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I have a 3080, but I don't use steam. :eek:
 
DukenukemX said:
That's because unemployment and moratorium ends for a lot of people and that will likely force people to tighten their money belt. I also wonder how successful these GPU's are selling when the GTX 1060 is still nearly 10% on Steams Hardware Survey. Not just the 1060 but 1050Ti, 1650, 2060, 1050, 1660Ti, 1070. In that order, ascending order. Where's all the RTX 3070's and 3060's that I hear Nvidia is making more than ever? RTX 3000 series is hardly showing up on that survey. At some point GPU manufacturers will have to lower prices for a lot of reasons.
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The Steam survey is interesting to look at, but it doesn’t capture everything, such as the miner who bought 35 RTX3080s, in turn forcing the Steam user to hold on to his 1060 because there is no inventory of 3080s. A better source is the corporate earnings reports. Nvidia and AMD are more profitable than ever. They’re selling a ton of cards.
 
DukenukemX said:
That's because unemployment and moratorium ends for a lot of people and that will likely force people to tighten their money belt. I also wonder how successful these GPU's are selling when the GTX 1060 is still nearly 10% on Steams Hardware Survey. Not just the 1060 but 1050Ti, 1650, 2060, 1050, 1660Ti, 1070. In that order, ascending order. Where's all the RTX 3070's and 3060's that I hear Nvidia is making more than ever? RTX 3000 series is hardly showing up on that survey. At some point GPU manufacturers will have to lower prices for a lot of reasons.
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Steam's hardware survey would actually mean something if it was compulsory for everybody instead of just a random sampling.
 
HockeyJon said:
The Steam survey is interesting to look at, but it doesn’t capture everything, such as the miner who bought 35 RTX3080s, in turn forcing the Steam user to hold on to his 1060 because there is no inventory of 3080s. A better source is the corporate earnings reports. Nvidia and AMD are more profitable than ever. They’re selling a ton of cards.
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Wouldn't that mean that mining is definitely a problem still?
 
HockeyJon said:
Not if you’re a shareholder.
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Mining is a significant problem for shareholders. Every $900 video card that sells for $2000 second hand is lost profit, yet nobody wants to talk about it. If next gen cards aren't priced at current market prices there's of cause for an activist investment group to hold the board accountable for lost revenue.
 
cybereality said:
And the latest AMD cards are a ghost. You would think at least *some* gamers got the cards, but it doesn't look that way.
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The reference cards sure seem rare. I'm the only gamer I know personally who managed to get one. Snagged a 6700xt in April and kept trying to get a higher-end card for the next 2 months (before giving up). That "drop" system on AMD's store sucks big time. As of the last time I tried in June, you had to be able to camp on the page, you needed a 3rd party browser extension from github installed to allow you to access the "add to cart" button before the bots could instant-click it, and you needed lots of luck. I had a 6900xt in checkout 3 different times. One was cancelled after the fact (presumably because I had already bought the 6700xt previously?). Later, trying with an account using my relatives address/paypal, failed on two different occasions at the final step of checkout (out of stock).

The 6700XT has improved my opinion of recent AMD GPUs and I'd definitely consider a higher tier AMD card if they were available at MSRP.
 
exiled350 said:
Mining is a significant problem for shareholders. Every $900 video card that sells for $2000 second hand is lost profit, yet nobody wants to talk about it. If next gen cards aren't priced at current market prices there's of cause for an activist investment group to hold the board accountable for lost revenue.
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Not really. Secondary market sales happen all the time in various industries. They may question whether or not the MSRP is appropriate, and creep their prices up over time, but this isn’t a “problem” for shareholders any more than scalped concert tickets are a “problem” for musicians who are still selling out arenas.
 
exiled350 said:
Mining is a significant problem for shareholders. Every $900 video card that sells for $2000 second hand is lost profit, yet nobody wants to talk about it. If next gen cards aren't priced at current market prices there's of cause for an activist investment group to hold the board accountable for lost revenue.
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Secondhand sales are not lost profit. The manufacturer already got there money from the first sale. AMD and NVIDIA are still selling every single video card they can produce.
 
DukenukemX said:
Wouldn't that mean that mining is definitely a problem still?
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Yes it is,but the hope is that Ether moving to Proof Of Stake by December will result in a selloff of GPUs (you can't mine anymore Ether with those GPUs, so you might as well turn them into cash andd buy more stake!)

