5 ms·

It would be nice if Nvidia did not enforce artificial driver and legal kneecaps to consumer Geforce cards for cloud usage to prop up their enterprise ones... bu

by ommz 3y ago

It would be nice if Nvidia did not enforce artificial driver and legal kneecaps to consumer Geforce cards for cloud usage to prop up their enterprise ones... but shareholder rights come before anyone.

konschubert 3y ago
If they were not such a monopoly they could not pull this off.
- sanxiyn 3y ago
  NVIDIA became a monopoly by building superior products. It's not like they became a monopoly by anti-competitive practices.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    I’m not saying they did anything bad. But a monopoly can be harmful for a market without anyone doing anything illegal.
    - sanxiyn 3y ago
      True. But it is also self-correcting, since monopoly profit will attract competitors. AMD seems to be the most likely candidate.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
ChuckNorris89 3y ago
But then what's stopping cloud customers from scalping up all the consumer GeForce stocks for cheap and putting those in the data center like in the crypto mining days? Cloud customers can afford to pay more for those GPUs than gamers because they generate revenue with them, gamers don't. So it make sense to have some product segmentation in place to prevent one market completely cannibalizing the other while leaving Nvidia with less profits. The current situation is still caused by manufacturing constraints at TSMC for the cutting edge nodes which both the consumer and data center parts occupy so it makes sense for Nvidia to prioritize the higher margin parts. There have been great points made that Nvidia should split into Nvidia, the general compute company oriented to data center customers with deep pockets, and in GeForce, the gaming GPU company with access to all the cutting edge tech of Nvidia but seeks to be more scrappy and optimize designs for rasterization performance rather than generic compute and chases smaller die sizes on cheaper nodes to be price competitive. This way the data center compute market will stop cannibalizing consumer gaming one and we'll be back to having better GPUs at competitive prices.
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  There are some debatable licensing terms in various Nvidia driver releases that prohibit the use of consumer cards being hosted in "datacenters". But the real issue is physical form factor and power. As has been noted in the press, etc, something like an RTX 3090 (and more so 4090) is literally designed to push frames as fast as possible power and heat be damned. They're multi-slot (which results in poor density), have card design/cooling challenges, power configuration issues, etc. There's a story out there about the only dual-slot RTX 3090. Gigabyte came up with one (I have several - they're great) but supposedly Nvidia put pressure on them to pull them from the market[0] because people were putting them in x8 server configurations and using them instead of their much more expensive datacenter products. [0] - https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-rains-partners-parade-cancelling-geforce-rtx-3090-turbo https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-rains-partners-pa...
neximo64 3y ago
You could always use a Geforce card at home. Are you saying the cloud should use those Geforce cards and completely distort the price of the GPUs for home use?
izacus 3y ago
nVidia making sure that their consumer business isn't outscalped and destroyed by VC funded companies is a good thing. This is how they also came out on top from the crypto craze without destroying their gaming market.
- sdflhasjd 3y ago
  They didn't come out on top, they revelled in it. What brought us back to some relative normalcy was the crypto crash & Etherium's switch away from PoW; even after that, the 40 series pricing and range seems to be nVidia cashing in on the scalper prices
  - KaoruAoiShiho 3y ago
    nvidia maintained MSRP of 30 series cards during the WFH boom and did not allow AIBs to increase prices, this was one of the main complaints from EVGA that ended up with them pulling out of the GPU market. The scalping was done by third parties.
rmbyrro 3y ago
They're just trying to eat the consumer surplus from enterprise customers, which are higher up in the demand curve. Everyone does that. An individual developer is happy to charge a higher salary for its services from a larger corporation in comparison to working for an SME, simple because in a large org its services generate more value, allowing it to capture more of it.
- cj 3y ago
  I don’t disagree, but I think that’s a poor analogy. I don’t think devs take into account the business value their future job will bring their employer when negotiating salary. And if they do, they only do so when the balance is in their favor and they definitely wouldn’t lower their salary if they think the job has less impact than another job.
  - rmbyrro 3y ago
    They do when they decide to interview for large orgs. They do it because they get better pay. It's the same service. Why not work for a small org that pays less?
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  As a human, I do not want a level playing field when it comes to humans exploiting corporations vs corporations exploiting humans.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    You have long since missed the boat on changing that. This is how business is done: "well we can charge you 5x the market price for the RAM/SSD upgrade, so we will!"
    - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      In some cases, yes. But not entirely. Open source exists to give people a way to opt out of would-be exploitation of a related kind. Things can still get a lot worse: The fight isn't over until all roads are toll roads and you have to pay for the oxygen you consume.

