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And the question for most that remains once AMD catches up: will the duopoly result in lower prices to a reasonable level for hobbyists or bootstrapped startups

And the question for most that remains once AMD catches up: will the duopoly result in lower prices to a reasonable level for hobbyists or bootstrapped startups, or will AMD just gouge like NVidia?

klysm 3y ago
A simplistic economic take would suggest that the competition would result in lower prices, but given two players in the market who knows.
- binarymax 3y ago
  My intuition is along the lines that if AMD had a competing product earlier, then it would have kept prices down. But since Nvidia has shown what the market will pay, AMD won't be able to resist overcharging. It will probably come down a little, but nowhere near to the point of affordability. I sure hope I'm wrong.
  - tyre 3y ago
    AMD might have to charge less to break into customers that are already bought into Nvidia. There has to be a discount to cover the switching costs + still provide savings (or access).
    - zirgs 3y ago
      AMD will have to provide a REALLY steep discount to convince me to come back.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  It is oligopoly pricing. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/oligopoly.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/oligopoly.asp With that few competitors pricing would not change much.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    That's mostly when there isn't a lot of price elasticity of demand. If you're Comcast and Verizon, each customer wants one internet connection and you're not going to change the size of the market much by offering better prices. If you're AMD and NVIDIA and lowering the price would double the number of customers, you might very well want to do that, unless you're supply constrained -- which has been the issue because they're both bidding against everyone else for limited fab capacity. But that should be temporary. This is also a market with a network effect. If all your GPUs are $1000 and nobody can afford them then nobody is going to write code for them, and then who wants them? So the winning strategy is actually to make sure that there are kind of okay GPUs available for less than $300 and make sure lots of people have them, then sell very expensive ones that use the same architecture but are faster. That has been the traditional model, but the lack of production capacity meant that they've only been making the overpriced ones recently. Which isn't actually in their interests once the supply of fab capacity loosens up.
    - ngcc_hk 3y ago
      Actually there is already a market like this they are in - game. Most Gpu used are low to mid-range see steam. The AI has to and will go down to that level for using or gaming. You cannot just have game for intel … you did. Then steam work hard and realize the steam deck. You can have total different software like j and a did. Hence you really can’t have 1 N to rule for long. Do thank for it and all the fish, without it we might be still doing Gpu for numerical computing research.
      - Qwertious 3y ago
        AI doesn't have all that much application to gamedev - people think "videogames have lots of AI", and don't realize that "game AI" and "stable diffusion/GPT AI" are about as related as Java and Javascript. Game "AI" is meant to be fun to play (and win) against, they're not meant to be smart; that's why zombie games are so successful. Most "game AI" are finite state machines, throwing a neural network at the issue would be absurd overkill. I'm sure there will be some AI applications in games (like procedural world generation or such, perhaps) but it's not the obvious connection that most people think.
- hackerlight 3y ago
  Looking at the CPU market, competition did lead to lower prices: AMD are the best, but their CPUs are very reasonably priced because Intel is close behind. In the gaming market for GPUs, Nvidia has no competition except in some niche areas. Overall, their lead in upscaling software is too commanding so they can price how they want. Customers are paying 15-20% premiums for the same raw hardware performance, all to access Nvidia's DLSS, because there's no good competition.
rafaelmn 3y ago
If the margins and demand is there Intel will eventually show up
- Havoc 3y ago
  Is either in doubt?
  - rafaelmn 3y ago
    Wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of investment is hype bubble and demand correction forces price correction. Maybe not immediately but at Intel's pace - they managed to miss out on mining bubble, wouldn't be surprised for them to release in a correction.
- wmf 3y ago
  Intel already showed up three or four times but their software is as bad as AMD's used to be.
  - ilc 3y ago
    Thankfully, software can be fixed over time as AMD has shown. Lack of another competitor can't be fixed as easily.
wil421 3y ago
Why would their investors allow anything else? I’m sure they see it as a huge loss like intel and mobile.
rdsubhas 3y ago
Demand will push AMD prices up by couple hundred bucks and Nvidia cards down by couple hundred bucks. A hobbyist customer will be neither better or worse.
quitit 3y ago
I think in this case the changes needed to make AMD useful will open the market to other players as well (e.g. Intel). PyTorch is already walking down this path and while CUDA-based performance is significantly better, that is changing and of course an area of continued focus. It's not that people don't like Nvidia, rather it's just that there is a lot of hardware out there that can technically perform competitively, but the work needs to be done to bring it into the circle.
- binarymax 3y ago
  Last I checked I saw the H100 was about two gens more advanced for certain components (tensor cores, bfloats, cache, mem bandwidth) - but my research may have been wrong as admittedly I'm not as familiar with AMDs offerings for GPU.
  - FuriouslyAdrift 3y ago
    They are not behind... https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-expands-mi300-with-gpu-only-model-eight-gpu-platform-with-15tb-of-hbm3 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-expands-mi300-with-gpu... You can also actually buy them as opposed to the nVidia offerings which you are going to have to fight for.
evanjrowley 3y ago
AMD prices will go up because of the newfound ability to gouge for AI/ML/GPGPU workloads. Nvidia's will likely go down, but I don't expect it will be by much. The market demand is high, so the equilibrium price will also be high. Supply isn't at pandemic / crypto-rush lows, but the supply of cards useful for CUDA/ROCm still is.
adamsvystun 3y ago
This is not a binary question. Two players, while not ideal, are better then just one.
stjohnswarts 3y ago
In general I think it will lower prices, certainly not as much as if there were 4+ on the market where it's hard to anticipate your rivals. a 2 body system is pretty straight forward, 3 body can be stable for a while with some restrictions, a 4 body problem is really damn hard...
johngossman 3y ago
When AMD caught up to Intel in CPUs, prices went down (at least compared to when Intel had a complete monopoly). The same was true when AMD gaming cards were more competitive. Chip manufacturers have shown themselves willing to both raise prices when they can and lower them when they must.

