Nvidia is full of shit

493 todsacerdoti 247 7/4/2025, 9:58:25 PM blog.sebin-nyshkim.net ↗

Comments (247)

mcdeltat · 26m ago
Anyone else getting a bit disillusioned with the whole tech hardware improvements thing? Seems like every year we get less improvement for higher cost and the use cases become less useful. Like the whole industry is becoming a rent seeking exercise with diminishing returns. I used to follow hardware improvements and now largely don't because I realised I (and probably most of us) don't need it.

It's staggering that we are throwing so many resources at marginal improvements for things like gaming, and I say that as someone whose main hobby used to be gaming. Ray tracing, path tracing, DLSS, etc at a price point of $3000 just for the GPU - who cares when a 2010 cell shaded game running on an upmarket toaster gave me the utmost joy? And the AI use cases don't impress me either - seems like all we do each generation is burn more power to shove more data through and pray for an improvement (collecting sweet $$$ in the meantime).

Another commenter here said it well, there's just so much more you can do with your life than follow along with this drama.

philistine · 3m ago
Your disillusionment is warranted, but I'll say that on the Mac side the grass has never been greener. The M chips are screamers year after year, the GPUs are getting ok, the ML cores are incredible and actually useful.
bamboozled · 9m ago
I remember when it was a serious difference, like PS1-PS3 was absolutely miraculous and exciting to watch.

It's also fun that no matter how fast the hardware seems to get, we seem to fill it up with shitty bloated software.

rkagerer · 3h ago
I am a volunteer firefighter and hold a degree in electrical engineering. The shenanigans with their shunt resistors, and ensuing melting cables, is in my view criminal. Any engineer worth their salt would recognize pushing 600W through a bunch of small cables with no contingency if some of them have failed is just asking for trouble. These assholes are going to set someone's house on fire.

I hope they get hit with a class action lawsuit and are forced to recall and properly fix these products before anyone dies as a result of their shoddy engineering.

rkagerer · 2h ago
Apparently somebody did sue a couple years back. Anyone know what happened with the Lucas Genova vs. nVidia lawsuit?

EDIT: Plantiff dismissed it. Guessing they settled. Here are the court documents (alternately, shakna's links below include unredacted copies):

https://www.classaction.org/media/plaintiff-v-nvidia-corpora...

https://www.classaction.org/media/plaintiff-v-nvidia-corpora...

A GamersNexus article investigating the matter: https://gamersnexus.net/gpus/12vhpwr-dumpster-fire-investiga...

And a video referenced in the original post, describing how the design changed from one that proactively managed current balancing, to simply bundling all the connections together and hoping for the best: https://youtu.be/kb5YzMoVQyw

shakna · 2h ago
> NOTICE of Voluntary Dismissal With Prejudice by Lucas Genova (Deckant, Neal) (Filed on 3/10/2023) (Entered: 03/10/2023)

Sounds like it was settled out of court.

[0] https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/California_Northern_Distri...

middle-aged-man · 2h ago
Do those mention failing to follow Underwriters Laboratory requirements?

I’m curious whether the 5090 package was not following UL requirements.

Would that make them even more liable?

Part of me believes that the blame here is probably on the manufacturers and that this isn’t a problem with Nvidia corporate.

No comments yet

autobodie · 54m ago
GamersNexus ftw as always
lukeschlather · 1h ago
Also, like, I kind of want to play with these things, but also I'm not sure I want a computer that uses 500W+ in my house, let alone just a GPU.

I might actually be happy to buy one of these things, at the inflated price, and run it at half voltage or something... but I can't tell if that is going to fix these concerns or they're just bad cards.

wasabinator · 1h ago
It's not the voltage, it's the current you'd want to halve. The wire gauge required to carry power is dependent on the current load. It's why when i first saw these new connectors and the loads they were being tasked with it was a wtf moment for me. Better to just avoid them in the first place though.
dietr1ch · 49m ago
It's crazy, you don't even need to know about electricity after you see a thermal camera on them operating at full load. I'm surprised they can be sold to the general public, the reports of cables melting plus the high temps should be enough to force a recall.
ryao · 2h ago
Has anyone made 12VHPWR cables that replace the 12 little wires with 2 large gauge wires yet? That would prevent the wires from becoming unbalanced, which should preempt the melting connector problem.

As a bonus, if the gauge is large enough, the cable would actually cool the connectors, although that should not be necessary since the failure appears to be caused by overloaded wires dumping heat into the connector as they overheat.

alright2565 · 2h ago
Might help a little bit, by heatsinking the contacts better, but the problem is the contact resistance, not the wire resistance. The connector itself dangerously heats up.

Or at least I think so? Was that a different 12VHPWR scandal?

bobmcnamara · 1h ago
Contact resistance is a problem.

Another problem is when the connector is angled, several of the pins may not make contact, shoving all the power through as few as one wire. A common bus would help this but the contact resistance in this case is still bad.

ryao · 1h ago
A common bus that is not also overheating would cool the overheating contact(s).
alright2565 · 1h ago
It would help, but my intuition is that the thin steel of the contact would not move the heat fast enough to make a significant difference. Only way to really know is to test it.
ryao · 1h ago
I thought that the contact resistance caused the unbalanced wires, which then overheat alongside the connector, giving the connector’s heat nowhere to go.
bobmcnamara · 2h ago
Or 12 strands in a single sheath so it's not overly rigid.
__turbobrew__ · 5h ago
> With over 90% of the PC market running on NVIDIA tech, they’re the clear winner of the GPU race. The losers are every single one of us.

I have been rocking AMD GPU ever since the drivers were upstreamed into the linux kernel. No regrets.

I have also realized that there is a lot out there in the world besides video games, and getting all in a huff about it isn’t worth my time or energy. But consumer gotta consoooooom and then cry and outrage when they are exploited instead of just walking away and doing something else.

Same with magic the gathering, the game went to shit and so many people got outraged and in a big huff but they still spend thousands on the hobby. I just stopped playing mtg.

surgical_fire · 4h ago
> I have also realized that there is a lot out there in the world besides video games

My main hobby is videogames, but since I can consistently play most games on Linux (that has good AMD support), it doesn't really matter.

mathiaspoint · 4h ago
AMD isn't even bad at video games, it's just pytorch that doesn't work so well.
kyrra · 4h ago
Frame per watt they aren't as good. But they are still decent.
trynumber9 · 3h ago
They seem to be close? The RX 9070 is the 2nd most efficient graphics card this generation according to TechPowerUp and they also do well when limited to 60Hz, implying their joules per frame isn't bad either.

Efficiency: https://tpucdn.com/review/gigabyte-geforce-rtx-5050-gaming-o...

Vsync power draw: https://tpucdn.com/review/gigabyte-geforce-rtx-5050-gaming-o...

The variance within Nvidia's line-up is much larger than the variance between brands, anyway.

docmars · 2h ago
The RX 9070XT goes toe-to-toe with the RTX 4080 in many benchmarks, and costs around 2/3 MSRP. I'd say that's a pretty big win!
msgodel · 3h ago
TCO per FPS is almost certainly cheaper.
bob1029 · 4h ago
> I have also realized that there is a lot out there in the world besides video games

My favorite part about being a reformed gaming addict is the fact that my MacBook now covers ~100% of my computer use cases. The desktop is nice for Visual Studio but that's about it.

I'm still running a 5700XT in my desktop. I have absolutely zero desire to upgrade.

leoapagano · 4h ago
Same here - actually, my PC broke in early 2024 and I still haven't fixed it. I quickly found out that without gaming, I no longer have any use for my PC, so now I just do everything on my MacBook.
pshirshov · 3h ago
PCI reset bug makes it necessary to upgrade to 6xxx series at least.
__turbobrew__ · 3h ago
Im a reformed gaming addict as well and mostly play games over 10 years old, and am happy to keep doing that.
nicce · 4h ago
> I'm still running a 5700XT in my desktop. I have absolutely zero desire to upgrade.

Same boat. I have 5700XT as well and since 2023, used mostly my Mac for gaming.

