4 ms·

That's a bit missing the point of what he said. You are correct about the hardware requirements - but his point was that 90% of the applications of this high e

by janoc 4y ago

That's a bit missing the point of what he said. You are correct about the hardware requirements - but his point was that 90% of the applications of this high end hardware ends up being in machine learning (and or crypto mining) and not the tiny ultra-high-end gaming market that can afford to pay several thousands for such cards. Most gaming "rigs" are nowhere near those specs. Nobody would manufacture such cards in quantity beyond a few "show pieces" only for the few very rich enthusiasts that can afford them if there wasn't this non-gaming market, it simply wouldn't be economical.

imwillofficial 4y ago
And your numbers for these assumptions are based on what?
dotnet00 4y ago
The high end market has always been like that even before ML or mining were a thing on GPUs. While yes, the majority of the use nowadays is in those areas, they clearly do sell enough of them to be making a profit even without being the majority of sales (otherwise they would've never made them prior to GPU compute going mainstream), especially considering that the costs of making the high end cards aren't that crazy when the lower end cards are often just the same chip as the high end model but cut down. It's also worth considering that the same chips also go into the workstation cards. On top of all that, the halo product effect also plays a role, where it's easier to sell even the lower end models when you can claim to have the fastest model of the generation at the high end. Furthermore, the current generation's high end tends to become the next generation's mid/low end, so it's really just buying into a product that could last a gamer one extra generation, which offsets the costs (ignoring that $1600 every ~2-3 years isn't really that crazy for someone with stable employment).
stephanst 4y ago
> Thanks, this is exactly what I meant in a much better formulation :)

by janoc 4y ago

imwillofficial 4y ago

And your numbers for these assumptions are based on what?

dotnet00 4y ago

The high end market has always been like that even before ML or mining were a thing on GPUs. While yes, the majority of the use nowadays is in those areas, they clearly do sell enough of them to be making a profit even without being the majority of sales (otherwise they would've never made them prior to GPU compute going mainstream), especially considering that the costs of making the high end cards aren't that crazy when the lower end cards are often just the same chip as the high end model but cut down. It's also worth considering that the same chips also go into the workstation cards. On top of all that, the halo product effect also plays a role, where it's easier to sell even the lower end models when you can claim to have the fastest model of the generation at the high end. Furthermore, the current generation's high end tends to become the next generation's mid/low end, so it's really just buying into a product that could last a gamer one extra generation, which offsets the costs (ignoring that $1600 every ~2-3 years isn't really that crazy for someone with stable employment).

stephanst 4y ago

> Thanks, this is exactly what I meant in a much better formulation :)