And the question for most that remains once AMD catches up: will the duopoly result in lower prices to a reasonable level for hobbyists or bootstrapped startups, or will AMD just gouge like NVidia?

klysm 3y ago

A simplistic economic take would suggest that the competition would result in lower prices, but given two players in the market who knows.

binarymax 3y ago
My intuition is along the lines that if AMD had a competing product earlier, then it would have kept prices down. But since Nvidia has shown what the market will pay, AMD won't be able to resist overcharging. It will probably come down a little, but nowhere near to the point of affordability. I sure hope I'm wrong.
- tyre 3y ago
  AMD might have to charge less to break into customers that are already bought into Nvidia. There has to be a discount to cover the switching costs + still provide savings (or access).
  - zirgs 3y ago
    AMD will have to provide a REALLY steep discount to convince me to come back.
sumtechguy 3y ago
It is oligopoly pricing. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/oligopoly.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/oligopoly.asp With that few competitors pricing would not change much.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  That's mostly when there isn't a lot of price elasticity of demand. If you're Comcast and Verizon, each customer wants one internet connection and you're not going to change the size of the market much by offering better prices. If you're AMD and NVIDIA and lowering the price would double the number of customers, you might very well want to do that, unless you're supply constrained -- which has been the issue because they're both bidding against everyone else for limited fab capacity. But that should be temporary. This is also a market with a network effect. If all your GPUs are $1000 and nobody can afford them then nobody is going to write code for them, and then who wants them? So the winning strategy is actually to make sure that there are kind of okay GPUs available for less than $300 and make sure lots of people have them, then sell very expensive ones that use the same architecture but are faster. That has been the traditional model, but the lack of production capacity meant that they've only been making the overpriced ones recently. Which isn't actually in their interests once the supply of fab capacity loosens up.
  - ngcc_hk 3y ago
    Actually there is already a market like this they are in - game. Most Gpu used are low to mid-range see steam. The AI has to and will go down to that level for using or gaming. You cannot just have game for intel … you did. Then steam work hard and realize the steam deck. You can have total different software like j and a did. Hence you really can’t have 1 N to rule for long. Do thank for it and all the fish, without it we might be still doing Gpu for numerical computing research.
    - Qwertious 3y ago
      AI doesn't have all that much application to gamedev - people think "videogames have lots of AI", and don't realize that "game AI" and "stable diffusion/GPT AI" are about as related as Java and Javascript. Game "AI" is meant to be fun to play (and win) against, they're not meant to be smart; that's why zombie games are so successful. Most "game AI" are finite state machines, throwing a neural network at the issue would be absurd overkill. I'm sure there will be some AI applications in games (like procedural world generation or such, perhaps) but it's not the obvious connection that most people think.
hackerlight 3y ago
Looking at the CPU market, competition did lead to lower prices: AMD are the best, but their CPUs are very reasonably priced because Intel is close behind. In the gaming market for GPUs, Nvidia has no competition except in some niche areas. Overall, their lead in upscaling software is too commanding so they can price how they want. Customers are paying 15-20% premiums for the same raw hardware performance, all to access Nvidia's DLSS, because there's no good competition.