Finnucane · 4h ago
Same here. I got mine five years ago when I needed to upgrade my workstation to do work-from-home, and it's been entirely adequate since then. I switched the CPU from an AMD 3900 to a 5900, but that's the only upgrade. The differences from one generation to the next are pretty marginal.
frollogaston · 5h ago
Also playing PC video games doesn't even require a Nvidia GPU. It does sorta require Windows. I don't want to use that, so guess I lost the ability to waste tons of time playing boring games, oh no.
snackbroken · 4h ago
Out of the 11 games I've bought through Steam this year, I've had to refund one (1) because it wouldn't run under Proton, two (2) had minor graphical glitches that didn't meaningfully affect my enjoyment of them, and two (2) had native Linux builds. Proton has gotten good enough that I've switched from spending time researching if I can play a game to just assuming that I can. Presumably ymmv depending on your taste in games of course, but I'm not interested in competitive multiplayer games with invasive anticheat which appears to be the biggest remaining pain point.

My experience with running non-game windows-only programs has been similar over the past ~5 years. It really is finally the Year of the Linux Desktop, only few people seem to have noticed.

mystified5016 · 4h ago
The only games in my library at all that don't work on linux are indie games from the early 2000s, and I'm comfortable blaming the games themselves in this case.

I also don't play any games that require a rootkit, so..

globalnode · 3h ago
good move, thats why i treat my windows install as a dumb game box, they can steal whatever data they want from that i dont care. i do my real work on linux, as far away from windows as i can possibly get.
surgical_fire · 4h ago
> It does sorta require Windows.

The vast majority of my gaming library runs fine on Linux. Older games might run better than on Windows, in fact.

JeremyNT · 17m ago
True for single player, but if you're into multiplayer games anti-cheat is an issue.
rightbyte · 5h ago
Steam's Wine thing works quite well. And yes you need to fiddle and do work arounds including giving up getting some games to work.
cosmic_cheese · 5h ago
Yeah Proton covers a lot of titles. It’s mainly games that use the most draconian forms of anticheat that don’t work.
y-curious · 3h ago
It's Linux, what software doesn't need fiddling to work?
frollogaston · 5h ago
Yeah, but it's not worth. Apparently the "gold" list on ProtonDB is games that allegedly work with tweaks. So like, drop in this random DLL and it might fix the game. I'm not gonna spend time on that.

Last one I ever tried was https://www.protondb.com/app/813780 with comments like "works perfectly, except multiplayer is completely broken" and the workaround has changed 3 times so far, also it lags no matter what. Gave up after stealing 4 different DLLs from Windows. It doesn't even have anticheat, it's just cause of some obscure math library.

surgical_fire · 4h ago
> Yeah, but it's not worth. Apparently the "gold" list on ProtonDB is games that allegedly work with tweaks. So like, drop in this random DLL and it might fix the game. I'm not gonna spend time on that.

I literally never had to do that. Most tweaking I needed to do was switching proton versions here and there (which is trivial to do).

webstrand · 4h ago
I've been running opensuse+steam and I never had to tweak a dll to get a game running. Albeit that I don't exactly chase the latest AAA, the new releases that I have tried have worked well.

Age of empires 2 used to work well, without needing any babying, so I'm not sure why it didn't for you. I will see about spinning it up.

neuroelectron · 5h ago
Seems a bit calculated and agreed across the industry. What can really make sense of Microsoft's acquisitions and ruining of billion dollar IPs? It's a manufactured collapse of the gaming industry. They want to centralize control of the market and make it a service based (rent seeking) sector.

I'm not saying they all got together and decided this together but their wonks are probably all saying the same thing. The market is shrinking and whether it's by design or incompetence, this creates a new opportunity to acquire it wholesale for pennies on the dollar and build a wall around it and charge for entry. It's a natural result of games requiring NVidia developers for driver tuning, bitcoin/ai and buying out capacity to prevent competitors.

The wildcard I can't fit into this puzzle is Valve. They have a huge opportunity here but they also might be convinced that they have already saturated the market and will read the writing on the wall.

bob1029 · 4h ago
I think the reason you see things like Blizzard killing off Overwatch 1 is because the Lindy effect applies in gaming as well. Some things are so sticky and preferred that you have to commit atrocities to remove them from use.

From a supply/demand perspective, if all of your customers are still getting high on the 5 (or 20) year old supply, launching a new title in the same space isn't going to work. There are not an infinite # of gamers and the global dopamine budget is limited.

Launching a game like TF2 or Starcraft 2 in 2025 would be viewed as a business catastrophe by the metrics most AAA studios are currently operating under. Monthly ARPU for gamers years after purchasing the Orange Box was approximately $0.00. Giving gamers access to that strong of a drug would ruin the demand for other products.

a_wild_dandan · 3h ago
I purchased "approximately $0.00" in TF2 loot boxes. How much exactly? Left as an exercise to the reader.
refulgentis · 2h ago
This is too clever for me, I think - 0?
bigyabai · 2h ago
People forget that TF2 was originally 20 dollars before hitting the F2P market.
ThrowawayTestr · 1h ago
I paid full price for the orange box
aledalgrande · 1h ago
Petition related to companies like Blizzard killing games: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home
kbolino · 4h ago
The video game industry has been through cycles like this before. One of them (the 1983 crash) was so bad it killed most American companies and caused the momentum to shift to Japan for a generation. Another one I can recall is the "death" of the RTS (real-time strategy) genre around 2010. They have all followed a fairly similar pattern and in none of them that I know of have things played out as the companies involved thought or hoped they would.
georgeecollins · 4h ago
I worked in the video game industry from the 90s through to today. I think you are over generalizing or missing the original point. It's true that there have been boom and busts. But there are also structural changes. Do you remember CD-ROMs? Steam and the iPhone were structural changes.

What Microsoft is trying to do with Gamepass is a structural change. It may not work out the way that they plan but the truth is that sometimes these things do change the nature of the games you play.

kbolino · 3h ago
But the thing is that Steam didn't cause the death of physical media. I absolutely do remember PC gaming before Steam, and between the era when it was awesome (StarCraft, Age of Empires, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, etc.) and the modern Steam-powered renaissance, there was an absolutely dismal era of disappointment and decline. Store shelves were getting filled with trash like "40 games on one CD!" and each new console generation gave retailers an excuse to shrink shelf space for PC games. Yet during this time, all of Valve's games were still available on discs!

I think Microsoft's strategy is going to come to the same result as Embracer Group. They've bought up lots of studios and they control a whole platform (by which I mean Xbox, not PC) but this doesn't give them that much power. Gaming does evolve and it often evolves to work around attempts like this, rather than in favor of them.

georgeecollins · 2h ago
I am not saying that about Steam. In fact Steam pretty much saved triple A PC gaming. Your timeline is quite accurate!

>> Microsoft's strategy is going to come to the same result as Embracer Group.

I hope you are right.

If I were trying to make a larger point, I guess it would be that big tech companies (Apple, MSFT, Amazon) don't want content creators to be too important in the ecosystem and tend to support initiatives that emphasize the platform.

ethbr1 · 52m ago
> big tech companies (Apple, MSFT, Amazon) don't want content creators to be too important in the ecosystem

100%. The platforms' ability to monetize in their factor is directly proportional to their relative power vs the most powerful creatives.

Thus, in order to keep more money, they make strategic moves that disempower creatives.

IgorPartola · 3h ago
Not in the game industry but as a consumer this is very true. One example: ubiquitous access to transactions and payment systems gave a huge rise to loot boxes.

Also mobile games that got priced at $0.99 meant that only the unicorn level games could actually make decent money so In-App Purchases were born.

But also I suspect it is just a problem where as consumers we spend a certain amount of money on certain kinds of entertainment and if as a content producer you can catch enough people’s attention you can get a slice of that pie. We saw this with streaming services where an average household spent about $100/month on cable so Netflix, Hulu, et al all decided to price themselves such that they could be a portion of that pie (and would have loved to be the whole pie but ironically studios not willing to license everything to everyone is what prevented that).

the__alchemist · 2h ago
Thankfully, RTS is healthy again! (To your point about cycles)
needcaffeine · 2h ago
What RTS games are you playing now, please?
sgarland · 1h ago
AoE2, baby. Still going strong, decades after launch.
keyringlight · 4h ago
As much as they've got large resources, I'm not sure what projects they could reasonably throw a mountain of money at and expect to change things, and presumably benefit from in the future instead of doing it to be a a force of chaos in the industry. Valve's efforts all seem to orbit around the store, that's their main business and everything else seems like a loss-leader to get you buying through it even if it comes across as a pet project of a group of employees.

