It makes sense to me; AI needs GPUs, and there’s an AI boom.
Probably won’t be as bad as the crypto situation, but I imagine it will have an effect on GPU availability at some point.
The AI boom started last year, it’s the reason prices are already high. So I’m skeptical that they are going to get higher, seeing as this whole AI thing feels like a bubble.
People are skeptical about AI, but companies seem to be less so.
They see an opportunity to save money and they’re gonna go for it, with the ship steered by shareholders who like the “AI” buzzword.
Maybe it won’t have any effect on GPU prices though. Crypto was a much more accessible market for anyone who wanted to have a go at it, whereas you do need to actually have an idea to make use of AI.
AI needs GPUs with a huge amount of vram. Nvidia moves to put criminally low amount of VRAM in their low and mid range gaming GPUs will ensure those GPUs won’t be hoarded by companies for AI stuff. Whether gamers actually want to buy those GPUs with such low amount of VRAM is a different matter though.
Ai cards need to be efficient so they need tsmc 3n and 5n fabs. Desktop cards don’t so they could use Samsung or older cheap tsmc fabs. When we had the shortages before it was the smaller components like vrm stages and capacitors that had a shortage. Those are now over supplied. There is no reason for the price hikes other than Nvidia seeing what people paid to scalpers and wanting it for themselves.
Nvidia has continued to push for more clock speed on lower end parts and charging higher prices. There is no reason a mid range die should be clocked to 3ghz on a super expensive pcb like the 4080 has or a low end part doing it on the 4070. Those both have pcb that cost more than the die for a die that would historically be used in $150-400 parts when adjusted for inflation. They also both should be clocked around 1.8-2ghz as that has a 60-70% reduction their power consumption for a 30% performance loss (see the mobile parts for what those parts should be close to for their base sku.)