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Nvidia specifically indicates the VRAM size and whether the product is suitable, so you pick the ones with enough to satisfy your expected needs. What’s there t

Nvidia specifically indicates the VRAM size and whether the product is suitable, so you pick the ones with enough to satisfy your expected needs. What’s there to not understand?

beeboobaa 3y ago
That VRAM isn't everything, apparently.
michaelt 3y ago
* Is a given product their most advanced, or was it merely their most advanced when the marketing copy was written 5 years ago? * Is the product actually available for purchase today, and at what price? * In what form factors - Full height? Half height? Two slots? Three? SXM? Does it have a fan built in? * What is the relative performance? Half the time the specs all quote different numbers. Why does one product quote 'single precision performance' and 'rt core performance' and 'tensor performance' while another quotes the 'tensor cores' and 'shader cores' and another quotes the 'FP64', 'FP32', 'FP16', 'BFLOAT16', 'TF32' and 'INT8'? And don't imagine you're going to get away with ignoring those specs. A $2700 L4 24GB is slower than an RTX 4090, for example, because it's for power-efficient servers or something.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Most of this information is indicated on their website or online spec sheets? Like I said Nvidia themselves indicate whether it’s suitable. And if your still confused or doubt the accuracy, or don’t want to spend any time reading spec sheets, I imagine the sales channel folks will be able to guarantee it in writing for a fee.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    > Most of this information is indicated on their website or online spec sheets? You'd think so, wouldn't you? But nvidia is not that smart. They have decided that the GPUs should be split over at least three different pages, and those pages should be camouflaged. I can only assume the marketing team are judged based on time spent on site or number of pages viewed, rather than on sales made. When you go to the home page, point to products and click on "NVIDIA RTX / Quadro" you might expect to find the RTX 4090 and some Quadro products. You will in fact find neither - the RTX 4090 is under 'GeForce' and the 'Quadro' brand is no longer used. Maybe on the home page you choose "NVIDIA RTX-Powered AI Workstations" - that'll give you a list of their workstation-suitable cards for ML, right? No, that page contains no products at all. The only option is to Find A Partner which links you to a bunch of partners - several of whom do not in fact sell AI Workstations. Other partners sell AI workstations... without GPUs. As far as HP is concerned, $4000 only gets you the base model workstation, with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk. If you want GPUs with that, you'll need to call the sales team, who might perhaps deign to sell you one. Or perhaps you're at nvidia's home page, and you're looking for data centre grade GPUs? For that product page, simply choose whether you mean the DGX, EGX, IGX, HGX, MGX or OVX platform? But they make it very easy to find the keynote speech by His Excellency Omar Sultan Al Olama on the latest breakthroughs in AI. He does, in fairness, have a very appropriate surname.
    - larodi 3y ago
      The Al Olama joke really made my day. I support what I say in the model lines and assured website. But perhaps only MS and IBM so far know how to do corporate sites…
    - izacus 3y ago
      This is such a bizarre rant - you're buying an AI GPU and are ranting be used you need to understand what kind of workloads you need with it? And while also ranting that you won't pay the price of the obvious high end models if you're too lazy about it? What, exactly, is your expectation here? If you want the simple Apple model where you don't need to look at the spec, do the Apple think and pay up for the pricy GPU.
  - gymbeaux 3y ago
    It’s overwhelmingly apparent to me that you haven’t had to seriously consider this problem of which GPU to buy in 2023/2024.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      Did you even finish reading my comment? The whole point of the last sentence is that you don’t need to “seriously consider this problem of which GPU to buy”, if your willing to pay more for written guarantees through the sales channel.
      - gymbeaux 3y ago
        I did
        MichaelZuo 3y ago
        Sure, then you get the point.
gymbeaux 3y ago
It’s not even remotely that simple. Well, I guess it is if you have infinite money. For the rest of us, VRAM is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s what you can actually order and get shipped to you, how much that costs versus MSRP, whether to get one giant GPU or two, or to leave room in your computer/PSU budget for two down the line… it’s the Wild West. I think most of us end up with 3080s or 3090s mostly due to price/what’s available on the market.
- izacus 3y ago
  You're calling market choice "Wild West"?
  - gymbeaux 3y ago
    There's a lot of chaos that stems from the crypto boom, COVID, the AI boom, the fact that NVidia is essentially a monopoly, some groups are making custom GPUs so they have more VRAM....