The striking one for me is their linux efforts, at least as far as I'm aware they don't do a lot that isn't tied to the steam deck (or similar devices) or running games available on steam through linux. Even the deck APU is derived from the semi-custom work AMD did for the consoles, they're benefiting from a second later harvest that MS/Sony have invested (hundreds of millions?) in many years earlier. I suppose a lot of it comes down to what Valve needs to support their customers (developers/publishers), they don't see the point in pioneering and establishing some new branch of tech with developers.

layoric · 5h ago
Valve is a private company so doesn’t have the same growth at all costs incentives. To Microsoft, the share price is everything.
MangoToupe · 3h ago
> It's a manufactured collapse of the gaming industry. They want to centralize control of the market and make it a service based (rent seeking) sector.

It also won’t work, and Microsoft has developed no way to compete on actual value. As much as I hate the acquisitions they’ve made, even if Microsoft as a whole were to croak tomorrow I think the game industry would be fine.

beefnugs · 3h ago
This post is crazy nonsense: Bad games companies have always existed, and the solution is easy: dont buy their trash. I buy mostly smaller indie games these days just fine.

nvidia isn't purposely killing anything, they are just following the pivot into the AI nonsense. They have no choice, if they are in a unique position to make 10x by a pivot they will, even if it might be a dumpsterfire of a house of cards. Its immoral to just abandon the industry that created you, but companies have always been immoral.

Valve has an opportunity to what? Take over video card hardware market? No. AMD and Intel are already competitors in the market and cant get any foothold (until hopefully now consumers will have no choice but to shift to them)

cherioo · 5h ago
High end GPU has over the last 5 years slowly turning from an enthusiast product into a luxury product.

5 or maybe 10 years ago, high-end GPU are needed to run games at reasonably eye candy setting. In 2025, $500 mid-range GPUs are more than enough. Folks all over can barely tell between High and Ultra settings, DLSS vs FSR, or DLSS FG and Lossless Scaling. There's just no point to compete at $500 price point any more, that Nvidia has largely given up and relegating to the AMD-built Consoles, and integrated graphics like AMD APU, that offer good value in low-end, medium-end, and high-end.

Maybe the rumored Nvidia PC, or the Switch 2, can bring some resurgence.

piperswe · 2h ago
10 years ago, $650 would buy you a top-of-the-line gaming GPU (GeForce GTX 980 Ti). Nowadays, $650 might get you a mid-range RX 9070 XT if you miraculously find one near MSRP.
ksec · 2h ago
That is $880 dollars in today's term. And 2015 Apple was already shipping a 16nm SoC. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti was still on 28nm. Two generation Node behind.
conception · 2h ago
Keeping with inflation (650 to 880) it’d get you a 5070TI.
wasabi991011 · 2h ago
$650 of 2015 USD is around $875 of 2025 USD fwiw
dukeyukey · 5h ago
I bought a new machine with an RTX 3060 Ti back in 2020 and it's still going strong, no reason to replace it.
ohdeargodno · 5h ago
Not quite $500, but at $650, the 9070 is an absolute monster that outperforms Nvidia's equivalent cards in everything but ray tracing (which you can only turn on with full DLSS framegen and get a blobby mess anyways)

AMD is truly making excellent cards, and with a bit of luck UDNA is even better. But they're in the same situation as Nvidia: they could sell 200 GPUs, ship drivers, maintain them, deal with returns and make $100k... Or just sell a single MI300X to a trusted partner that won't make any waves and still make $100k.

Wafer availability unfortunately rules all, and as it stands, we're lucky neither of them have abandoned their gaming segments for massively profitable AI things.

cosmic_cheese · 5h ago
Some models of 9070 use the well-proven old style PCI-E power connectors too, which is nice. As far as I'm aware none of the current AIB midrange or high end Nvidia cards do this.
enraged_camel · 5h ago
I have a 2080 that I'm considering upgrading but not sure which 50 series would be the right choice.
magicalhippo · 2h ago
I went from a 2080 Ti to a 5070 Ti. Yes it's faster, but for the games I play, not dramatically so. Certainly not what I'm used to doing such a generational leap. The 5070 Ti is noticeably faster at local LLMs, and has a bit more memory which is nice.

I went with the 5070 Ti since the 5080 didn't seem like a real step up, and the 5090 was just too expensive and wasn't in stock for ages.

If I had a bit more patience, I would have waited till the next node refresh, or for the 5090. I don't think any of the other current 50-series cards are worth besides the 5090 it if you're coming from a 2080. And by worth it I mean will give you a big boost in performance.

thway15269037 · 4h ago
Grab a used/refurb 3090 then. Probably as legendary card as a 1080Ti.
k12sosse · 3h ago
Just pray that it's a 3090 under that lid when you buy it second hand
Tadpole9181 · 3h ago
Just going to focus on this one:

> DLSS vs FSR, or DLSS FG and Lossless Scaling.

I've used all of these (at 4K, 120hz, set to "balanced") since they came out, and I just don't understand how people say this.

FSR is a vaseline-like mess to me, it has its own distinct blurriness. Not as bad as naive upscaling, and I'll use it if no DLSS is available and the game doesn't run well, but it's distracting.

Lossless is borderline unusable. I don't remember the algorithm's name, but it has a blur similar to FSR. It cannot handle text or UI elements without artifacting (because it's not integrated in the engine, those don't get rendered at native resolution). The frame generation causes almost everything to have a ghost or afterimage - UI elements and the reticle included. It can also reduce your framerate because it's not as optimized. On top of that, the way the program works interferes with HDR pipelines. It is a last resort.

DLSS (3) is, by a large margin, the best offering. It just works and I can't notice any cons. Older versions did have ghosting, but it's been fixed. And I can retroactively fix older games by just swapping the DLL (there's a tool for this on GitHub, actually). I have not tried DLSS 4.

cherioo · 2h ago
Maybe I over exaggerated, but I was dumbfounded myself reading people’s reaction to Lossless Scaling https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/s/wlaoHl6GAS

Most people either can’t tell the difference, don’t care about the difference, or both. Similar discourse can be found about FSR, frame drop, and frame stutter. I have conceded that most people do not care.

paulbgd · 3h ago
I’ve used fsr 4 and dlss 4, I’d say fsr 4 is a bit ahead of dlss 3 but behind dlss 4. No more vaseline smear
gxs · 3h ago
I think this is the even broader trend here

In their never ending quest to find ways to suck more money out of people, one natural extension is to just turn the thing into a luxury good and that alone seems to justify the markup

This is why new home construction is expensive - the layout of a home doesn’t change much but it’s trivial to throw on some fancy fixtures and slap the deluxe label on the listing.

Or take a Toyota, slap some leather seats on it, call it a Lexus and mark up the price 40% (I get that these days there are more meaningful differences but the point stands)

This and turning everything into subscriptions alone are responsible for 90% of the issues I have as a consumer

Graphics cards seem to be headed in this direction as well - breaking through that last ceiling for maximum fps is going to be like buying a bentley (if it isn’t already) where as before it was just opting for the v8

bigyabai · 3h ago
Nvidia's been doing this for a while now, since at least the Titan cards and technically the SLI/Crossfire craze too. If you sell it, egregiously-compensated tech nerds will show up with a smile and a wallet large enough to put a down-payment on two of them.

I suppose you could also blame the software side, for adopting compute-intensive ray tracing features or getting lazy with upscaling. But PC gaming has always been a luxury market, at least since "can it run Crysis/DOOM" was a refrain. The homogeneity of a console lineup hasn't ever really existed on PC.

strictnein · 4h ago
This really makes no sense:

> This in turn sparked rumors about NVIDIA purposefully keeping stock low to make it look like the cards are in high demand to drive prices. And sure enough, on secondary markets, the cards go way above MSRP

Nvidia doesn't earn more money when cards are sold above MSRP, but they get almost all the hate for it. Why would they set themselves up for that?

Scalpers are a retail wide problem. Acting like Nvidia has the insight or ability to prevent them is just silly. People may not believe this, but retailers hate it as well and spend millions of dollars trying to combat it. They would have sold the product either way, but scalping results in the retailer's customers being mad and becoming some other company's customers, which are both major negatives.

kbolino · 4h ago
Scalping and MSRP-baiting have been around for far too many years for nVidia to claim innocence. The death of EVGA's GPU line also revealed that nVidia holds most of the cards in the relationship with its "partners". Sure, Micro Center and Amazon can only do so much, and nVidia isn't a retailer, but they know what's going on and their behavior shows that they actually like this situation.
adithyassekhar · 2h ago
Think of it this way, the only reason 40 series and above are priced like they are is because they saw how willing people were to pay dueing 30 series scalper days. This over representation by the rich is training other customers that nvidia gpus are worth that much so when they increase it again people won't feel offended.
lmm · 3h ago
> Nvidia doesn't earn more money when cards are sold above MSRP

How would we know if they were?

rubyn00bie · 3h ago
> Scalpers are a retail wide problem. Acting like Nvidia has the insight or ability to prevent them is just silly.