rafaelmn 3y ago

If the margins and demand is there Intel will eventually show up

Havoc 3y ago
Is either in doubt?
- rafaelmn 3y ago
  Wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of investment is hype bubble and demand correction forces price correction. Maybe not immediately but at Intel's pace - they managed to miss out on mining bubble, wouldn't be surprised for them to release in a correction.
wmf 3y ago
Intel already showed up three or four times but their software is as bad as AMD's used to be.
- ilc 3y ago
  Thankfully, software can be fixed over time as AMD has shown. Lack of another competitor can't be fixed as easily.

wil421 3y ago

Why would their investors allow anything else? I’m sure they see it as a huge loss like intel and mobile.

rdsubhas 3y ago

Demand will push AMD prices up by couple hundred bucks and Nvidia cards down by couple hundred bucks. A hobbyist customer will be neither better or worse.

quitit 3y ago

I think in this case the changes needed to make AMD useful will open the market to other players as well (e.g. Intel). PyTorch is already walking down this path and while CUDA-based performance is significantly better, that is changing and of course an area of continued focus. It's not that people don't like Nvidia, rather it's just that there is a lot of hardware out there that can technically perform competitively, but the work needs to be done to bring it into the circle.

binarymax 3y ago
Last I checked I saw the H100 was about two gens more advanced for certain components (tensor cores, bfloats, cache, mem bandwidth) - but my research may have been wrong as admittedly I'm not as familiar with AMDs offerings for GPU.
- FuriouslyAdrift 3y ago
  They are not behind... https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-expands-mi300-with-gpu-only-model-eight-gpu-platform-with-15tb-of-hbm3 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-expands-mi300-with-gpu... You can also actually buy them as opposed to the nVidia offerings which you are going to have to fight for.

evanjrowley 3y ago

AMD prices will go up because of the newfound ability to gouge for AI/ML/GPGPU workloads. Nvidia's will likely go down, but I don't expect it will be by much. The market demand is high, so the equilibrium price will also be high. Supply isn't at pandemic / crypto-rush lows, but the supply of cards useful for CUDA/ROCm still is.

adamsvystun 3y ago

This is not a binary question. Two players, while not ideal, are better then just one.

stjohnswarts 3y ago

In general I think it will lower prices, certainly not as much as if there were 4+ on the market where it's hard to anticipate your rivals. a 2 body system is pretty straight forward, 3 body can be stable for a while with some restrictions, a 4 body problem is really damn hard...

johngossman 3y ago

When AMD caught up to Intel in CPUs, prices went down (at least compared to when Intel had a complete monopoly). The same was true when AMD gaming cards were more competitive. Chip manufacturers have shown themselves willing to both raise prices when they can and lower them when they must.