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PC graphics cards to get more expensive again "thanks" to AI boom (archive.is)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 12 points 3 years ago (3 children)

Increased sales volume should be bringing prices down, not up. Perhaps the real problem is that we need more production capacity?

In the meantime, I'll happily use an AMD card for gaming.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Limiting supply has the tendency to increase the price. There's no incentive to significantly increase supply when they can milk it for all its worth and create increases in price between generations faster than inflation. Just look at the price increases after covid. Prices have come down slightly but there has been a permanent upward shift in GPU prices.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    Just look at the price increases after covid.

    It's not really an apples-to-apples comparison. Most of the things people continue buying at prices inflated by covid issues and corporate greed are things they need, like food. Graphics cards are more of a luxury.

    If GPU prices stay high, I simply won't buy them. Even if I were to finally relent when my current one eventually dies, I would be buying them far less often than I otherwise would, meaning less profit for the sellers in the long term.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago*

    This sounds more like the prices would be going up because a new emerging hobby has a need for multiple extremely powerful GPUs the same way crypto mining did. That hobby just happens to be running AI at home instead of using cloud services. So there would be a drop in supply as a few hoarders snap up everything for that or to scalp at higher prices.

    They just literally can't make them fast enough to keep prices stable against the shitty kinds of consumers.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    Yes, the problem is production capacity, but it's very difficult to get that capacity up and running. For example, Intel started building 2 factories in Ohio last year. They won't be up and running until at least 2025.

    This stuff is complicated and nobody predicted the rise of covid, crypto currencies, or AI, or if they did nobody was convinced enough to dedicate potential billions of dollars to building capacity to capitalize on it.

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