Oh trust me, they can combat it. The easiest way, which is what Nintendo often does for the launch of its consoles, is produce an enormous amount of units before launch. The steady supply to retailers, absolutely destroys folks ability to scalp. Yes a few units will be scalped, but most scalpers will be underwater if there is a constant resupply. I know this because I used to scalp consoles during my teens and early twenties, and Nintendo's consoles were the least profitable and most problematic because they really try to supply the market. The same with iPhones, yeah you might have to wait a month after launch to find one if you don't pre-order but you can get one.

It's widely reported that most retailers had maybe tens of cards per store, or a few hundred nationally, for the 5090s launch. This immediately creates a giant spike in demand, and drove prices up along with the incentive for scalpers. The manufacturing partners immediately saw what (some) people were willing to pay (to the scalpers) and jacked up prices so they could get their cut. It is still so bad in the case of the 5090 that MSRP prices from AIBs skyrocketed 30%-50%. PNY had cards at the original $1999.99 MSRP and now those same cards can't be found for less than $2,999.99.

By contrast look at how AMD launched it's 9000 series of GPUS-- each MicroCenter reportedly had hundreds on hand (and it sure looked like by pictures floating around). Folks were just walking in until noon and still able to get a GPU on launch day. Multiple restocks happened across many retailers immediately after launch. Are there still some inflated prices in the 9000 series GPUs? Yes, but we're not talking a 50% increase. Having some high priced AIBs has always occurred but what Nvidia has done by intentionally under supplying the market is awful.

I personally have been trying to buy a 5090 FE since launch. I have been awake attempting to add to cart for every drop on BB but haven't been successful. I refuse to pay the inflated MSRP for cards that haven't been been that well reviewed. My 3090 is fine... At this point, I'm so frustrated by NVidia I'll likely just piss off for this generation and hope AMD comes out with something that has 32GB+ of VRAM at a somewhat reasonable price.

cherioo · 16m ago
Switch 2 inventory was amazing, but how did RX 9070 inventory remotely sufficient? News at the time were all about how limited its availability https://www.tweaktown.com/news/103716/amd-rx-9070-xt-stock-a...

Not to mention it's nowhere to be found on Steam Hardware Survey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

ksec · 2h ago
>Oh trust me, they can combat it.

As has been explained by others. They cant. Look at the tech which is used by Switch 2 and then look at the tech by Nvidia 50 series.

And Nintendo didn't destroy scalpers, they are still in many market not meeting demand despite "is produce an enormous amount of units before launch".

pshirshov · 2h ago
W7900 has 48 Gb and is reasonably priced.
whamlastxmas · 1h ago
Nvidia shareholders make money when share price rises. Perceived extreme demand raises share prices
thaumasiotes · 2h ago
> Nvidia doesn't earn more money when cards are sold above MSRP, but they get almost all the hate for it. Why would they set themselves up for that?

If you believe their public statements, because they didn't want to build out additional capacity and then have a huge excess supply of cards when demand suddenly dried up.

In other words, the charge of "purposefully keeping stock low" is something NVidia admitted to; there was just no theory of how they'd benefit from it in the present.

snitty · 5h ago
NVIDIA is, and will be for at least the next year or two, supply constrained. They only have so much capacity at TSMC for all the chips, and the lion's share of that is going to be going enterprise chips, which sell for an order of magnitude more than the consumer chips.

It's hard to get too offended by them shirking the consumer marker right now when they're printing money with their enterprise business.

davidee · 4h ago
Not personally offended, but when a company makes a big stink around several gross exaggerations (performance, price, availability) it's not hard to understand why folks are kicking up their own stink.

Nvidia could have said "we're prioritizing enterprise" but instead they put on a big horse and pony show about their consumer GPUs.

I really like the Gamer's Nexus paper launch shirt. ;)

nicce · 3h ago
They could rapidly build new own factories but they don’t.
axoltl · 3h ago
Are you saying Nvidia could spin up their own chip fabs in short order?
benreesman · 3h ago
If they believed they were going to continue selling AI chips at those margins they would:

- outbid Apple on new nodes

- sign commitments with TSMC to get the capacity in the pipeline

- absolutely own the process nodes they made cards on that are still selling way above retail

NVIDIA has been posting net earnings in the 60-90 range over the last few years. If you think that's going to continue? You book the fab capacity hell or high water. Apple doesn't make those margins (which is what on paper would determine who is in front for the next node).

ksec · 2h ago
And what if Nvidia booked but the order didn't come. What if Nvidia's customer isn't going to commit? How expensive and how much prepayment is needed for TSMC to break a new Fab?

These are the same question Apple Fans asking Apple to buy TSMC. The fact is isn't so simple. And even if Nvidia were willing to pay for it TSMC wouldn't do it just for Nvidia alone.

benreesman · 2h ago
Yeah, I agree my "if" is doing a lot of lifting there. As in, "if Jensen were being candid and honest when he goes on stage and said things".

Big if, I I get that.

selectodude · 3h ago
Somebody should let Intel know.
wmf · 4h ago
They could be more honest about it though.
msgodel · 3h ago
I was under the impression that a ton of their sales growth last quarter was actually from consumers. DC sales growth was way lower than I expected.
scrubs · 3h ago
"It's hard to get too offended by them shirking the consumer"

BS! Nvidia isn't entitled. I'm not obligated. Customer always has final say.

The problem is a lot of customers can't or don't stand their ground. And the other side knows that.

Maybe you're a well trained "customer" by Nvidia just like Basil Fawlty was well trained by his wife ...

Stop excusing bs.

monster_truck · 5h ago
Remember when nvidia got caught dropping 2 bits of color information to beat ati in benchmarks? I still can't believe anyone has trusted them since! That is an insane thing to do considering the purpose of the product.

For as long as they have competition, I will support those companies instead. If they all fail, I guess I will start one. My spite for them knows no limits

827a · 32m ago
People need to start asking more questions about why the RTX 50 series (Blackwell) has almost no performance uplift over the RTX 40 series (Ada/Hopper), and also conveniently its impossible to find B200s.
ionwake · 5h ago
I don’t want to jump on nvidia but I found it super weird when they clearly remote controlled a Disney bot onto the stage and claimed it was all using real time AI which was clearly impossible due to no latency and weirdly the bot verifying correct stage position in relation to the presenter. It was obviously the Disney bot just being controlled by someone off stage.

I found it super alarming because why would they fake something on stage to the extent of just lying.i know Steve jobs had backup phones but jsut claiming a robot is autonomous when it isn’t I just feel it was scammy.

It reminded me of when Tesla had remote controlled Optimus bots. I mean I think that’s awesome like super cool but clearly the users thought the robots were autonomous during that dinner party.

I have no idea why I seem to be the only person bothered by “stage lies” to this level. Tbh even the Tesla bots weren’t claimed to be autonomous so actually I should never have mentioned them but it explains the “not real” vibe.

Not meaning to disparage just explaining my perception as a European maybe it’s just me though!

EDIT > Im kinda suprised by the weak arguments in the replies, I love both companies, I am just offering POSITIVE feedback, that its important ( in my eyes ) to be careful not to pretend in certain specific ways or it makes the viewer question the foundation ( which we all know is SOLID and good ).

EDIT 2 >There actually is a good rebuttal in the replies, although apparently I have "reading comprehension skill deficiencies" its just my pov that they were insinuating the robot was aware of its surroundings, which is fair enough.

elil17 · 5h ago
As I understand it the Disney bots do actually use AI in a novel way: https://la.disneyresearch.com/publication/design-and-control...

So there’s at least a bit more “there” there than the Tesla bots.

ionwake · 5h ago
I believe its RL trained only.

See this snipet : "Operator Commands Are Merged: The control system blends expressive animation commands (e.g., wave, look left) with balance-maintaining RL motions"

I will print a full retraction if someone can confirm my gut feeling is correct

dwattttt · 5h ago
Having worked on control systems a long time ago, that's a 'nothing' statement: the whole job of the control system is to keep the robot stable/ambulating, regardless of whatever disturbances occur. It's meant to reject the forces induced due to waving exactly as much as bumping into something unexpected.