That, combined with a lower amount of cooped-up remote learners /workers, the demand for new systems with discrete GPUs will drop like a rock.

Both should be happening around the same time!
 
Armenius said:
Secondhand sales are not lost profit. The manufacturer already got there money from the first sale. AMD and NVIDIA are still selling every single video card they can produce.
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It is though, it's been shown that the market will bear a cost far greater that what they are charging - therefore a lost opportunity at profit. I'm not saying they should have set the price at double but there is certainly money left on the table and that could be construed as malpractice with some slick graphics and a smooth talking representative.
 
Armenius said:
Secondhand sales are not lost profit. The manufacturer already got there money from the first sale. AMD and NVIDIA are still selling every single video card they can produce.
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It’s not a loss but shareholder see it as a lost opportunity, they will put pressure on their respective companies to increase their margins as they have documented evidence that they are charging too little as the product moves at 100% volume well above MSRP. If they don’t I could see them actively suing.
 
Lakados said:
It’s not a loss but shareholder see it as a lost opportunity, they will put pressure on their respective companies to increase their margins as they have documented evidence that they are charging too little as the product moves at 100% volume well above MSRP. If they don’t I could see them actively suing.
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This is a very interesting angle, and I agree 100%, investors dont care about the people, the tech, the sale, they just care about the margin. Again very interesting to think on suing...curious if that would ever hold up in court. I have seen some rather large companies come up with stupid stuff just to improve their portfolio for investment changes...doing absolutely dumb shit, again it is the relationship of the company and investors, not the customers.
 
Viper16 said:
This is a very interesting angle, and I agree 100%, investors dont care about the people, the tech, the sale, they just care about the margin. Again very interesting to think on suing...curious if that would ever hold up in court. I have seen some rather large companies come up with stupid stuff just to improve their portfolio for investment changes...doing absolutely dumb shit, again it is the relationship of the company and investors, not the customers.
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It can and it has there have been a number of investor lawsuits in the past for similar issues. They are actually pretty common in markets that don’t have healthy competition, most never go to court usually the threat is enough, because if it goes badly they can always just lower their prices and offer rebates.
 
Armenius said:
Steam's hardware survey would actually mean something if it was compulsory for everybody instead of just a random sampling.
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"Statisticians apply their mathematical and statistical knowledge to the design of surveys and experiments; the collection, processing, and analysis of data; and the interpretation of the experiment and survey results."

not 100% perfect but often pretty close and so, since this isn't being used for rocket science applications It's probably close enough
 
cybereality said:
And the latest AMD cards are a ghost. You would think at least *some* gamers got the cards, but it doesn't look that way.
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Steam user base is so giant now, if they have reached 125m active user by now, getting to that 0.15% to make the survey could mean selling over 300k to gamers (if steam is used by 60% of them, which can be generous considering how giant the Asian market is and not sure what percentage of Chinese gamers use steam and so on), maybe it is more in the half a million type of numbers. There is over 1.2-1.5 billion pc "gamers" after all, maybe 300m of them are serious enough to have a dedicated video card.

It could be that you need to sell twice has much in 2021 than in 2016 to make a 1% dent on it.

Only 4.3% of steam hardware survey being Ampere cards can feel like almost nothing, but that could mean, 5.3, 5.4m steam active user and maybe you need 9-10 millions card sold to gamers for that. If only a small fraction of cards goes to gamers (15-20%), what would we talking about 45 to 66 million ampere card already sold ? That would be more than all the Xbox one series (one, S, X) sold in the first 5 year's


Armenius said:
Steam's hardware survey would actually mean something if it was compulsory for everybody instead of just a random sampling.
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If it was random sampling it will be easy to be virtually perfect, but it not perfectly random, they ask for permission I think and not simply scan a certain number of random computers, which can create a mini bias that the people that accept to fill such survey are a bit different than the average user, it is possible that enthusiast with higher end hardware disproportionally participate for example, the kind of people that put hardware description in message board signature.
 
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LukeTbk said:
Steam user base is so giant now, if they have reached 125m active user by now, getting to that 0.15% to make the survey could mean selling over 300k to gamers (if steam is used by 60% of them, which can be generous considering how giant the Asian market is and not sure what percentage of Chinese gamers use steam and so on), maybe it is more in the half a million type of numbers. There is over 1.2-1.5 billion pc "gamers" after all, maybe 300m of them are serious enough to have a dedicated video card.

