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Ok? But the other RTX models are fine - I know I had a 3070 until recently. Yes, there is a continuum of models with progressively more power. That’s good - th

Ok? But the other RTX models are fine - I know I had a 3070 until recently. Yes, there is a continuum of models with progressively more power. That’s good - the high end blazes a trail for the low end. The architecture that supports AI also support gaming. It’s the same overall architecture just different scales and price points. That’s good, it ensures enormous investment at the high end which is scaled down for different price points. If it were not for gaming and crypto and others driving money at nvidia they would have a lot less capital to dedicate towards improving the architecture. The fact they continue to drive forward real time ray tracing and other features is indicative of their continued focus on gaming.

solardev 3y ago
Yes, it's fine to have a large product line with different price points for different consumers, but I don't think it's quite fair to add the last generation's cards in there too (because they won't be around forever). Typically they only keep 2-3 generations alive in the marketplace at any given time, and if the prices keep going up, once the 30xxs disappear, so too will the affordability. Even an entry-level 4060 is $299 these days and doesn't have much RAM. My fear is that Nvidia, seeing record-high profits for their datacenter cards, will gradually phase out budget/midrange gaming cards in favor of the higher end stuff. Maybe AMD and Intel will step up their game to tackle that segment, who knows. Or maybe Apple Silicon gaming will gradually take off. But if neither of those happen, there might just be a huge void left in the "affordable PC gaming" segment (which used to be most of it, not so long ago). On the other hand... I do have to give them credit and say that GeForce Now is AMAZING -- limited library aside. If they can keep growing that segment, hell, maybe the future of PC gaming is just in the cloud, like everything else, and nobody would want to buy expensive GPUs for home use that just become obsolete in a couple years anyway.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Perhaps - but as long as they’re are profitable skus I don’t see that happening. The lower and mid range build scale for them. If they need more scale for the high end they can simply produce fewer, but by making as many as they can at any cost point they improve economics. Also often there is a probability distribution of quality of components, and by having a low end to saturate the excess that is below high end grade they can improve margins and efficiency.
  - solardev 3y ago
    You mean things like binning? But aren't most hardware producers these days fab-limited, with Apple, Samsung, Nvidia, etc. all competing for the same few foundries, especially at the smaller processes? If they only have X amount of production available a year, it seems like they'd want to focus those on the super-high-margin high-end datacenter cards rather than the leftover low-end stuff. Or maybe the high/low stuff are manufactured on different pipelines altogether, that don't suffer from the same production limits? I'm not sure how that works...

solardev 3y ago

Yes, it's fine to have a large product line with different price points for different consumers, but I don't think it's quite fair to add the last generation's cards in there too (because they won't be around forever). Typically they only keep 2-3 generations alive in the marketplace at any given time, and if the prices keep going up, once the 30xxs disappear, so too will the affordability. Even an entry-level 4060 is $299 these days and doesn't have much RAM. My fear is that Nvidia, seeing record-high profits for their datacenter cards, will gradually phase out budget/midrange gaming cards in favor of the higher end stuff. Maybe AMD and Intel will step up their game to tackle that segment, who knows. Or maybe Apple Silicon gaming will gradually take off. But if neither of those happen, there might just be a huge void left in the "affordable PC gaming" segment (which used to be most of it, not so long ago). On the other hand... I do have to give them credit and say that GeForce Now is AMAZING -- limited library aside. If they can keep growing that segment, hell, maybe the future of PC gaming is just in the cloud, like everything else, and nobody would want to buy expensive GPUs for home use that just become obsolete in a couple years anyway.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Perhaps - but as long as they’re are profitable skus I don’t see that happening. The lower and mid range build scale for them. If they need more scale for the high end they can simply produce fewer, but by making as many as they can at any cost point they improve economics. Also often there is a probability distribution of quality of components, and by having a low end to saturate the excess that is below high end grade they can improve margins and efficiency.
- solardev 3y ago
  You mean things like binning? But aren't most hardware producers these days fab-limited, with Apple, Samsung, Nvidia, etc. all competing for the same few foundries, especially at the smaller processes? If they only have X amount of production available a year, it seems like they'd want to focus those on the super-high-margin high-end datacenter cards rather than the leftover low-end stuff. Or maybe the high/low stuff are manufactured on different pipelines altogether, that don't suffer from the same production limits? I'm not sure how that works...