It's easier to stabilise from an operator initiated wave, really; it knows it's happening before it does the wave, and would have a model of the forces it'll induce.

ionwake · 4h ago
I tried to understand the point of your reply but Im not sure what your point was - I only seemed to glean "its easier to balance if the operator is moving it".

Please elaborate unless Im being thick.

EDIT > I upvoted your comment in any case as Im sure its helping

rcxdude · 4h ago
'control system' in this case is not implying remote control, it's referring to the feedback system that adjust the actuators in response to the sensed information. If the motion is controlled automatically, then the control loop can in principle anticipate the motion in a way that it could not if it was remote controlled: i.e. the opposite, it's easier to control the motions (in terms of maintaining balance and avoiding overstressing the actuators) if the operator is not live puppeteering it.
dwattttt · 4h ago
Apologies, yes, "control system" is somewhat niche jargon. "Balance system" is probably more appropriate.
dboreham · 4h ago
Well "control system" is a proper term understood by anyone with a decent STEM education since 150 years ago.
ionwake · 4h ago
Thank you for the explanation
dwattttt · 4h ago
It's that there's nothing special about blending "operator initiated animation commands" with the RL balancing system. The balance system has to balance anyway; if there was no connection between an operator's wave command and balance, it would have exactly the same job to do.

At best the advantage of connecting those systems is that the operator command can inform the balance system, but there's nothing novel about that.

numpad0 · 2h ago
"RL is not AI" "Disney bots were remote controlled" are major AI hypebro delulu moment lol

Your understanding of AI and robotics are more cucumber than pear shaped. You're making very little technical sense here. Challenges and progress in robotics aren't where you think they are. It's all propagandish contents you're basing your understandings on.

If you're getting information from TikTok or YouTube Shorts style content, especially around Tesla bros - get the hell out of it at Ludicrous Speed. Or consume way more of it so thoroughly that you cannot be deceived anymore despite blatant lies everywhere. Then come back. They're all plain wrong and it's not good for you.

elil17 · 3h ago
Only as opposed to what? VLAM/something else more trendy?
CoastalCoder · 5h ago
Not just you.

I hate being lied to, especially if it's so the liar can reap some economic advantage from having the lie believed.

AnimalMuppet · 5h ago
Yeah. I have a general rule that I don't do business with people who lie to me.
MichaelZuo · 4h ago
I can’t even imagine what kind of person would not follow that rule.

Do business with people that are known liars? And just get repeatedly deceived?

…Though upon reflection that would explain why the depression rate is so high.

hn_throwaway_99 · 3h ago
> I don’t want to jump on nvidia but I found it super weird when they clearly remote controlled a Disney bot onto the stage and claimed it was all using real time AI which was clearly impossible due to no latency and weirdly the bot verifying correct stage position in relation to the presenter. It was obviously the Disney bot just being controlled by someone off stage.

I don't know what you're referring to, but I'd just say that I don't believe what you are describing could have possibly happened.

Nvidia is a huge corporation, with more than a few lawyers on staff and on retainer, and what you are describing is criminal fraud that any plaintiff's lawyer would have a field day with. So, given that, and since I don't think people who work at Nvidia are complete idiots, I think whatever you are describing didn't happen the way you are describing it. Now, it's certainly possible there was some small print disclaimer, or there was some "weasel wording" that described something with ambiguity, but when you accuse someone of criminal fraud you want to have more than "hey this is just my opinion" to back it up.

kalleboo · 33m ago
Tefal literally sells a rice cooker that boasts "AI Smart Cooking Technology" while not even containing a microcontroller and just being controlled by the time-honored technology of "a magnet that gets hot". They also have lawyers.

AI doesn't mean anything. You can claim anything uses "AI" and just define what that means yourself. They could have some basic anti-collision technology and claim it's "AI".

numpad0 · 1h ago
They're soaked eyebrows deep in Tiktok style hype juice, believing that latest breakthrough in robotics is that AGIs just casually started walking and talking on their own and therefore anything code controlled by now is considered proof of ineptitude and fake.

It's complete cult crazy talk. Not even cargocult, it's proper cultism.

frollogaston · 5h ago
There's also a very thick coat of hype in https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/glossary/ai-factory/ and related material, even though the underlying product (an ML training cluster) is real.
AtariATMHacker · 5h ago
Was there any actual proof they were lying? Personally I don't share your skepticism and find their claims credible and on par with current progress in the field.
abxyz · 4h ago
Disney are open about their droids being operator controlled. Unless nvidia took a Disney droid and built it to be autonomous (which seems unlikely) it would follow that it is also operator controlled. The presentation was demonstrating what Disney had achieved using nvidia’s technology. You can see an explainer of how these droids use machine learning here: https://youtube.com/shorts/uWObkOV71ZI

If you think the droid was autonomous then I guess that is evidence that nvidia were misrepresenting (if not lying).

Having seen these droids outside of the nvidia presentation and watching the nvidia presentation, I think it’s obvious it was human operated and that nvidia were misleading people.

ionwake · 4h ago
I think its cool you disagree with me, it would be nice to hear a counter argument though.
Larrikin · 4h ago
I assume any green accounts that are just asking questions with no research are usually lying. Actual new users will just comment and say their thoughts to join the community.
timschmidt · 4h ago
It seems to me like both cases raised by OP - the Disney droids and Optimus - are cases of people making assumptions and then getting upset that their assumptions were wrong and making accusations.

Neither company was very forthcoming about the robots being piloted, but neither seems to be denying it either. And both seem to use RL / ML techniques to maintain balance, locomotion, etc. Not unlike Boston Dynamics' bots, which are also very carefully orchestrated by humans in multiple ways.

Haters gonna hate (downvotes just prove it - ha!)

ionwake · 4h ago
If you look at the video he says " this is real time simulation .. can you believe it" basically : https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jD5y1eQ3Y_o

Yet he lists all the RL stuff that we know is used in the robot, he isnt being silent and saying " this robot is aided by AI" , or better yet, not commenting on the specifics, ( which would have been totally ok ), instead he is saying " This is real life simulation", which it isnt.

EDIT > apparently I am wrong - thank you for the correction everyone!

timschmidt · 4h ago
I have written motion control firmwares for 20+ years, and "this is real time simulation" has very domain-specific meaning to me. "Real time" means the code is responding to events as they happen, like with interrupts, and not via preemptible processing which could get out of sync with events. "simulation" is used by most control systems from simple PID loops to advanced balancing and motion planning.

It is clearly - to me at least - doing both of those things.

I think you're reading things into what he said that aren't there.

ionwake · 4h ago
ok thanks
NewsaHackO · 4h ago
Yea, this seems like the initial poster has reading comprehension skill deficiencies and is blaming NVIDIA for lying about a point they never made. NVIDIA is even releasing some of the code they used to power the robot, which further proves that they in no way said the robot was not being operator controlled, just that it was using AI to make it’s movement look more fluid.
ionwake · 4h ago
fair enough, upvoted.
topato · 1h ago
I seem to remember multiple posts on large tech websites having the exact same opinion/conclusion/insinuation as the one you originally had, so not necessarily comprehension problem on your part. My opinion: Nvidia's CEO has a problem communicating in good faith. He absolutely knew what he was doing during that little stage show, and it was absolutely designed to mislead people toward the most "AI HYPE, PLEASE BUY GPUs, MY ROBOT NEEDS GPUS TO LIVE" conclusion
leakycap · 6h ago
This article goes much deeper than I expected, and is a nice recap of the last few years of "green" gpu drama.

Liars or not, the performance has not been there for me in any of my usecases, from personal to professional.

A system from 2017/2018 with an 8700K and an 8GB 2080 performs so closely to the top end, expensive systems today that it makes almost no sense to upgrade at MSRP+markup unless your system is older than this.

Unless you need specific features only on more recent cards, there are very few use cases I can think of needing more than a 30 series card right now.

pixl97 · 5h ago
I mean, most people probably won't directly upgrade. Their old card will die, or eventually nvidia will stop making drivers for it. Unless you're looking around for used cards, the price difference between something low end like a 3060 isn't that much less in price for the length of support you're going to get.

Unless nvidia's money printing machine breaks soon, expect the same to continue for the next 3+ years. Crappy expensive cards with a premium on memory with almost no actual video rendering performance increase.

leakycap · 5h ago
> Unless you're looking around for used cards, the price difference between something low end like a 3060 isn't that much less in price for the length of support you're going to get.

