Etern4l

I love how the add depicts a vortex of personal data being sucked into M$ servers.

To see where things are headed one needs to look at the most profitable gaming sector: mobile. The top grossing games there rake in hundreds of millions per year in microtransactions. The mobile nature of the platform means the game is always on, players are forced to engagement and addiction through a number of psychological tricks widely used by the tech industry (TikTok etc), as detailed here: https://www.darkpattern.games/ Many of those games should be just banned outright on unregulated gambling grounds. All of them are Pay-To-Win, with the freemium model just there to suck people in. After a while a victim is put in a situation where they have to pay money to be competitive. People end up dropping sometimes tens of thousands on a mobile game, in addition to wasting years of their life grinding. Some of the games are designed such that there are serious penalties for not playing to schedule. People get kicked out of guilds after one day of inactivity. This is the direction rotten EA and Activision/Blizzard will no doubt keep pushing on the PC/console front. If people are prepared to pay sometimes serious money for virtual cosmetics and status (some were spending thousands on CSGO skins at the time I opted out from that brain cancer), how much might they pay for actual competitive advantages? I mean to some extent there has been element of that on the PC side, where people have been buying faster HW and better monitors to boost FPS into 200-300+ range, which definitely helps in many MP games, but that’s not remotely on the level of the boost some of the P2W features provide. Same as in the other areas, we are effectively voting with our wallets. Spending any money on microtransactions, and frankly just engaging with products which offer them, is just going to reinforce the drive in that direction. The problem is that people’s free will is actually quite limited. We are driven by habits, which those endless multiplayer games seek to build up and exploit.

Gee, thanks bro, you know I love you but really need to steer clear of that good stuff. Wouldn’t want to end up in trouble like CD Joe there. Granted, it’s a fairly loose analogy, but has its moments. “Life service” works lol. Almost 20 years… Blizzard def knows how to cook.

Fascinating how IBM had created the PC industry then got pushed out of it on all fronts.

TBH that'd probably be ideal, especially since you do have fallback to Intel and don't need to play WoW at 4K Ultra RT 120 FPS. I must say that quitting PC gaming (as opposed to PCs in general) a few years back was one of the best decisions ever. Failing that approach, unfortunately, as in the other unspoken area of reference, we often end up having to choose the lesser evil. Sign of the times.

I have to say I don't agree with that particular statement. The brand/company ethos is important for quite valid and rational (although not necessarily immediately obvious) reasons such as: * The way the company reinvests proceeds, and the long-term consequences of that * The desire to support or not the particular individuals at the top of the given company (given the potential consequences of their staying in charge) * The kind of world the company envisages and is working towards * The treatment of consumers. Are the products being offered provided in good faith, or exploitative, perhaps borderline-scams? * Presence of problematic geopolitical aspects of the company's activities * Edit: a basic one: the consequences of the company gaining a complete monopoly etc. Yep, you guessed it, NVidia ticks all those boxes for me the wrong way, even though I'm happy with the products per se. I'm sure you would agree to some extent at least as you have numerously lambasted or praised brands (rather than necessarily particular products) on various grounds including things like ethos, customer service or the impact of the people in charge. I also bet even a dogmatic view like the one you proposed has its limits in practice. Imagine a given company has technically the best product on the market, but is actively developing technologies or supporting other business whose activities are harmful to the society, and the collective product space either already has or might eventually be turned into weapons of totalitarian population control and mass destruction potentially unleashed at home. If you were reasonably convinced that is the case, the buck would stop there - I would like to think that at least. I suspect the issue is that in the case of NVidia you are not there yet. Of course, the average consumer rarely takes a moment to think at a higher level about their purchases (we generally struggle with long-term planning as a species), and even if they do they probably often conclude they are powerless. It's easy to see though that if the broader mindset of the public changed, the tables would turn rather quite quickly. TBH this is our last hope. Edit: Given the power held by large corporations, I think it's valid to think about this as quasi-democracy, just voting with your wallet (while still possible). Democracy if you can keep it and all that.

