1. Nvidia cards

2. Hooked up to Linux boxes

It turns out that Nvidia tends to work pretty well on Linux too, despite the binary blob drivers.

Other than gaming and ML, I'm not sure what the value of spending much on a GPU is... AMD is just in a tough spot.

I'd really love to try AMD as a daily driver. For me CUDA is the showstopper. There's really nothing comparable in the AMD camp.

I guess there games that you can only play on PC with Nvidia graphics. That begs the question why someone create a game and ignore large console market.

I'm with you - in principle. Capital-G "Gamers" who see themselves as the real discriminated group have fully earned the ridicule.

But I think where the criticism is valid is how NVIDIA's behavior is part of the wider enshittification trend in tech. Lock-in and overpricing in entertainment software might be acceptance, but it gets problematic when we have the exact same trends in actually critical tech like phones and cars.

My main hobby is videogames, but since I can consistently play most games on Linux (that has good AMD support), it doesn't really matter.

They will complain endlessly about the price of a RTX 5090 and still rush out to buy it. I know people that own these high end cards as a flex, but their lives are too busy to actually play games.

My favorite part about being a reformed gaming addict is the fact that my MacBook now covers ~100% of my computer use cases. The desktop is nice for Visual Studio but that's about it.

I'm still running a 5700XT in my desktop. I have absolutely zero desire to upgrade.

...and even if you're all in on video games, there's a massive amount of really brilliant indie games on Steam that run just fine on a 1070 or 2070 (I still have my 2070 and haven't found a compelling reason to upgrade yet).

I think more and more people will realize games are a waste of time for them and go on to find other hobbies. As a game developer, it kinda worries me. As a gamer, I can't wait for gaming to be a niche thing again, haha.

From a supply/demand perspective, if all of your customers are still getting high on the 5 (or 20) year old supply, launching a new title in the same space isn't going to work. There are not an infinite # of gamers and the global dopamine budget is limited.

Launching a game like TF2 or Starcraft 2 in 2025 would be viewed as a business catastrophe by the metrics most AAA studios are currently operating under. Monthly ARPU for gamers years after purchasing the Orange Box was approximately $0.00. Giving gamers access to that strong of a drug would ruin the demand for other products.

I don’t think nVidia wants gaming collapse either. They might not prioritize it now but they definitely know that it will persist in some form. They bet on AI (and crypto before it) because those are lucrative opportunities but there’s no guarantee they will last. So they squeeze as much as they can out of those while they can. They definitely want gaming as a backup. It might be not as profitable and more finicky as it’s a consumer market but it’s much more stable in the long run.

It also won’t work, and Microsoft has developed no way to compete on actual value. As much as I hate the acquisitions they’ve made, even if Microsoft as a whole were to croak tomorrow I think the game industry would be fine.

The striking one for me is their linux efforts, at least as far as I'm aware they don't do a lot that isn't tied to the steam deck (or similar devices) or running games available on steam through linux. Even the deck APU is derived from the semi-custom work AMD did for the consoles, they're benefiting from a second later harvest that MS/Sony have invested (hundreds of millions?) in many years earlier. I suppose a lot of it comes down to what Valve needs to support their customers (developers/publishers), they don't see the point in pioneering and establishing some new branch of tech with developers.

nvidia isn't purposely killing anything, they are just following the pivot into the AI nonsense. They have no choice, if they are in a unique position to make 10x by a pivot they will, even if it might be a dumpsterfire of a house of cards. Its immoral to just abandon the industry that created you, but companies have always been immoral.

Valve has an opportunity to what? Take over video card hardware market? No. AMD and Intel are already competitors in the market and cant get any foothold (until hopefully now consumers will have no choice but to shift to them)

Either way, scalping is not a problem that persists for multiple years unless it's intentional corporate strategy. Either factories ramp up production capacity to ensure there is enough supply for launch, or MSRP rises much faster than inflation. Getting demand planning wrong year after year after year smells like incompetence leaving money on the table.

The argument that scalping is better for NVDA is coming from the fact that consumer GPUs no longer make a meaningful difference to the bottom line. Factory capacity is better reserved for even more profitable data center GPUs. The consumer GPU market exists not to increase NVDA profits directly, but as a marketing / "halo" effect that promotes decision makers sticking with NVDA data center chips. That results in a completely different strategy where out-of-stock is a feature, not a bug, and where product reputation is more important than actual product performance, hence the coercion on review media.

How would we know if they were?

Oh trust me, they can combat it. The easiest way, which is what Nintendo often does for the launch of its consoles, is produce an enormous amount of units before launch. The steady supply to retailers, absolutely destroys folks ability to scalp. Yes a few units will be scalped, but most scalpers will be underwater if there is a constant resupply. I know this because I used to scalp consoles during my teens and early twenties, and Nintendo's consoles were the least profitable and most problematic because they really try to supply the market. The same with iPhones, yeah you might have to wait a month after launch to find one if you don't pre-order but you can get one.

It's widely reported that most retailers had maybe tens of cards per store, or a few hundred nationally, for the 5090s launch. This immediately creates a giant spike in demand, and drove prices up along with the incentive for scalpers. The manufacturing partners immediately saw what (some) people were willing to pay (to the scalpers) and jacked up prices so they could get their cut. It is still so bad in the case of the 5090 that MSRP prices from AIBs skyrocketed 30%-50%. PNY had cards at the original $1999.99 MSRP and now those same cards can't be found for less than $2,999.99.

By contrast look at how AMD launched it's 9000 series of GPUS-- each MicroCenter reportedly had hundreds on hand (and it sure looked like by pictures floating around). Folks were just walking in until noon and still able to get a GPU on launch day. Multiple restocks happened across many retailers immediately after launch. Are there still some inflated prices in the 9000 series GPUs? Yes, but we're not talking a 50% increase. Having some high priced AIBs has always occurred but what Nvidia has done by intentionally under supplying the market is awful.