This does not somehow give purchasers more budget room now, but they can buy 30-series cards in spades and not have to worry about the same heating and power deliveries as a little bonus.

DeepYogurt · 1h ago
> And I hate that they’re getting away with it, time and time again, for over seven years.

Nvidia's been at this way longer than 7 years. They were cheating at benchmarks to control a narrative back in 2003. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/03/05/23/1516220/futuremark-...

Nextgrid · 5h ago
I wonder if the 12VHPWR connector is intentionally defective to prevent large-scale use of those consumer cards in server/datacenter contexts?

The failure rate is just barely acceptable in a consumer use-case with a single card, but with multiple cards the probability of failure (which takes down the whole machine, as there's no way to hot-swap the card) makes it unusable.

I can't otherwise see why they'd persevere on that stupid connector when better alternatives exist.

transcriptase · 5h ago
It boggles my mind that an army of the most talented electrical engineers on earth somehow fumble a power connector and then don’t catch it before shipping.
mjevans · 5h ago
Sunk cost fallacy and a burning (literal) desire to have small artistic things. That's probably also the reason the connector was densified so much, and clearly, released with so VERY little tolerance for error human and otherwise.
ls612 · 56m ago
They use the 12VHPWR on some datacenter cards too.
KerrAvon · 5h ago
IANAL, but knowingly leaving a serious defect in your product at scale for that purpose would be very bad behavior and juries tend not like that sort of thing.
thimabi · 3h ago
However, as we’ve learned from the Epic vs Apple case, corporations don’t really care about bad behavior — as long as their ulterior motives don’t get caught.
ryao · 6h ago
> The RTX 50 series are the second generation of NVIDIA cards to use the 12VHPWR connector.

This is wrong. The 50 series uses 12V-2x6, not 12VHPWR. The 30 series was the first to use 12VHPR. The 40 series was the second to use 12VHPWR and first to use 12V-2x6. The 50 series was the second to use 12V-2x6. The female connectors are what changed in 12V-2x6. The male connectors are identical between 12V-2x6 and 12VHPWR.

ohdeargodno · 5h ago
Nitpicking it doesn't change the fact that the 12v2x6 connector _also_ burns down.
ryao · 5h ago
The guy accuses Nvidia of not doing anything about that problem, but ignored that they did with the 12V-2x6 connector, which as far as I can tell, has had far fewer issues.
Gracana · 5h ago
It still has no fusing, sensing, or load balancing for the individual wires. It is a fire waiting to happen.
ryao · 2h ago
It is a connector. None of the connectors inside a PC have those. They could add them to the circuitry on the PCB side of the connector, but that is entirely separate from the connector.

That said, the industry seems to be moving to adding detection into the PSU, given seasonic’s announcement:

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/power-supplies/se...

Finally, I think there is a simpler solution, which is to change the cable to use two large gauge wires instead of 12 individual ones to carry current. That would eliminate the need for balancing the wires in the first place.

Gracana · 17m ago
Previous well-designed video cards used the technologies I described. Eliminating the sense circuits and fusing is a recent development.

I do like the idea of just using big wires. It’d be so much cleaner and simpler. Also using 24 or 48V would be nice, but that’d be an even bigger departure from current designs.

MindSpunk · 2h ago
The 50 series connectors burned up too. The issue was not fixed.
ryao · 2h ago
It seems incredibly wrong to assume that there was only 1 issue with 12WHPWR. 12V-2x6 was an improvement that eliminated some potential issues, not all of them. If you want to eliminate all of them, replace the 12 current carrying wires with 2 large gauge wires. Then the wires cannot become unbalanced. Of course, the connector would need to split the two into 12 very short wires to be compatible, but those would be recombined on the GPU’s PCB into a single wire.
numpad0 · 1h ago
(context: 12VHPWR and 12V-2x6 are the exact same thing. The latter is supposed to be improved and totally fixed, complete with the underspecced load-bearing "supposed to be" clause.)
porphyra · 5h ago
The article complains about issues with consumer GPUs but those are nowadays relegated to being merely a side hobby project of Nvidia, whose core business is enterprise AI chips. Anyway Nvidia still has no significant competition from AMD on either front so they are still getting away with this.

Deceptive marketing aside, it's true that it's sad that we can't get 4K 60 Hz with ray tracing with current hardware without some kind of AI denoising and upscaling, but ray tracing is really just _profoundly_ hard so I can't really blame anyone for not having figured out how to put it in a consumer pc yet. There's a reason why pixar movies need huge render farms that take lots of time per frame. We would probably sooner get gaussian splatting and real time diffusion models in games than nice full resolution ray tracing tbh.

Jabrov · 5h ago
I get ray tracing at 4K 60Hz with my 4090 just fine
trynumber9 · 3h ago
Really? I can't even play Minecraft (DXR: ON) at 4K 60Hz on a RTX 5090...

Maybe another regression in Blackwell.

voxleone · 3h ago
It’s reasonable to argue that NVIDIA has a de facto monopoly in the field of GPU-accelerated compute, especially due to CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture). While not a legal monopoly in the strict antitrust sense (yet), in practice, NVIDIA's control over the GPU compute ecosystem — particularly in AI, HPC, and increasingly in professional content creation — is extraordinarily dominant.
arcanus · 2h ago
> NVIDIA's control over the GPU compute ecosystem — particularly in AI, HPC

The two largest supercomputers in the world are powered by AMD. I don't think it's accurate to say Nvidia has monopoly on HPC

Source: https://top500.org/lists/top500/2025/06/

Dylan16807 · 3h ago
> The competing open standard is FreeSync, spearheaded by AMD. Since 2019, NVIDIA also supports FreeSync, but under their “G-Sync Compatible” branding. Personally, I wouldn’t bother with G-Sync when a competing, open standard exists and differences are negligible[4].

Open is good, but the open standard itself is not enough. You need some kind of testing/certification, which is built in to the G-Sync process. AMD does have a FreeSync certification program now which is good.

If you rely on just the standard, some manufacturers get really lazy. One of my screens technically supports FreeSync but I turned it off day one because it has a narrow range and flickers very badly.

spoaceman7777 · 3h ago
The real issue here is actually harebrained youtubers stirring up drama for views. That's 80% of the problem. And their viewers (and readers, for that which makes it into print) eat it up.

Idiots doing hardware installation, with zero experience, using 3rd party cables incorrectly, posting to social media, and youtubers jumping on the trend for likes.

These are 99% user error issues drummed up by non-professionals (and, in some cases, people paid by 3rd party vendors to protect those vendors' reputation).

And the complaints about transient performances issues with drivers, drummed up into apocalyptics scenarios, again, by youtubers, who are putting this stuff under a microscope for views, are universal across every single hardware and software product. Everything.

Claiming "DLSS is snakeoil", and similar things are just an expression of the complete lack of understanding of the people involved in these pot-stirring contests. Like... the technique obviously couldn't magically multiply the ability of hardware to generate frames using the primary method. It is exactly as advertised. It uses machine learning to approximate it. And it's some fantastic technology, that is now ubiquitous across the industry. Support and quality will increase over time, just like every _quality_ hardware product does during its early lifespan.

It's all so stupid and rooted in greed by those seeking ad-money, and those lacking in basic sense or experience in what they're talking about and doing. Embarrassing for the author to so publicly admit to eating up social media whinging.

grg0 · 3h ago
If you've ever watched a GN or LTT video, they never claimed that DLSS is snakeoil. They specifically call out the pros of the technology, but also point out that Nvidia lies, very literally, about its performance claims in marketing material. Both statements are true and not mutually exclusive. I think people like in this post get worked up about the false marketing and develop (understandably) a negative view of the technology as a whole.

> Idiots doing hardware installation, with zero experience, using 3rd party cables incorrectly

This is not true. Even GN reproduced the melting of the first-party cable.

Also, why shouldn't you be able to use third-party cables? Fuck DRM too.

spoaceman7777 · 3h ago
I'm referring to the section header in this article. Youtubers are not a truly hegemonic group, but there's a set of ideas and narratives that pervade the group as a whole that different subsets buy into, and push, and that's one that exists in the overall sphere of people who discuss the use of hardware for gaming.
grg0 · 3h ago
Well, I can't speak for all youtubers, but I do watch most GN and LTT videos and the complaints are legitimate, nor are they random jabronis yolo'ing hardware installations.
spoaceman7777 · 3h ago
As far as I know, neither of them have had a card unintentionally light on fire.

