Question [RUMOR] MLID, "Nvidia to intentionally throttle production of Ampere GPUs, to keep prices high" - allegedly.

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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I'm not familiar with the site, but the original YT vid was a long rambling piece, so this will serve as a summary.
 
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Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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I don't think Nvidia would do something like this for the reasons you think they are (i.e. to keep the prices high). I'm not saying the results will not be the same (i.e. there may be less graphics cards produced in the 4th quarter), but not for the reasons being speculated. If I had to place a bet, Nvidia had worked with Samsung for purchasing production line time/units more than 18-24 months ago for the suspected lifecycle of the 3000 series models. And all that took place under pre-pandemic, pre-crypto insanity that has since occurred. Under those previous conditions, Nvidia would have been expecting a drop off of the need to continue producing 3000 series chips as the lifecycle is drawing to an end with them having already had 4 quarters of having been released to the public (and 5-6 quarters of production). Under the normal circumstances, anyone who had wanted to get a card would have already been able to do so and there would be stock on the shelves/warehouse in most any major store, and thus Nvidia would normally be cutting production so that they would not be left holding chips from the previous generation when they are starting to have late stage engineering samples of the next generation cards produced to begin feature/performance testing with initial production of next gen cards only another 1-2 quarters away.

Now grant it, Nvidia will have attempted to negotiate with Samsung for additional production capabilities given the crypto situation, but you need to understand that Nvidia is not Samsung's only customer for use of their production lines and there is only so much unsold capacity that existed (to the point that Samsung is/was raising their rates due to the limited capacity across the entire industry). So at the end of the day, the production levels will still roughly follow the initial plan that Nvidia had worked out with Samsung for the 3000 series, which almost definitely called for a tapering off of production towards the end of the planned lifecycle of the cards.
 
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DeathReborn

Platinum Member
Oct 11, 2005
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Maybe Nvidia has a huge stockpile of GPU's but a real dearth of small components so can't actually build new cards... who knows if it's even true though.
 

Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Aside from the founders cards, Nvidia would not care about the other components for the cards, and only care about making the gpu chips. The other vendors would be the ones worrying about getting all the other components like video ram, power regulators, chokes, resistors, capacitors, etc. Again, not Nvidia's direct problem, but could mean the other vendors would cut back on their orders for the GPU chips if they can't get the other parts needed, however from my understanding, the limited parts are still the GPU.
 

DisarmedDespot

Senior member
Jun 2, 2016
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Yeah, reducing the number of GPUs makes no sense. They're selling every GPU they make. The retailers are the ones making the real dosh when prices go up.

What I COULD see being the case is that they're not expanding production the way you'd expect, because they won't want to be like AMD was in previous mining boom crashes where the market was flooded with cheap 290s and 580s.
 

Dribble

Platinum Member
Aug 9, 2005
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In a market where for a sustained period of time you can sell many times what you can produce at a hight profit margin why on earth would you not produce all that you can?
 

gorobei

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2007
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mlid may have the correct information(production stop) but may have the wrong reason.

last year nv said they produced the normal forecasted number of chips but pent up demand from lackluster turing sales meant widespread scarcity. given the demand they seeming rushed in additional production. if nv is getting ready to start on the next gen then this would probably be when they start ramping down. they could easily have a bunch of wafer starts in backlog at samsung already.

they could also have heard back from some of their crypto mining contacts. if PoS eth is implemented in 6 months, now that most of the china miners have either shut down or moved operations, the miners arent likely to expand operations until a reliably profitable alt-coin emerges. thus they probably arent going to nv for direct sales of pallets of gpus.
shutting down wafer starts makes sense if you expect a bunch of miners to flood the market with used cards. also the parts shortage could easily make sourcing the massive amount to dram required for a large order way to expensive to risk with mining situation.
 
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eek2121

Platinum Member
Aug 2, 2005
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That's when you stop trusting that source of information.

NVIDIA does not make money in a scalpers market. If they wanted to "keep prices high", they would raise prices. Their 3080s still sell for $699. It is the scalpers driving prices up. NVIDIA doesn't get a dime from Bob XYZ selling a 3080 for $1,200. They only get bad press. If I were NVIDIA, I'd temporarily raise prices by 2X until the market cools down. Be glad I'm not NVIDIA.
 

remsplease

Junior Member
Oct 22, 2021
16
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Where to begin.. MLID..unreliable source. Did ya see that rendering of the "inside source" 125watt tdp cooling solution for ARC? :)

Business 301..you never openly state you are actively trying to create a limited supply situation to sustain or inflate pricing..and yet here we are. Does it happen? Yes. Should you promote it? No.

A TON of articles about issues with Samsung 8nm yields which I find hard to believe. Chip manufacturing nodes typically become more efficient with time and not less efficient. Samsung knows what they're doing on their 8nm nodes.

TSMC and Samsung both just raised pricing.. I firmly believe this is a result of poorly executed price fixing on the part of multiple vendors (A** and N*****). TSMC and Samsung are being blamed for something in which they have no stake..price fixing and hoarding of chips they already delivered.

What I see in the large print in the linked article is an attempt to strong-arm Samsung pricing increases. Additional articles reference NVidia looking at purchasing from TSMC in the future. Same point. NVidia may halt orders for further 8nm chips. Same point.

Messy..
 

Leeea

Diamond Member
Apr 3, 2020
3,599
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Is that how you leverage your "golden member" status? Harsh, bro!
He is totally right.

MLiD is just a rumor monger, nothing more. Throw enough predictions at the wall and eventually you will get one right.

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As for the rumor itself, I think Nvidia only purchased so many dies, and that is all there is to it. These things need to be purchased years ahead of time, and their planned production run is likely coming to an end.

Not because Nvidia wants it to per say, or they are doing anything nefarious*, but that is all they bought and the rest of the wafer production has already sold to a 3rd party.


*Nvidia does plenty of nefarious activity, this is not one of those times.
 
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TheELF

Diamond Member
Dec 22, 2012
3,967
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That's when you stop trusting that source of information.

NVIDIA does not make money in a scalpers market. If they wanted to "keep prices high", they would raise prices. Their 3080s still sell for $699. It is the scalpers driving prices up. NVIDIA doesn't get a dime from Bob XYZ selling a 3080 for $1,200. They only get bad press. If I were NVIDIA, I'd temporarily raise prices by 2X until the market cools down. Be glad I'm not NVIDIA.
They already get bad press, imagine how much worse that would be if they doubled their prices.
Also the FTC would be so far up their...business that it would take quite a while for them to recover.