by ommz 3y ago

konschubert 3y ago

If they were not such a monopoly they could not pull this off.

sanxiyn 3y ago
NVIDIA became a monopoly by building superior products. It's not like they became a monopoly by anti-competitive practices.
- konschubert 3y ago
  I’m not saying they did anything bad. But a monopoly can be harmful for a market without anyone doing anything illegal.
  - sanxiyn 3y ago
    True. But it is also self-correcting, since monopoly profit will attract competitors. AMD seems to be the most likely candidate.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

ChuckNorris89 3y ago

But then what's stopping cloud customers from scalping up all the consumer GeForce stocks for cheap and putting those in the data center like in the crypto mining days? Cloud customers can afford to pay more for those GPUs than gamers because they generate revenue with them, gamers don't. So it make sense to have some product segmentation in place to prevent one market completely cannibalizing the other while leaving Nvidia with less profits. The current situation is still caused by manufacturing constraints at TSMC for the cutting edge nodes which both the consumer and data center parts occupy so it makes sense for Nvidia to prioritize the higher margin parts. There have been great points made that Nvidia should split into Nvidia, the general compute company oriented to data center customers with deep pockets, and in GeForce, the gaming GPU company with access to all the cutting edge tech of Nvidia but seeks to be more scrappy and optimize designs for rasterization performance rather than generic compute and chases smaller die sizes on cheaper nodes to be price competitive. This way the data center compute market will stop cannibalizing consumer gaming one and we'll be back to having better GPUs at competitive prices.

kkielhofner 3y ago
There are some debatable licensing terms in various Nvidia driver releases that prohibit the use of consumer cards being hosted in "datacenters". But the real issue is physical form factor and power. As has been noted in the press, etc, something like an RTX 3090 (and more so 4090) is literally designed to push frames as fast as possible power and heat be damned. They're multi-slot (which results in poor density), have card design/cooling challenges, power configuration issues, etc. There's a story out there about the only dual-slot RTX 3090. Gigabyte came up with one (I have several - they're great) but supposedly Nvidia put pressure on them to pull them from the market[0] because people were putting them in x8 server configurations and using them instead of their much more expensive datacenter products. [0] - https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-rains-partners-parade-cancelling-geforce-rtx-3090-turbo https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-rains-partners-pa...

neximo64 3y ago

You could always use a Geforce card at home. Are you saying the cloud should use those Geforce cards and completely distort the price of the GPUs for home use?

izacus 3y ago

nVidia making sure that their consumer business isn't outscalped and destroyed by VC funded companies is a good thing. This is how they also came out on top from the crypto craze without destroying their gaming market.

sdflhasjd 3y ago
They didn't come out on top, they revelled in it. What brought us back to some relative normalcy was the crypto crash & Etherium's switch away from PoW; even after that, the 40 series pricing and range seems to be nVidia cashing in on the scalper prices
- KaoruAoiShiho 3y ago
  nvidia maintained MSRP of 30 series cards during the WFH boom and did not allow AIBs to increase prices, this was one of the main complaints from EVGA that ended up with them pulling out of the GPU market. The scalping was done by third parties.

rmbyrro 3y ago

They're just trying to eat the consumer surplus from enterprise customers, which are higher up in the demand curve. Everyone does that. An individual developer is happy to charge a higher salary for its services from a larger corporation in comparison to working for an SME, simple because in a large org its services generate more value, allowing it to capture more of it.

cj 3y ago
I don’t disagree, but I think that’s a poor analogy. I don’t think devs take into account the business value their future job will bring their employer when negotiating salary. And if they do, they only do so when the balance is in their favor and they definitely wouldn’t lower their salary if they think the job has less impact than another job.
- rmbyrro 3y ago
  They do when they decide to interview for large orgs. They do it because they get better pay. It's the same service. Why not work for a small org that pays less?
__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
As a human, I do not want a level playing field when it comes to humans exploiting corporations vs corporations exploiting humans.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  You have long since missed the boat on changing that. This is how business is done: "well we can charge you 5x the market price for the RAM/SSD upgrade, so we will!"
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    In some cases, yes. But not entirely. Open source exists to give people a way to opt out of would-be exploitation of a related kind. Things can still get a lot worse: The fight isn't over until all roads are toll roads and you have to pay for the oxygen you consume.