but how…? just make more. its not even 2027 yet. ffs. this feels like a scam.
GG my fellow PC enthusiasts
it’s been like that for the past 6 years or so? I remember falling back to a laptop because of video card spike because mining, then I said right I postpone another year for the build and the chip shortage came along. Then SSD/hard drive Then RAM Next thing they’re pulling the rug off is going to be PSU and chassis and we’re cooked
Don’t worry all orders will be canceled when the bubble pops.
How long was crypto graphics card demand ? Anyone remember ?
GPU prices have gone up and up since RTX 2000 era, basically.
My 3090 is about as expensive than it was at launch, 6 years ago.
There were crypto slumps, many moons ago, but I don’t think that’s happening again.
After the last one they never really lowered prices back, we were still buying near crypto era priced GPUs before the AI boom.
This guy actually Making RAM at Home
Really interesting watch actually. But uh, I don’t think we’re gaming on homemade RAM anytime soon lol
To build chips that are used as collateral for datacentres that have yet to be built, so the chips can’t be used, and they’ll just age out of usefulness.
The prices finna be ka-ching when the bubble finally bursts though
Feels like we’ve been waiting for this bubble to burst for a lifetime.
and they’ll just age out of usefulness.
Nah, we’ll stall on this generation. Even if a new one is released, very few will pay the extra when games would alreadyhave to start becoming RAM optimized again. Even Windows just dropped their 32GB recommendation.
Without the recommendation being met, people weren’t buying windows PCs, so lower the requirement and people will buy more computers and more copies of windows. Which means they always could have just optimized better if they felt pressure.
Games will 100% do the same.
Which could be a huge thing for rational companies right now.
The big hurdle to domestic production is you’ll spend billions and by the time it’s built it’s “last gen”.
Instead of useless data centers, we could be building up domestic chip production, confident it will still produce top of the line chips when it goes live.
A literal golden opportunity, more so if China goes after Taiwan finally, you’d be the only international supplier.
As far as I know, no country is doing it tho.
I know you know this, but PC RAM is useful for a lot more than games. Workstation PCs are where I find this situation really hurts. I suppose that to an extent, some of what you describe might apply to development and design tools.
Before this shortage took off, I got a rock-5-itx (ARM computer) with a whopping 32GB of RAM which was definitely overkill for the home server I use it as, but now it feels insanely decadent. I’m looking for ways to utilize it, like running Immich with the full AI facial recognition features and whatnot, Nextcloud with the full text search, etc.
Even Windows just dropped their 32GB recommendation.
Yes, but they haven’t actually done the memory optimisation work. They just plan to sell underpowered machines.
Odd to think that the Windows Vista days are coming around again.
Wasn’t that one of the reasons that people didn’t like it? A lot of manufacturers basically just crammed it onto XP-spec machines, so it ran horrendously, and was generally awful to use.
And also everyone was running garbage Windows XP applications which wanted administrator permissions and to save it’s data in the Program Files folder.
For years the accounts software we used at work required you to install it in C:\ because it couldn’t handle keeping it’s data and executable in different places.
There’s no problem with ‘last gen’ right now. The “ai” bullshit and global rise of fascism has slowed tech progress to a crawl, and even ten or fifteen year old systems are pretty good right now.
Plus, you’re making this or drafting tables.
You’re right about domestic production but I think the situation is much worse. We’ve tried to make advanced chips domestically and we can’t do it. Taiwan has had decades to perfect the resource allocation, supply chains, knowledge, and work culture to make those damn things.
It should be an executive order to make them domestically, and put up with the years of failure and low output. It’s a matter of national security to be able to create and maintain computers and other advanced tech.
Taiwan has had decades to perfect the resource allocation, supply chains, knowledge, and work culture to make those damn things.
…
Uh, Apple taught them from scratch in less than 20 years.
Now they have a proven plan on how to do it, what to look out for.
Like, the on part Apple didn’t understand is that China was ok with Apple employees being treated as disposable, because they’d burn out, quit, (maybe) recover, and by then alreybe replaced.
Now an Apple trained employee needs a job and Apple won’t hire them back. Repeat that tens of thousands of times and before Apple releazied all they were doing was training their competition, it was too late.
It wouldn’t be “years of failure and low output”. It would be years of nothing to build the infrastructure and then flip a switch.
As a bonus this makes chips for weapons in parallel, something we desperately need to do.
This ain’t just a crackpot idea, and it’s not just mine.
