AMD & NVIDIA Could Kill Off Budget GPUs as Memory Shortages Drive Costs Up, Leaving Entry-Level Gamers With Little Options

Operative words here are "AI Bubble"

It will pop and the world will be awash with cheap components and spare grid capacity.

If you don't need upgrades right now then sit tight. There will be bargains everywhere by the end of 2026
It may pop on the stock market but so far the financial reports have been meeting the expectations and even more (Intel last reported profits were 1000% above analysts previsions). tsmc, micron, ... have enough orders to work at maximum production capacity for the next three or four years. I doubt the prices will go down anytime soon.
 
They're not the biggest especially if you go by the number of "PCs sold". In desktop builds maybe they are. Yes I'm well aware that they all get chips from the likes of Micron, Hynix and Samsung including the console manufacturers. But "these big 3" are the suppliers the customers on the PC side are more than "a few" and even those many customers have many product cycles with different order amounts for modules. You've done nothing to show that they are putting in bigger volume orders for a given module from those suppliers. You've just ranted about PC this, PC that.

The three companies, Micron, Hynix and Samsung, are the only ones that produce dram chips. They supply everyone else.
 
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The three companies, Micron, Hynix and Samsung, are the only ones that produce dram chips. They supply everyone else.
Obviously, but they're the one accepting volume orders as the supplier so why would that be relevant? The numerous PC manufacturers and console manufacturers both order from them as clients when making products.

there is also Nanya who sometimes supply Corsair so they're not technically the only ones but let's just assume Micron, Hynix and Samsung are the only ones for simplicity
 
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T Three has articulated it better than I had.
The crux of it is both Sony and Nintendo order from the manufacturers in large consistent qualities. You don't get that anywhere else.

And while yes, there are more servers/pc's sold, they don't get sold/proposed under the one contract as it's coming from an enormous amount of buyers, and even those buyers aren't as consistent in terms of what they're actually buying unlike console manufacturers.
 
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I was planning on sitting on my 5800X3D for awhile longer but with memory prices going straight up I'm wondering if I should just panic buy into a 9800X3D now. The 9800X3D CPU and the X870E motherboard are both still regular price and have BF deals going on too, and so far the price of memory has merely doubled so it's still worth considering. I ended up having to do an unexpected rebuild anyways when I had to buy a new case to fit my 5090 so at this point I'm already 85% of the way to an overhaul and pulling the machine apart again to put an AM5 build in wouldn't be a big issue

I dunno, should I do this? I know my 5800X3D bottlenecks my 5090 but damn I wasn't wanting to be forced to do this so soon...
 
So...I'll add some thoughts to this.

I am inclined to believe that Valve has already worked out memory deals, otherwise I have a really hard time believing they would announce this. Only Valve knows.

if that is the case and Valve did get favorable RAM deals then this SteamBox COULD be the only affordable device available for anyone to buy.

That's a big if, but one that could pay off very handsomly if true.

I care about the success of this ONLY cuz I want SteamOS to gain traction. That's all I care about.
 
So...I'll add some thoughts to this.

I am inclined to believe that Valve has already worked out memory deals, otherwise I have a really hard time believing they would announce this. Only Valve knows.

if that is the case and Valve did get favorable RAM deals then this SteamBox COULD be the only affordable device available for anyone to buy.

That's a big if, but one that could pay off very handsomly if true.

I care about the success of this ONLY cuz I want SteamOS to gain traction. That's all I care about.

It's likely. Memory manufacturers say they've already sold out of their 2026 production.

 
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We're never getting anything remotely close to affordable again. I hope the bubble bursts hard and Nvidia goes bankrupt.

The GTX 1070 and 80
The RTX 3060Ti/3070 and even pandemic 3080LHRs...........


Entry price now????
I assume im gonna be putting down over 700 bucks for my next GPU.......just out the gate.
 
NVIDIA, Intel and AMD? Yes, they absolutely buy parts in bulk.

Console manufacturers buy large amounts of the exact same item in bulk, that's where the discounts come in.
I don't mean to split hairs here but I believe they actually by access to wafers and manufacturing time now. That's how it was explained to me and it's certainly how tmsc prices their work.
 
maaaan. everything is going up in price these days! but dont ram prices fluctuate from time to time? prices will most likely come back down when the ram shortage is no longer a thing but its hardly worth killing off the low end market.
 