The whole thing started with Derbauer going to bat for a cable from some 3rd party vendor that he'd admitted he'd already plugged in and out of various cards something like 50 times.

The actual instances that youtubers report on are all reddit posters and other random social media users who would clearly be better off getting a professional installation. The huge popularity for enthusiast consumer hardware, due to the social media hype cycle, has brought a huge number of naive enthusiasts into the arena. And they're getting burned by doing hardware projects on their own. It's entirely unsurprising, given what happens in all other realms of amateur hardware projects.

Most of those who are whinging about their issues are false positive user errors. The actual failure rates (and there are device failures) are far lower, and that's what warrantys are for.

grg0 · 3h ago
I'm sure the failure rates are blown out of proportion, I agree with that.

But the fact of the matter is that Nvidia has shifted from a consumer business to b2b, and they don't even give a shit about pretending they care anymore. People take beef with that, understandably, and when you couple that with the false marketing, the lack of inventory, the occasional hardware failure, missing ROPs, insane prices that nobody can afford and all the other shit that's wrong with these GPUs, then this is the end result.

yunyu · 5h ago
If you are a gamer, you are no longer NVIDIA's most important customer.
bigyabai · 5h ago
A revelation on-par with Mac users waking up to learn their computer was made by a phone company.
ravetcofx · 4h ago
Barely even a phone company, more like a app store and microtransactions services company
dcchambers · 4h ago
Haven't been for a while. Not since crypto bros started buying up GPUs for coin mining.
Ancapistani · 4h ago
I disagree with some of the article’s points - primarily, that nVidia’s drivers were ever “good” - but the gist I agree with.

I have a 4070 Ti right now. I use it for inference and VR gaming on a Pimax Crystal (2880x2880x2). In War Thunder I get ~60 FPS. I’d love to be able to upgrade to a card with at least 16GB of VRAM and better graphics performance… but as far as I can tell, such a card does not exist at any price.

FeepingCreature · 5h ago
Oh man, you haven't gotten into their AI benchmark bullshittery. There's factors of 4x on their numbers that are basically invented whole cloth by switching units.
fracus · 2h ago
This was an efficient, well written, TKO.
anonymars · 1h ago
Agreed. An excellent summary of a lot of missteps that have been building for a while. I had watched that article on the power connector/ shunt resistors and was dumbfounded at the seemingly rank-amateurish design. And although I don't have a 5000 series GPU I have been astonished at how awful the drivers have been for the better part of a year.

As someone who filed the AMD/ATi ecosystems due to their quirky unreliability, Nvidia and Intel have really shit the bed these days (I also had the misfortune of "upgrading" to a 13th gen Intel processor just before we learned that they cook themselves)

I do think DLSS supersampling is incredible but Lord almighty is it annoying that the frame generation is under the same umbrella because that is nowhere near the same, and the water is awful muddy since "DLSS" is often used without distinction

benreesman · 5h ago
The thing is, company culture is a real thing. And some cultures are invasive/contagious like kudzu both internally to the company and into adjacent companies that they get comped against. The people get to thinking a certain way, they move around between adjacent companies at far higher rates than to more distant parts of their field, the executives start sitting on one another's boards, before you know it a whole segment is enshittified, and customers feel like captives in an exploitation machine instead of parties to a mutually beneficial transaction in which trade increases the wealth of all.

And you can build mythologies around falsehoods to further reinforce it: "I have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value." No buddy, you have some very specific restrictions on your ability to sell the company to your cousin (ha!) for a handful of glass beads. You have a legal obligation to bin your wafers the way it says on your own box, but that doesn't seem to bother you.

These days I get a machine like the excellent ASUS Proart P16 (grab one of those before they're all gone if you can) with a little 4060 or 4070 in it that can boot up Pytorch and make sure the model will run forwards and backwards at a contrived size, and then go rent a GB200 or whatever from Latitude or someone (seriously check out Latitude, they're great), or maybe one of those wildly competitive L40 series fly machines (fly whips the llama's ass like nothing since Winamp, check them out too). The GMTek EVO-X1 is a pretty capable little ROCm inference machine for under 1000, its big brother is nipping at the heels of a DGX Spark under 2k. There is good stuff out there but its all from non-incumbent angles.

I don't game anymore but if I did I would be paying a lot of attention to ARC, I've heard great things.

Fuck the cloud and their ancient Xeon SKUs for more than Latitude charges for 5Ghz EPYC. Fuck NVIDIA gaming retail rat race, its an electrical as well as moral hazard in 2025.

It's a shame we all have to be tricky to get what used to be a halfway fair deal 5-10 years ago (and 20 years ago they passed a HUGE part of the scaling bonanza down to the consumer), but its possible to compute well in 2025.

glitchc · 2h ago
Nice advertorial. I hope you got paid for all of those plugs.
benreesman · 2h ago
I wish! People don't care what I think enough to monetize it.

But I do spend a lot of effort finding good deals on modern ass compute. This is the shit I use to get a lot of performance on a budget.

Will people pay you to post on HN? How do I sign up?

dofubej · 5h ago
> With over 90% of the PC market running on NVIDIA tech, they’re the clear winner of the GPU race. The losers are every single one of us.

Of course the fact that we overwhelmingly chose the better option means that… we are worse off or something?

atq2119 · 5h ago
That bit does seem a bit whiney. AMD's latest offerings are quite good, certainly better value for money. Why not buy that? The only shame is that they don't sell anything as massive as Nvidia's high end.
ohdeargodno · 5h ago
Choosing the vendor locked in, standards hating brand does tend to mean that you inevitably get screwed when they decide do massively inflate their prices and there's nothing you can do about it does tend to make you worse off, yes.

Not that AMD was anywhere near being in a good state 10 years ago. Nvidia still fucked you over.

frollogaston · 5h ago
Because they won't sell you an in-demand high-end GPU for cheap? Well TS
tiahura · 3h ago
Not to mention that they are currently in stock at my local microcenter.
WhereIsTheTruth · 5m ago
Call it delusions or conspiracy theories, what ever, I don't care, but it seems to me that NVIDIA wants to vendor lock the whole industry

If all game developers begin to rely on NVIDIA technology, the industry as a whole puts customers in a position where they are forced to give in

The public's perception of RTX's softwarization (DLSS) and them coining the technical terms says it all

They have a long term plan, and that plan is:

- make all the money possible

- destroy all competition

- vendor lock the whole world

When I see that, I can't help myself but to think something is fishy:

https://i.imgur.com/WBwg6qQ.png

jes5199 · 2h ago
with Intel also shitting the bed, it seems like AMD is poised to pick up “traditional computing” while everybody else runs off to chase the new gold rush. Presumably there’s still some money in desktops and gaming rigs?
alganet · 5h ago
Right now, all silicon talk is bullshit. It has been for a while.

It became obvious when old e-waste Xeons were turned into viable, usable machines, years ago.

Something is obviously wrong with this entire industry, and I cannot wait for it to pop. THIS will be the excitement everyone is looking for.

bigyabai · 4h ago
A lot of those Xeon e-waste machines were downright awful, especially for the "cheap gaming PC" niche they were popular in. Low single-core clock speeds, low memory bandwidth for desktop-style configurations and super expensive motherboards that ran at a higher wattage than the consumer alternatives.

> THIS will be the excitement everyone is looking for.

Or TSMC could become geopolitically jeopardized somehow, drastically increasing the secondhand value of modern GPUs even beyond what they're priced at now. It's all a system of scarcity, things could go either way.

alganet · 4h ago
They were awful compared to newer models, but for the price of nothing, pretty good deal.

If no good use is found for high-end GPUs, secondhand models will be like AOL CDs.

gizajob · 5h ago
Do you have a timeframe for the pop? I need some excitement.
alganet · 5h ago
More a sequence of potential events than a timeframe.

High-end GPUs are already useless for gaming (a low-end GPU is enough), their traditional source of demand. They're floating on artificial demand for a while now.

There are two markets that currently could use them: LLMs and Augmented Reality. Both of these are currently useless, and getting more useless by the day.

CPUs are just piggybacking on all of this.

So, lots of things hanging on unrealized promises. It will pop when there is no next use for super high-end GPUs.

War is a potential user of such devices, and I predict it could be the next thing after LLMs and AR. But then if war breaks out in such a scale to drive silicon prices up, lots of things are going to pop, and food and fuel will boom to such a magnitude that will make silicon look silly.