It’s just any country that does it, risks kissing off the only manufacturer till up and running. It’s fucking with trillions of dollars. We need an arms race scenario with multiple countries trying to be first.
Source on TSMC hiring ex-Apple employees lol
Apple uses TSMC’s services because there’s a huge difference between what Apple does (chip design) vs what TSMC does (chip manufacturing).
It wouldn’t be “years of failure and low output”. It would be years of nothing to build the infrastructure and then flip a switch.
No, the failure and low output come AFTER the switch is flipped, unless you get a TON of industry know-how from TSMC. First you have nothing, then you have low yields until you figure out the processes.
Biden tried to do just that. But our own beloved oompa lumpa axed that first chance it got. Because… I’m not certain it’s “reasoning”
Because it was Biden’s accomplishment. That alone meant it had to go. He’s a vindictive, narcissistic toddler.
None of the chips built for datacentres are useful for gaming. None of the RAM in these chips is useful for normal computing - even servers - much less home gaming.
AI compute believes it’s still in a “race” so they won’t want to be using previous gen chips unless forced to in some way.
This isn’t the “dark fibre” of the AI bubble. It’s just a future pile of trash.
None of the chips built for datacentres are useful for gaming. None of the RAM in these chips is useful for normal computing - even servers - much less home gaming.
…
Yes, literally everyone knows that…
If you ask why the production of two different form factors that use the same infrastructure could effect the quantities produced, I can probably explain that for you.
But it’s like being surprised you have to wait in line at checkout despite being the only person in Costco buying a single can of grape soda, so hopefully you can figure it out from here.
Next time you feel like you’re missing something though, it’s easier to just ask first rather than hoping someone else takes all this time instead of just ignoring you and not explaining what you’re missing
My bad, guys. I needed to upgrade my rig. I am planning to play BF7.
No problem. So much enshittification on the web these days, don’t need so much RAM, I might sell some.
My prediction:
- Investors continue to fuel demand, choking supply
- Plans to monetize LLMs don’t pan out
- Eventually, lenders call their margins
- Investors see the called margins and get spooked; demand fizzles
- AI companies desperately try to liquidate their positions. Seeing the price of components, there’s a rush to sell while prices are high.
- PC components flood the market
- Record high supply, record low prices
- PC gaming golden age
They aren’t PC components. They’re server GPUs.
They don’t even have ROPs anymore. There was a time when the Nvidia P100/A100 could technically game, but that’s generations ago.
FYI, during the crypto busts, Nvidia bought back GPUs and basically incinerated them to keep demand for new stuff up.
…I’m pretty sure that’s what they will do again.
yeah, but chip manufactures are reducing output for consumer class products, so yeah, there are still PC components choked by AI’s current supremacy in the market.
It’s frustrating to see the tech industry take this path, because there were alternative paths that didn’t lead us here. We are in a selfish and shortsighted time.
So you’re not 100% incorrect, but does it happen in 2027? 2028?
Logistically it’ll probably happen eventually, but when?
OpenAI is likely to be the first domino to fall that causes the whole bubble to pop. They’re burning over $10-15 billion a year in losses, and have shown that any attempts to scale only increase that burn rate. They’re running out of investor money to toss into the fire.
And they just announced a last ditch free unlimited for everyone plan to…I dunno drum up interest or hope it converts to paying customers or something. So their costs are about to skyrocket even more, accelerating their death spiral
Just like how GPUs became cheap and plentiful after mining crypto became passé, right?
…They actually did.
I got an AMD 7950 is a crypto bust. Then a Nvidia 980 TI in the next one, dirt cheap.
Nvidia figured it out in the most recent bust though, and controlled supply fairly well.
After the last crypto bust, prices stayed up though. They’re still way higher than before the last crypto boom.
And nVidia, AMD, Intel all know better now than to overproduce consumer GPUs.
PC components flood the market
*Server-grade purpose built AI components flood the market
SXM to PCIe adapters already exist hehe
Not to mention my dumbass would chuck money at a whole server just to throw it in my home lab.
Its not trivial.
Check the level1 forums, where some electronics gurus are trying to get a single adapter MI250X to even boot. The problem isn’t the adapters, but firmware that makes it difficult.
I see no problem if I can snag some generic Instinct accelerators, and a server to go. I’ve already got half a rack full.
6 will actually be “RAM suppliers buy the stock in bulk and sell as refurbs, keeping prices up”
Eventually, lenders call their margins
Lending to companies doesn’t work like that.