Impulse-buying at launch tends to be dire timing: least choice, worst prices, not to mention the possibility of running into some unwelcome first adopter issues. That is, unless some shortages are expected (and in this case almost surely no shortage of those lower grade chips is on the horizon, hence the price cut), or there is some indication that prices might rise post launch for another reason - again no grounds for that, not least because NVidia is thankfully not alone in the segment.

I don't want to reciprocate by invoking NVidia fanboyism in this situation, as that kind of language does not generally lead to great outcomes, although you do seem to have missed the fact that 4080S has a significantly slower gimped VRAM, with a 256 bit bus, although it is GDDR6X (the result being: probably better OC if we are being charitable to NVidia, which might help offset the 30% smaller bus). For a more balanced point of view: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/nvidia-rtx-4080-super-review-all-you-need-to-know-is-that-its-cheaper-than-a-4080/ or https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-rtx-4080-super-review-performance-benchmarks/ I only see a huge difference in RT performance in CP2077, a piece of software particularly famous for its technical qualities. It's true that VRAM > 16GB will rarely come into play for a gamer, but many of them will just look at this dire PC market and shrug to begin with, and NVidia is largely to blame for this by inflating GPU prices. This doesn't help the PC industry. As for content creation, it looks like the 7900 XTX is a viable contender in some categories (to the point of beating the 4090), while falling flat in some other - hence the use-case dependence: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/amd-radeon-rx-7900-xtx-24gb-content-creation-review/ BTW There is no such thing as too much VRAM in many professional applications, and the 7900 XTX at < $1k will be an increasingly very tempting offering, if the software side of things can be worked out, e.g. as per an example here: https://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-7900-xtx-offers-higher-generative-ai-performance-per-dollar-than-nvidia-rtx-4080-after-990-speedup/ That is good, right? We are our own fanboys here, and we rock when we can buy great GPUs at reasonable prices, otherwise we kind of suck lol In keeping with that theme, I would agree with some of the reviews that AMD should now drop the 7900 XTX price a little to keep Huang in check where they can.

I’m not going to opine on specific points around this or that game, however 7900XTX is the clearly superior card in terms of VRAM, raw rasterisation and floating performance specs (the latter is not even close): https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-4080-super.c4182 https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-7900-xtx.c3941 Which card is superior depends on the use cases.

The commentators over at Artechnica would seem to broadly agree. Warning! NVidia fans could find the following material distressing: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/nvidia-rtx-4080-super-review-all-you-need-to-know-is-that-its-cheaper-than-a-4080/?comments=1&comments-page=1 A home run right off the bat (hope I got that reference right lol): Still stupid pricing. The AI company doesn’t need me and I don’t need them.

Yeah, that’s what I suspected. They gimped this to avoid cannibalising the profitable sales of AI scraps. Guess NVidia would like people to think that $1k for a 16GB gaming card is money spent Super-Well. There is still hope though? 4080 Ti Super-Duper anyone lol The ongoing running joke aside, little doubt the business model is: put most fab capacity on AD102 and H100, sell AD102 leftovers as expensively as possible via 4090/D. I’m actually surprised they cut the prices of those Super offerings, must be caused by some annoying inventory buildup.

if you look closely at that piece, it’s nothing more than clickbait and speculation. If I could, I would happily bet you $2500 there won’t be any 48GB Titan cards in 2024, much less priced at that level.

