Question are video card prices headed down yet?

[Insert_Nickname]

Young gamers are mouth foamy and completely animalistic when it comes to GPUs. </> They enter a zombie-like state where what little consciousness </>

In other words, behave like ordinary teenagers.



When you think about it zombies and teenagers have a lot in common. Both are mostly active at night, behave in a trance-like manner and answer questions with single sentence words or groans.

(Apologies in advance for any teenagers out there. It's completely normal. We've all been there)

 

[SMOGZINN]

In other words, behave like ordinary teenagers.



When you think about it zombies and teenagers have a lot in common. Both are mostly active at night, behave in a trance-like manner and answer questions with single sentence words or groans.

(Apologies in advance for any teenagers out there. It's completely normal. We've all been there)

I mean it is pretty obvious that Romero's Night of the Living Dead is an allegory for parenting teenagers.

 

[moonbogg]

In other words, behave like ordinary teenagers.



When you think about it zombies and teenagers have a lot in common. Both are mostly active at night, behave in a trance-like manner and answer questions with single sentence words or groans.

(Apologies in advance for any teenagers out there. It's completely normal. We've all been there)

Of course. How do you think my descriptions of young gamer zombies could be so oddly specific? I was among the first of them to lemming straight over a cliff in pursuit of a new GPU. I am like a gamer zombie elder of wisdom now where I teach that the only way to win the GPU game is to not play. Let Nvidia choke on unsold, price hiked 4000 series cards and they will come wondering toward us with GPUs in hand and a blank stare offering reduced prices.

 

[Saylick]

So, y'all wanted cheap prices, right? Doesn't seem like Nvidia wants to increase supply of their GPUs because they foresee reduced demand. They totally could just commit to their original allotment and just have extra stock sitting on shelves, if that's even a possibility, but they ain't risking it and would rather have a slight undersupply rather than face oversupply.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1542733213730508800

 

[Frenetic Pony]

So, y'all wanted cheap prices, right? Doesn't seem like Nvidia wants to increase supply of their GPUs because they foresee reduced demand. They totally could just commit to their original allotment and just have extra stock sitting on shelves, if that's even a possibility, but they ain't risking it and would rather have a slight undersupply rather than face oversupply.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1542733213730508800

Nvidia just doesn't know what demand and supply are going to look like over the next 6 months. How much of this "wave" of old GPUs from miners appear? How much will that undercut the new 4xx series? Of course they're going to be cautious, meanwhile AMD is pretty sure they can sell every Bergamo and Genoa they can make, and possibly every laptop APU too guessing from how much power efficiency they'll be able to wring out of 4nm (4p even?) and Zen 4 combined; even if the market is smaller they can still take a lot of market share from Intel who's only update is more cores in Raptor Lake. I wonder if AMD would be willing to snap some of that possible extra capacity up, now that would be a fun little sting at their cross town competition.

 

[coercitiv]

Nvidia and AMD are being courteous and reducing wafer allocation to make room for Intel's new arrival in the GPU space. Live and let live... /s

 

[DrMrLordX]

TBH AMD could probably take all the extra N5-family capacity TSMC has and still sell it.

 

[amenx]

Well at least the chip shortage is over.

But TSMC have decided to increase chip costs in 2023.

 

[mastertech01]

Artificial shortages to keep prices high. The way of the world today.

 

[jpiniero]

Wondering if nVidia thinks that crypto/mining will be back in early Q1 and are thinking of delaying the bulk of Ada launches until then.

I personally feel it is a mistake holding back the 4090's release.

 

[igor_kavinski]

AMD can take Nvidia's vacated TSMC production capacity to make PS5 chips, assuming they have a die-shrink ready. Or just make extra Zen 4 chips and undercut Raptor Lake. Let there be a price war!

 

[igor_kavinski]

So, y'all wanted cheap prices, right? Doesn't seem like Nvidia wants to increase supply of their GPUs because they foresee reduced demand.

I think this points to a more worrying problem. If Lovelace was a good GPU, Nvidia would have no problem overproducing it and supplying it for the next two years. But their hesitation in committing to their original WSA with TSMC seems to indicate that Lovelace is just a stopgap until they release a better and less power hungry design. This could also mean that they are sitting on more current gen GPU chips that their AIBs are not interested in purchasing.

 

[maddie]

Wondering if nVidia thinks that crypto/mining will be back in early Q1 and are thinking of delaying the bulk of Ada launches until then.

I personally feel it is a mistake holding back the 4090's release.

Why do you think they're delaying the launch?

I read it as TSMC refusing to cut confirmed orders, but will allow customers to delay by 1 or maybe 2 quarters. Not that the customers are asking to delay.

Prediction:

TSMC will bend. They're going to rapidly realize that they no longer have the pricing power they did. They have committed to a huge capital investment program that needs to be utilized by fabbing chips. Being the best fab is only part of the equation, they also need to run the fabs at high capacity. It always takes a while to see and accept a new harsh reality.

 

[jpiniero]

Why do you think they're delaying the launch?

The 4090? I suspect they are afraid that it would hurt 30 series sales, even those not in the same price bracket.