It could be that you need to sell twice has much in 2021 than in 2016 to make a 1% dent on it.

Only 4.3% of steam hardware survey being Ampere cards can feel like almost nothing, but that could mean, 5.3, 5.4m steam active user and maybe you need 9-10 millions card sold to gamers for that. If only a small fraction of cards goes to gamers (15-20%), what would we talking about 45 to 66 million ampere card already sold ? That would be more than all the Xbox one series (one, S, X) sold in the first 5 year's




If it was random sampling it will be easy to be virtually perfect, but it not perfectly random, they ask for permission I think and not simply scan a certain number of random computers, which can create a mini bias that the people that accept to feel such survey are a bit different than the average user, it is possible that enthusiast with higher end hardware disproportionally participate for example, the kind of people that put hardware description in message board signature.
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The real "fun" is dealing with shared computers. A few years ago the share of Chinese language users (and a few other related stats) massively increased because of computers at gaming cafes being massively more likely to get surveyed because they'd be used by dozens of people each month. They eventually made adjustments to how they collect/process data with the intent of eliminating the multiple-counting of shared machines and stats broadly dropped back down to old values. However since then OS version and other stats still tend to have their largest shifts happen in line with changes of the Chinese/everything else language stat.
 
Armenius said:
Secondhand sales are not lost profit. The manufacturer already got there money from the first sale. AMD and NVIDIA are still selling every single video card they can produce.
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Not sure I get the logic, if the market prove without any doubt that it would have been possible to sell something $2000 instead of $900, it is possible that there was a lost profit, an immediate one and a more obscure future one.

It is not obvious, it could hard hurt the brand to sell it at that price and less than 13 month later at a very different price and so on that would have lead over time to less profit, which make the proposed court case quite hard to see how it would play. Many console launch had those without any legal issue.
 
LukeTbk said:
Not sure I get the logic, if the market prove without any doubt that it would have been possible to sell something $2000 instead of $900, it is possible that there was a lost profit, an immediate one and a more obscure future one.

It is not obvious, it could hard hurt the brand to sell it at that price and less than 13 month later at a very different price and so on that would have lead over time to less profit, which make the proposed court case quite hard to see how it would play. Many console launch had those without any legal issue.
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It's a hard one there have been cases where investors have gotten uppity over margins and claims that they could have gotten more and that things were sold too cheaply, but those have to go forward as a class action and they need to have enough investors on board with it to make a case of it. But in those cases margins were pretty thin, AMD and NVidia are already pushing +40%, much more and in a healthy environment it would constitute gouging or potentially price-fixing. So if suddenly NVidia raised their prices so they were pushing a 60% margin and AMD decided too as well, although there may not have been any direct communication between them due to the nature of the duopoly of the current GPU market it would also then be an easy case to make for price-fixing, if one does raise their prices and the others don't then they just have a bad PR image to take care of then they need to go through the hassle of offering rebates and price drops to bring their lineup in order which only hurts the image which could open up a secondary lawsuit. So in this event, it is a bit of a tightrope to walk, Investors tend to know this and will usually let things slide when there is overall growth.

Company growth is where AMD and NVidia are going to get stung next year if supplies remain constrained, and they are unable to increase the volume of sales, and they continue to sell out 100% of their products, then even with a good margin of say 43% if that margin is the same as last years then technically there is 0 growth. In the event of a 0 growth year, the stock values would decrease, and there is a better chance of upsetting investors for failing to meet their expected metrics especially if stock prices go down while selling 100% of the product.

Here is hoping that AMD and NVidia launch an MCM package next year, that would result in better yields and thus more cards to market faster and cheaper, which gives better margins meaning less likelihood of a price increase while keeping investors and customers happy.

The real hope though is Intel managing to produce their cards at their own fabs which would increase GPU supply while keeping demand at TSMC consistent which just means more products in the stores which leads to better competition. Even if the cards themselves are comparably bad, as long as they have the price/functionality ratios right they will find a place as long as that ratio doesn't mean selling them at a loss. I really don't think that is much of a possibility though, Intel can't afford to let NVidia and AMD dominate the GPU marketplace, the money there is too good and the need for GPU's especially in data centers is only growing and that is money they are just leaving on the table for the others, Intel's investors and upper management won't stand for that much longer.
 
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