Nvidia specifically indicates the VRAM size and whether the product is suitable, so you pick the ones with enough to satisfy your expected needs. What’s there to not understand?

beeboobaa 3y ago

That VRAM isn't everything, apparently.

michaelt 3y ago

* Is a given product their most advanced, or was it merely their most advanced when the marketing copy was written 5 years ago? * Is the product actually available for purchase today, and at what price? * In what form factors - Full height? Half height? Two slots? Three? SXM? Does it have a fan built in? * What is the relative performance? Half the time the specs all quote different numbers. Why does one product quote 'single precision performance' and 'rt core performance' and 'tensor performance' while another quotes the 'tensor cores' and 'shader cores' and another quotes the 'FP64', 'FP32', 'FP16', 'BFLOAT16', 'TF32' and 'INT8'? And don't imagine you're going to get away with ignoring those specs. A $2700 L4 24GB is slower than an RTX 4090, for example, because it's for power-efficient servers or something.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
Most of this information is indicated on their website or online spec sheets? Like I said Nvidia themselves indicate whether it’s suitable. And if your still confused or doubt the accuracy, or don’t want to spend any time reading spec sheets, I imagine the sales channel folks will be able to guarantee it in writing for a fee.
- michaelt 3y ago
  > Most of this information is indicated on their website or online spec sheets? You'd think so, wouldn't you? But nvidia is not that smart. They have decided that the GPUs should be split over at least three different pages, and those pages should be camouflaged. I can only assume the marketing team are judged based on time spent on site or number of pages viewed, rather than on sales made. When you go to the home page, point to products and click on "NVIDIA RTX / Quadro" you might expect to find the RTX 4090 and some Quadro products. You will in fact find neither - the RTX 4090 is under 'GeForce' and the 'Quadro' brand is no longer used. Maybe on the home page you choose "NVIDIA RTX-Powered AI Workstations" - that'll give you a list of their workstation-suitable cards for ML, right? No, that page contains no products at all. The only option is to Find A Partner which links you to a bunch of partners - several of whom do not in fact sell AI Workstations. Other partners sell AI workstations... without GPUs. As far as HP is concerned, $4000 only gets you the base model workstation, with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk. If you want GPUs with that, you'll need to call the sales team, who might perhaps deign to sell you one. Or perhaps you're at nvidia's home page, and you're looking for data centre grade GPUs? For that product page, simply choose whether you mean the DGX, EGX, IGX, HGX, MGX or OVX platform? But they make it very easy to find the keynote speech by His Excellency Omar Sultan Al Olama on the latest breakthroughs in AI. He does, in fairness, have a very appropriate surname.
  - larodi 3y ago
    The Al Olama joke really made my day. I support what I say in the model lines and assured website. But perhaps only MS and IBM so far know how to do corporate sites…
  - izacus 3y ago
    This is such a bizarre rant - you're buying an AI GPU and are ranting be used you need to understand what kind of workloads you need with it? And while also ranting that you won't pay the price of the obvious high end models if you're too lazy about it? What, exactly, is your expectation here? If you want the simple Apple model where you don't need to look at the spec, do the Apple think and pay up for the pricy GPU.
- gymbeaux 3y ago
  It’s overwhelmingly apparent to me that you haven’t had to seriously consider this problem of which GPU to buy in 2023/2024.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    Did you even finish reading my comment? The whole point of the last sentence is that you don’t need to “seriously consider this problem of which GPU to buy”, if your willing to pay more for written guarantees through the sales channel.
    - gymbeaux 3y ago
      I did
      - MichaelZuo 3y ago
        Sure, then you get the point.

gymbeaux 3y ago

It’s not even remotely that simple. Well, I guess it is if you have infinite money. For the rest of us, VRAM is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s what you can actually order and get shipped to you, how much that costs versus MSRP, whether to get one giant GPU or two, or to leave room in your computer/PSU budget for two down the line… it’s the Wild West. I think most of us end up with 3080s or 3090s mostly due to price/what’s available on the market.

izacus 3y ago
You're calling market choice "Wild West"?
- gymbeaux 3y ago
  There's a lot of chaos that stems from the crypto boom, COVID, the AI boom, the fact that NVidia is essentially a monopoly, some groups are making custom GPUs so they have more VRAM....