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Scientist says RAM pricing has risen to normalized 2007 levels, AI shortage undid 20 years of progress in a matter of months — memory prices had been falling exponentially for decades (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 5 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 19 points 5 days ago (3 children)

People have to buy the games… if the machine doesn’t support it, nobody to buy it.

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  • [–] 47 points 5 days ago* (4 children)

    Why not rent and stream the games for only $99.99 per month. Subscribe now!

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    Yeah, I think that's the running theory of the corporate backup plan if/when AI falls through and they need to find a use for all the data center resources.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    An AI data center cannot be used to run virtual machines. Cannot be converted into a gaming streaming service. They don’t work that way

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago

    You're right, but I think you underestimate the intersection of what's theoretically possible and desperation.

    We'll probably see multiple different things. Some of the equipment will be repurposed for other cloud GPU workloads. We'll probably see some companies try to make adapters and drivers to get the server hardware compatible with consumer desktops (there's someone who did a writeup, either on hacker news or hack a day who got older server RAM working on a desktop with an adapter and Linux tomfoolery). Buy up the stuff being sold at a loss, strap their adapter on it, and sell for profit.

    But on a low level, all this shit is turing complete. There will be performance losses and considerable overhead, but in theory translation layers and emulation should be able to be written to effectively convert GPU compute to whatever other format is needed.

    If it's taking a total loss vs squeezing the last squirts of profit out, I think there's going to be attempts to squeeze.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    You still need to run streamed games in RAM. A lot of RAM.

    Well...we'll go back to Zork and Venture.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    No you don't. I can run moonlight on a potato. All the processing is server side.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (1 child)

    Processing, yes. Game data needs to be loaded in RAM.

    I suppose games of the future will be optimized to require less RAM while streaming.

    Even modern web browsers require at least 8gb.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (1 child)

    No, it doesn't. The client receives the video + audio and sends control inputs to the server. The game data doesn't touch the client device.

    It's the same concept as RDP and VNC. With fiber being rolled out in more and more places, input lag will become a thing of the past.

    Source: I used to be a VDI Engineer. I designed and maintained the infrastructure for 1k zero clients that had lower specs than a Pi 3.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (2 children)

    I'll defer to your expertise.

    Let's assume a modern AAA game streamed to a dumb terminal: what are the minimum specs for that terminal to run the game without hiccups (controlling for network bandwidth, of course)?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 child)

    Testing with streaming at 1440p@144Hz from a cacyos host vm running sunshine to a cachyos physical client running Moonlight, the moonlight client used:

    • 153.2MB RAM
    • 2-3% of an i3-N305
    • 24Mb/s (3MB/s)
    • 15-20% of the iGPU

    And none of that changed between running Autodesk Fusion with both a low and high polygon assembly, running a AAA game at 1440p@144Hz, or emulating a switch game at the same resolution and refresh rate.

    The application being streamed is irrelevant to the resources used by the client.

    Edit: Added GPU utilization.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    The requirements for cloud gaming revolve around having the hardware to drive the local monitor, and having fast enough internet with low enough latency.

    For example, here are Geforce Now's minimum requirements: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/system-reqs/

    There is some overhead involved in streaming, but the RAM requirements are low and certainly don't change based on the game.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (1 child)

    Ok interesting. 4gb RAM. But they're also requiring a GPU that supports direct x v11. So there's some rendering happening at the client?

    That's still going to make a dumb terminal quite expensive.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago

    Notably, the game data is not loaded into RAM. In case it isn't clear, those requirements are very low, by 2026 standards. If it can display video on the monitor you have, then it can probably stream a game.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    Streaming only replaces storage, you actually need more RAM than running it from fixed memory.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    Nah, you just need to show it like a video basically.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (1 child)
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  • [–] 9 points 5 days ago

    The money is micro transactions and the whales have $7k gpus...

    Everyone else is just fodder so the pay to win accounts have someone to feel better than.

    COD a while ago got caught out for juicing the matchmaking odds right after you buy a new skin. Didn't matter what you bought or how much. A purchase made your next couple lobbies be filled with scrubs on one side, and you and some above averages on the other.

    After X amounts of games it wore off, and since those games pushed you up in the normal metrics, you're now in lobbies above your skill level. So even if you get a "fair" game, you're going to do badly, until you buy a skin again or lose to your actual skill level.

    That's why everyone started complaining about COD matchmaking, even if you bought nothing, everyone was on the same micro transaction maximizing rollercoaster.

    A cynic would say that's why it went free on Xbox, they need a population of players to make the whale milking work. Even if those people only fire it up a few hours a month and never buy anything, getting matched with someone above your skill level who just bought a stupid skin makes you the product they sell to the whales.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 days ago

    They'll never understand that.

    They'll assume the poor sales have to do with the genre, the subject matter, millennials killing the gaming industry, literally ANYTHING but the actual reason their supposed customers keep yelling about.

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