I'm assuming AD102 is in production right now and any delay we are talking about is AD104 and/or AD103.

 

[maddie]

The 4090? I suspect they are afraid that it would hurt 30 series sales, even those not in the same price bracket.

I'm assuming AD102 is in production right now and any delay we are talking about is AD104 and/or AD103.

You wrote:
Wondering if nVidia thinks that crypto/mining will be back in early Q1 and are thinking of delaying the bulk of Ada launches until then.

What delay? That's what I'm asking. Nvidia indicated nothing of the sort.

 

[jpiniero]

What delay? That's what I'm asking. Nvidia indicated nothing of the sort.

Pushing out the start of manufacturing AD104 and/or AD103 by a quarter or two.

 

[maddie]

Pushing out the start of manufacturing AD104 and/or AD103 by a quarter or two.

Alice, is that you, which reality am I in?

It seems that this is what was written by Retired Engineer.
Nvidia, after defecting from Samsung back to TSMC and making huge prepayments to secure more 5nm and below capacity, now facing weaker demand from gaming, along with enormous channel inventory and used GPUs dumped into the market by miners, wants to cut orders for the next-generation 5nm RTX40 series. However, TSMC is unwilling to make concessions, only agreeing to allow delaying first shipments by 1 quarter or even to 1Q'23. Nvidia, however, is responsible for finding replacement customers for any vacated production capacity.


Nvidia offer: I want to cut my orders as the sales situation is bad. (help me, I'm going to be hurting here)

TSMC counter: Not possible, but will allow some delay in your ramp. (No way. If I help you, I'll be hurting)

This is not an agreement to delay, but a bargaining process underway.

You might end up being right, although I don't believe this, as AMD is also influencing this process. Will Nvidia allow AMD a mid range (N33) market monopoly for 2 quarters? This is where being in more markets is going to benefit AMD a lot. Products from more market niches and thus products use the same wafer lines easing product mix ratios.

 

[jpiniero]

Will Nvidia allow AMD a mid range (N33) market monopoly for 2 quarters?

Presumably AMD is delaying N33's launch too. They will just take N33's wafers and shift them to Genoa.

 

[Aapje]

If there is no longer a production capacity shortage for the better production processes, that's great for us gamers, as the companies will actually be able to seriously compete again for market share. Before, they were competing to get production capacity, which meant bidding up the price they paid for manufacturing. So Nvidia's & AMDs production costs went up, putting a high floor on prices, with TSMC making record profits. In the future, the production costs will go down again, allowing for the cards to be sold at lower prices.

And the companies will no longer compete as much for the favor of TSMC, which benefited TSMC and not us consumers, but for the favor of consumers, which means they will compete more on price again.

Of course, there is a lag due to contracts, so we will have a delay before production costs come down fully (this may hurt Nvidia the most, since they seem to have a very expensive huge contract with TSMC, so it's quite plausible that AMD will swoop in and buy up excess Nvidia production capacity for a much lower price than what Nvidia pays from the production capacity that they keep, so AMD can then offer products at a much better price than Nvidia, which can force Nvidia to resell more of their excess production capacity for even lower prices, which allows AMD to undercut them even more, etc).

Of course, if Nvidia is not that competitive, AMD can ask higher prices than they could and make excess profit, so that's not optimal for us.

However, that excess capacity still nice for DDR5 prices, which should go down, as more production capacity comes available at the smaller node sizes. That would be quite nice for AMD, which gambled on cheaper DDR5 for AM5. Also, it makes AMD more competitive with Intel when it comes to CPUs, which is especially nice for the lower end, where AMD wasn't very competitive lately, probably because they paid so much to TSMC.

So I'm getting increasingly hopeful that a very good time for upgrades is coming, although it makes sense for GPU pricing reductions to still lag the prices for other components, unless we get a big flood of mining GPUs.

 

[Aapje]

This is not an agreement to delay, but a bargaining process underway.

But TSMC has no incentive to reduce the contract size, where they get a lot of money per wafer, to then sell that same wafer for much less to others, when they can demand that Nvidia resells that wafer for much less to another company, so Nvidia is taking the loss, not TSMC.

Of course, TSMC might want to keep Nvidia happy by taking a bit of the loss themselves, but there is little incentive to take much of the loss, when companies don't pay TSMC more when the demand for wafers go up, and they still have a contract with a lower price than the then-current price per wafer.

Ultimately, to bargain you need leverage and Nvidia has very little. It's not like they showed loyalty to TSMC in the past, when they went to Samsung. AMD is a loyal TSMC customer, but Nvidia is not.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Yep. Looks like Nvidia's fling with Samsung is gonna hurt it more than it anticipated.

 

[jpiniero]

Thing is, if the recession hits hard enough, that might be enough to get the money printer turned back on. Which means crypto and mining will be back. That's why I mentioned Q1.

 

[Aapje]

Thing is, if the recession hits hard enough, that might be enough to get the money printer turned back on.

That will only happen if inflation return to low levels. Otherwise they may make the money printers go brrr, but not BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR again.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I think we are at the point where Braveheart yells HOLD!

Unless you get one of those fire sale deals I am starting to see on mining cards.

 

[Aapje]

It's HODL!