I personally have been trying to buy a 5090 FE since launch. I have been awake attempting to add to cart for every drop on BB but haven't been successful. I refuse to pay the inflated MSRP for cards that haven't been been that well reviewed. My 3090 is fine... At this point, I'm so frustrated by NVidia I'll likely just piss off for this generation and hope AMD comes out with something that has 32GB+ of VRAM at a somewhat reasonable price.

If you believe their public statements, because they didn't want to build out additional capacity and then have a huge excess supply of cards when demand suddenly dried up.

In other words, the charge of "purposefully keeping stock low" is something NVidia admitted to; there was just no theory of how they'd benefit from it in the present.

In their never ending quest to find ways to suck more money out of people, one natural extension is to just turn the thing into a luxury good and that alone seems to justify the markup

This is why new home construction is expensive - the layout of a home doesn’t change much but it’s trivial to throw on some fancy fixtures and slap the deluxe label on the listing.

Or take a Toyota, slap some leather seats on it, call it a Lexus and mark up the price 40% (I get that these days there are more meaningful differences but the point stands)

This and turning everything into subscriptions alone are responsible for 90% of the issues I have as a consumer

Graphics cards seem to be headed in this direction as well - breaking through that last ceiling for maximum fps is going to be like buying a bentley (if it isn’t already) where as before it was just opting for the v8

> DLSS vs FSR, or DLSS FG and Lossless Scaling.

I've used all of these (at 4K, 120hz, set to "balanced") since they came out, and I just don't understand how people say this.

FSR is a vaseline-like mess to me, it has its own distinct blurriness. Not as bad as naive upscaling, and I'll use it if no DLSS is available and the game doesn't run well, but it's distracting.

Lossless is borderline unusable. I don't remember the algorithm's name, but it has a blur similar to FSR. It cannot handle text or UI elements without artifacting (because it's not integrated in the engine, those don't get rendered at native resolution). The frame generation causes almost everything to have a ghost or afterimage - UI elements and the reticle included. It can also reduce your framerate because it's not as optimized. On top of that, the way the program works interferes with HDR pipelines. It is a last resort.

DLSS (3) is, by a large margin, the best offering. It just works and I can't notice any cons. Older versions did have ghosting, but it's been fixed. And I can retroactively fix older games by just swapping the DLL (there's a tool for this on GitHub, actually). I have not tried DLSS 4.

AMD is truly making excellent cards, and with a bit of luck UDNA is even better. But they're in the same situation as Nvidia: they could sell 200 GPUs, ship drivers, maintain them, deal with returns and make $100k... Or just sell a single MI300X to a trusted partner that won't make any waves and still make $100k.

Wafer availability unfortunately rules all, and as it stands, we're lucky neither of them have abandoned their gaming segments for massively profitable AI things.

Nvidia could have said "we're prioritizing enterprise" but instead they put on a big horse and pony show about their consumer GPUs.

I really like the Gamer's Nexus paper launch shirt. ;)

BS! Nvidia isn't entitled. I'm not obligated. Customer always has final say.

The problem is a lot of customers can't or don't stand their ground. And the other side knows that.

Maybe you're a well trained "customer" by Nvidia just like Basil Fawlty was well trained by his wife ...

Stop excusing bs.

> Idiots doing hardware installation, with zero experience, using 3rd party cables incorrectly

This is not true. Even GN reproduced the melting of the first-party cable.

Also, why shouldn't you be able to use third-party cables? Fuck DRM too.

AI upscaling, AI denoising, and RT were clearly the future even 6 years ago. CDPR and the rest of the industry knew it, but outlets like GN pushed a narrative(borderline conspiracy) the developers were somehow out of touch and didn't know what they were talking about?

There is a contingent of gamers who play competitive FPS. Most of which are, like in all casual competitive hobbies, not very good. But they ate up the 240hz rasterization be-all meat GN was feeding them. Then they think they are the majority and speak for all gamers(as every loud minority on the internet does).

Fast forward 6 years and NVidia is crushing the Steam top 10 GPU list, AI rendering techniques are becoming ubiquitous, and RT is slowly edging out rasterization.

Now that the data is clear the narrative is most consumers are "suckers" for purchasing NVidia, Nintendo, and etc. And the content creator economy will be there to tell them they are right.

Edit: I believe too some of these outlets had chips on their shoulder regarding NVidia going way back. So AMDs poor RT performance and lack of any competitive answer the the DLSS suite for YEARS had them lying to themselves about where the industry was headed. Essentially they were running interference for AMD. Now that FSR4 is finally here it's like AI upscaling is finally ok.

EDIT: Plantiff dismissed it. Guessing they settled. Here are the court documents (alternately, shakna's links below include unredacted copies):

https://www.classaction.org/media/plaintiff-v-nvidia-corpora...

https://www.classaction.org/media/plaintiff-v-nvidia-corpora...

A GamersNexus article investigating the matter: https://gamersnexus.net/gpus/12vhpwr-dumpster-fire-investiga...

And a video referenced in the original post, describing how the design changed from one that proactively managed current balancing, to simply bundling all the connections together and hoping for the best: https://youtu.be/kb5YzMoVQyw

I might actually be happy to buy one of these things, at the inflated price, and run it at half voltage or something... but I can't tell if that is going to fix these concerns or they're just bad cards.

As a bonus, if the gauge is large enough, the cable would actually cool the connectors, although that should not be necessary since the failure appears to be caused by overloaded wires dumping heat into the connector as they overheat.