AMD has now issued a notification to its partners that it will raise the prices of its GPUs by at least 10% due to rising memory prices.
Memory prices continue to rise, leading to a significant increase in graphics card costs. Industry sources indicate that AMD, the second-largest graphics card manufacturer, has notified its partners of a second price increase across its entire product line, with the increase estimated to be at least 10%.
Earlier this month, we had reported that both NVIDIA and AMD were planning to increase the prices of their GPUs, especially the consumer-grade lineups, due to rising DRAM costs.
 
Lmao at folks wanting this bubble to pop because the results will be worse. Bubble pops say goodbye to most aa dev and most costly anticipated games with that consumer demand gone as the priority will be survival. Only way to stop inflation is some good old deflation 😂.
 
If prices don't stabilise I wonder what that might mean for nextgen consoles? PS6 is rumoured to ship with 30GB. Price goes up or Sony is forced to go with 20GB?
 
Lmao at folks wanting this bubble to pop because the results will be worse. Bubble pops say goodbye to most aa dev and most costly anticipated games with that consumer demand gone as the priority will be survival. Only way to stop inflation is some good old deflation 😂.
How would the AI bubble popping mean goodbye to AA game devs, I'm curious.
 
The Gabecube is going to be less powerful than a PS5/XSX with less RAM (8GB VRAM only) and likely still be more expensive than them.
Valve isn't going to be able to order the same volumes for their console.
PS5/XSX have more GDDR but Steam Machine still has more RAM in total (8GB of GDDR6 + 16GB of DDR5).
PS5: 16GB GDDR6 + 512MB DDR4 (SSD cache)
PS5 Pro: 16GB GDDR6 + 2GB DDR5 + 512MB DDR4 (SSD cache).
 
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How would the AI bubble popping mean goodbye to AA game devs, I'm curious.
same as 08 crash. Investors pull back and projects get cancelled. Make no mistake I want this to happen as it resets the market to a better place however the fallout will be worrisome as most folks are paycheck to paycheck.

Unless these companies budget as in from software take demon souls needed 100k sales to break even.
 
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I was planning on sitting on my 5800X3D for awhile longer but with memory prices going straight up I'm wondering if I should just panic buy into a 9800X3D now. The 9800X3D CPU and the X870E motherboard are both still regular price and have BF deals going on too, and so far the price of memory has merely doubled so it's still worth considering. I ended up having to do an unexpected rebuild anyways when I had to buy a new case to fit my 5090 so at this point I'm already 85% of the way to an overhaul and pulling the machine apart again to put an AM5 build in wouldn't be a big issue

I dunno, should I do this? I know my 5800X3D bottlenecks my 5090 but damn I wasn't wanting to be forced to do this so soon...
If you have the money for it, get the 9800x3D and a x870e mobo. If you already have the 5090, you're gonna be good for a long, long time. (Unless the cable melts, that is).
 
same as 08 crash. Investors pull back and projects get cancelled. Make no mistake I want this to happen as it resets the market to a better place however the fallout will be worrisome as most folks are paycheck to paycheck.

Unless these companies budget as in from software take demon souls needed 100k sales to break even.
But why would investors pull back from gaming projects when the AI bubble pops? Wouldn't that make gaming machines more affordable and people more likely to buy into it? And which employees would be living paycheck to paycheck the ones building AI?

All these AI companies are paying eachother mostly while sucking investors dry.

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If the bubble pops it would be more contained than it has ever been.
 
But why would investors pull back from gaming projects when the AI bubble pops? Wouldn't that make gaming machines more affordable and people more likely to buy into it? And which employees would be living paycheck to paycheck the ones building AI?

All these AI companies are paying eachother mostly while sucking investors dry.

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If the bubble pops it would be more contained than it has ever been.
Because most likely it is not their only investment. And in a deflationary environment they will chase better returns.
We have cash strapped gamers cutting back, the dominant games are ftp/gaas with sp being risky for investors and even players ( metacritic/genres/vs games on sales/early access ect..).
Ps I have no problem with eurojank and other jank games but the audience that wants AAA in AA don't understand that.
 
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