Softbank’s $40bn loan will be called on March 25, 2027. If they can’t roll this over it’s the banking equivalent of a margin call.
HBM and Vera Rubin are not useful for PC Gaming, at least not for current architectures. Main issue is that DDR5 production simply got cut to make more HBM. But there will be a huge amount of LPDDR, NVME / SSD drives and refurbished Hard Drives available, and hardware for running inference at home for pretty powerful models will become cheap as fuck, liberating us all from the hyperscalers; the open weights models from china are available for everyone.
At least i pray it will be this way.
But aren’t the wafers uncut? It could be used for anything if they’re just in storage.
If the memory wafers are largely HBM, so they can’t be used for gaming hardware.
If you’re thinking of HBM gaming GPUs, the chip design pipeline is too long. If Nvidia/AMD/Intel started making one right now, and rushed it, it would still be many years away.
…However, a lot of LPDDR5 is being made too.
Hence the rumors of AMD hedging their bets and using LPDDR for some future GPUs.
Could gpus use HBM? I thought AMD used it 10 years ago in theirs.
I’m not sure I worded this right before, but it takes ~half a decade to plan and produce a GPU.
They can’t just switch out the bus or memory on an existing design.
So they could make a HBM gaming GPU. But they would have had to have started ~2 years ago.
…That’s extremely unlikely.
It’s unlikely they’ll even plan one now.
AMD did indeed try making HBM gaming GPUs, and it turns out it’s supremely uneconomical; they immediately pivoted to the opposite extreme (narrow bus + larger cache).
However, LPDDR GPUs appear to already be in the pipe, so that will provide some GPU market relief.
I’ve never heard of uncut wavers hitting storage or the market. These things are made to be used for whatever is needed at the moment. If you hear this news regarding “Ram cap sold out”, it means all available wavers they expect to be produced for that year have been allocated to whoever paid for them. If 50% of the wavers go into HBM, 30% into DDR including LPDDR and 20% go into NAND storage (i do not have the exact numbers, but i know that HBM needs around 3x the amount of silicon compared to DDR), then you are done selling your capacity - whatever happens afterwards does not make DDR5 appear magically on the market.
Only thing that could change that would be that the AI bubble crashes before 2027, then the allocation numbers will be changed.
Not sure what you mean with the wafers hitting the market. I was only referring to the specific deal that OpenAI made with Samsung and SK hynix to purchase a metric boatload of 900,000 undiced DRAM silicon wafers per month.
According to Tom’s Hardware it includes “DDR5 and LPDDR4/LPDDR5 as well as premium HBM.”
Honestly I’m not sufficiently familiar with how that works to understand if any of that is consumer grade stuff.
I want to believe
I guess that I should use Klarna or the like to buy enough RDIMMs to let me use Qwen 3.8 122b, at the very least. The $606 I spent on buying 32gb of 5600 memory is looking like a bargain these days, and that was just a couple months ago.
Given that hoarding RAM for AI is the main culprit behind the shortage, you’re guaranteed to get pitchforks instead of compassion here.
Replace some of the labor you would use to pay for RAM and put it into learning a lighter weight operating system.
Most roundabout “install Linux” I’ve seen yet.
At least monitors are cheap now.
At least till they decide the AIs all need faces 🤣
Until we start sanctioning them, too
Dodge must be pretty happy.
We’re getting cloud computing/gaming in everything from now on, aren’t we?
Even in this hardware hellscape you can get some pretty decent handhelds for $200. I think the low end segment can stay pretty strong with devices like those and indie games.
But yeah I think high end gaming is going to be pretty stagnant for at least the next few years.
Indies4TheWindies
“High-end” gaming had no future either way, with how larger (in size and power need) GPUs slowly got and most of it being wasted on penny-pinching of developer time (e.g. atrocious performance) of AAA studios.
Ironically, browsers are so fucking bloated these days that any thin client that can run one can also enjoy most of gaming history.
Not long-term. No computers, phones, TVs? No consumers of cloud services. Including 90% of businesses. At some point, regulators have no choice (even if they are colluding), if they don’t want to strangle their economy.
The point with dissidents being on the cloud-rope still stands though. Especially on closed platforms like Apple, Android.
With imaginary money
Yeah but as long as the manufacturers keep selling all their production for real money, everybody else is screwed and prices are going up.
And people are trying to tax the imaginary money.
Can’t tax the imaginary money. It would destroy the imaginary economy.