You can't look at general US inflation to explain GPU pricing, it's a factor probably, but a minor one, but it's also circular - consumer good prices are an input to that (super coarse one, I would be surprised if they look at GPU pricing specifically there). Setting the expectations low to avoid disappointment? That's fair lol That said, techpowerup have 4090 at 17% faster than 4080S on average: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-4080-super.c4182 I think that's estimated at this point, so fingers crossed for you there. Exactly, so they attempted to exploit the crypto-pandemics, failing that prices returned to the set-point. I think we just established that the excessive launch pricing of the 3090Ti "halo product" was based on the attempt to exploit crypto. Nothing more. Now, I hate to break it to you, but all the rumours about 4090 Titan, Ti, Super etc have failed to materialise. I doubt we will see any of those cards anytime soon. NVidia is too busy selling full fat AD102 chips at 6k+ a pop, and any inferior silicon is pushed to gamers as 4090 or to "restricted markets" as 4090D. Yep, sorry but 4090 is just a way to recycle scraps from the big and small AI boys' table. Now, if not for the AI-pandemic, 4090 would have already been reduced to the sensible $1200 range and NVidia would have already attempted to push the full fat chip to gamers/enthusiast market via a Titan or Ti product. While 4090 prices could come down a little due to market burnout and 4080S, fat chance of the latter happening (which is good news for those who paid up for 4090 at launch or AI-pandemic prices). I guess my point is that that the reasonable, set point, price of those halo products is around $1200, and there is market pricing evidence for that - anything above is due to abnormal demand from crypto and AI. Now, obviously the AI people are not stupid (and even if they were - chat bots to the rescue lol), and they are hating the NVidia situation too, so efforts are ongoing left and right to get alternative solutions via AMD/Intel and custom silicon. If I were in a market for a new rig today, I would strongly consider AMD given the improvements on the software side. So, if this is the time for NVidia to scr3w their customers as hard as possible (as they should, you say, but I wonder if that won't hurt them long term via reduced consumer sentiment), but this jolly time will likely pass as the situation is unsustainable. Edit: remember that all this is happening against the backdrop of collapsing PC sales (which surely must have something to do with those crazy GPU prices). Intel is hanging in there by a thread. We are collectively on our knees, with NVidia's dagger in our backs which they refuse to pull out, just a little twist here and there via "Super" offerings. Doesn't really matter if the PC market dies or not, all Mad Jensen cares about is AI.

IIRC 3090 Ti was being offered for around 1100 for quite a while, which was sensible procing, then they fell off the wagon again and offered a roughly equivalent albeit gimped in the memory and pro features 4080 card at the same price and 4090 at a 50% premium. Using crypto-madness era launch prices as points of reference is not very useful when discussing expected pricing in healthy market circumstances. Titan cards were normally priced around $1200 mark, except the Titan V and RTX Titan aberrations, both also fuelled by mining (although those at least provided an extended set of pro features - 4090 does not).

By applying NVidia’s 4000 series predatory pricing logic (price proportional to power relative to previous gen) recursively, a personal computer today should cost somewhere between a billion and trillion dollars, because that’s how much more value you get vs Commodore C64 or Apple II. Fortunately there is a world outside of Jensen’s bubble.

Happy birthday @Mr. Fox - onwards in good health!

Thanks, that won me a huge bet, sadly there was nobody on the other side. If you are a casual gamer, the impact of reduced power consumption will be obviously lower, but still the new card will be an upgrade and as a gamer you are unlikely to run out of 16GB VRAM (12GB is another story). Good luck hunting for a nice 4080S, hope you can stick to your budget, it can be very tempting for us to go overboard. Anyway, doesn’t look like the 4090D is available in the US or UK (and even if it was, it might not actually be much cheaper than the good old 4090), so 4080S is the sweet spot.

Seems to me that the main cause of urgency is a bit of a HW addiction lol. Another option would be to wait a bit to see if 4080S won’t depress 4090 prices a little, or try to find that “limited’ 4090D if possible/available. 4090S looks unlikely unf.

At 30 fps it must be somewhat similar to the annoying TV soap opera effect. It must be even worse in games due to the extra input lag since instead of displaying the 2nd real frame, the engine must first display the generated frame. Unless frame gen is purely predictive which would be nuts if it worked that way effectively.

Samsung, Google

Weird, hope this will blow up in their face, their programming is not that strong.

OpenAI went back on a promise to make key documents public Why don’t they just rename the outfit to ClosedAI? Meanwhile, the intelligence community rings AI alarm bells: AI will increase the number and impact of cyberattacks, intel officers say

No wonder our friend Jensen decided to decapitate EVGA.

42 works great on a desktop. 55 or more would be a bit like sitting in the front row in IMAX.

Tall order. MSI do have some low-bling options, e.g. the Tomahawk or Unify(-X), and are probably less flashy than Asus consumer boards overall, especially the ROG stuff. The software is not ideal but optional, the important stuff you mentioned can be done through BIOS, but that of course entails rebooting. OTOH We have Asus and Asrock to thank for Sapphire Rapids mobos, neither MSI nor Gigab... seem to have any.