I think it will pop before it comes to the point of war driving it, and it will happen within our lifetimes (so, not a Nostradamus-style prediction that will only be realized long-after I'm dead).

selfhoster11 · 2h ago
Local LLMs are becoming more popular and easier to run, and Chinese corporations are releasing extremely good models of all sizes under MIT or similar terms in many cases. There amount of VRAM is the main limiter, and it would help with gaming too.
alganet · 2h ago
Gaming needs no additional VRAM.

From a market perspective, LLMs sell GPUs. Doesn't even matter if they work or not.

From the geopolitical tensions perspective, they're the perfect excuse to create infrastructure for a global analogue of the Great Firewall (something that the Chinese are pioneers of, and catching up to the plan).

From the software engineering perspective, LLMs are a nuissance, a distraction. They harm everyone.

selfhoster11 · 2h ago
> Gaming needs no additional VRAM.

Really? What about textures? Any ML that the new wave of games might use? For instance, while current LLMs powering NPC interactions would be pretty horrible, what about in 2 years time? You could have arbitrary dialogue trees AND dynamically voiced NPCs or PCs. This is categorically impossible without more VRAM.

> the perfect excuse to create infrastructure for a global analogue of the Great Firewall

Yes, let's have more censorship and kill the dream of the Internet even deader than it already is.

> From the software engineering perspective, LLMs are a nuissance, a distraction. They harm everyone.

You should be aware that reasonable minds can differ in this issue. I won't defend companies forcing the use of LLMs (it would be like forcing use of vim or any other tech you dislike), but I disagree about being a nuisance, distraction, or a universal harm. It's all down to choices and fit for use case.

rightbyte · 4h ago
I don't see how GPU factories could be running in the event of war "in such a scale to drive silicon prices up". Unless you mean that supply will be low and people scavanging TI calculators for processors to make boxes playing Tetris and Space Invaders.
alganet · 4h ago
Why not?

This is the exact model in which WWII operated. Car and plane supply chains were practically nationalized to support the military industry.

If drones, surveillance, satellites become the main war tech, they'll all use silicon, and things will be fully nationalized.

We already have all sorts of hints of this. Doesn't need a genius to predict that it could be what happens to these industries.

The balance with food and fuel is more delicate though. A war with drones, satellites and surveillance is not like WWII, there's a commercial aspect to it. If you put it on paper, food and fuel project more power and thus, can move more money. Any public crisis can make people forget about GPUs and jeopardize the process of nationalization that is currently being implemented, which still depends on relatively peaceful international trade.

newsclues · 3h ago
CPU and GPU compute will be needed for military use processing the vast data from all sorts of sensors. Think about data centres crunching satellite imagery for trenches, fortifications and vehicles.
alganet · 2h ago
> satellite imagery for trenches, fortifications and vehicles

Dude, you're describing the 80s. We're in 2025.

GPUs will be used for automated surveillance, espionage, brainwashing and market manipulation. At least that's what the current batch of technologies implies.

The only thing stopping this from becoming a full dystopia is that delicate balance with food and fuel I mentioned earlier.

It has become pretty obvious that entire wealthy nations can starve if they make the wrong move. Turns out GPUs cannot produce calories, and there's a limit to how much of a market you can manipulate to produce calories for you.

grg0 · 3h ago
Hell, yeah. I'm in for some shared excitement too if y'all want to get some popcorn.
johnklos · 3h ago
I'm so happy to see someone calling NVIDIA out for their bullshit. The current state of GPU programming sucks, and that's just an example of the problems with the GPU market today.

The lack of open source anything for GPU programming makes me want to throw my hands up and just do Apple. It feels much more open than pretending that there's anything open about CUDA on Linux.

827a · 57m ago
Here's something I don't understand: Why is it that when I go look at DigitalOcean's GPU Droplet options, they don't offer any Blackwell chips? [1] I thought Blackwell was supposed to be the game changing hyperchip that carried AI into the next generation, but the best many providers still offer are Hopper H100s? Where are all the Blackwell chips? Its been oodles of months.

Apparently AWS has them available in the P6 instance type, but the only configuration they offer has 2TB of memory and costs... $113/hr [2]? Like, what is going on at Nvidia?

Where the heck is Project Digits? Like, I'm developing this shadow opinion that Nvidia actually hasn't built anything new in three years, but they fill the void by talking about hypothetical newtech that no one can actually buy + things their customers have built with the actually good stuff they built three years ago. Like, consumers can never buy Blackwell because "oh Enterprises have bought them all up" then when Microsoft tries to buy any they say "Amazon bought them all up" and vice-versa. Something really fishy is going on over there. Time to short.

[1] https://www.digitalocean.com/products/gpu-droplets

[2] https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/

shmerl · 4h ago
> ... NVENC are pretty much indispensable

What's so special about NVENC that Vulkan video or VAAPI can't provide?

> AMD also has accelerated video transcoding tech but for some reason nobody seems to be willing to implement it into their products

OBS works with VAAPI fine. Looking forward to them adding Vulkan video as an option.

Either way, as a Linux gamer I haven't touched Nvidia in years. AMD is a way better experience.

DarkmSparks · 4h ago
I sometimes wonder if people getting this salty over "fake" frames actually realise every frame is fake even in native mode. Neither is more "real" than the other, it's just different.
KaoruAoiShiho · 4h ago
I guess somebody missed out on NVDA.
bigyabai · 5h ago
> Pretty much all upscalers force TAA for anti-aliasing and it makes the entire image on the screen look blurry as fuck the lower the resolution is.

I feel like this is a misunderstanding, though I admit I'm splitting hairs here. DLSS is a form of TAA, and so is FSR and most other modern upscalers. You generally don't need an extra antialiasing pipeline if you're getting an artificially supersampled image.

We've seen this technique variably developed across the lifespan of realtime raster graphics; first with checkerboard rendering, then TAA, then now DLSS/frame generation. It has upsides and downsides, and some TAA implementations were actually really good for the time.

kbolino · 5h ago
Every kind of TAA that I've seen creates artifacts around fast-moving objects. This may sound like a niche problem only found in fast-twitch games but it's cropped up in turn-based RPGs and factory/city builders. I personally turn it off as soon as I notice it. Unfortunately, some games have removed traditional MSAA as an option, and some are even making it difficult to turn off AA when TAA and FXAA are the only options (though you can usually override these restrictions with driver settings).
user____name · 4h ago
The sad truth is that with rasterization every renderer needs to be designed around a specific set of antialiasing solutions. Antialiasing is like a big wall in your rendering pipeline, there's the stuff you can do before resolving and the stuff you can do afterwards. The problem with MSAA is that it is pretty much tightly coupled with all your architectural rendering decisions. To that end, TAA is simply the easiest to implement and it kills a lot of proverbial birds with one stone. And it can all be implemented as essentially a post processing effect, it has much less of the tight coupling.

MSAA only helps with geometric edges, shader aliasing can be combatted with prefiltering but even then it's difficult to get rid of it completely. MSAA also needs beefy multisample intermediate buffers, this makes it pretty much a non-starter on heavily deferred rendering pipelines, which throw away coverage information to fit their framebuffer budget. On top of that the industry moved to stochastic effects for rendering all kinds of things that were too expensive before, the latest being actual realtime path tracing. I know people moan about TAA and DLSS but to do realtime path tracing at 4k is sort of nuts really. I still consider it a bit of a miracle we can do it at all.

Personally, I wish there was more research by big players into things like texture space lighting, which makes shading aliasing mostly go away, plays nice with alpha blending and would make MSAA viable again. The issue there is with shading only the stuff you see and not wasting texels.

kbolino · 4h ago
There's another path, which is to raise the pixel densities so high we don't need AA (as much) anymore, but I'm going to guess it's a) even more expensive and b) not going to fix all the problems anyway.
MindSpunk · 2h ago
That's just called super sampling. Render at 4k+ and down sample to your target display. It's as expensive as it sounds.
kbolino · 2h ago
No, I mean high pixel densities all the way to the display.

SSAA is an even older technique than MSAA but the results are not visually the same as just having a really high-DPI screen with no AA.

ohdeargodno · 5h ago
It's not that it's difficult to turn off TAA: it's that so many modern techniques do not work without temporal accumulation and anti-aliasing.

Ray tracing? Temporal accumulation and denoising. Irradiance cache? Temporal accumulation and denoising. most modern light rendering techniques cannot be done in time in a single frame. Add to that the fact that deferred or hybrid rendering makes implementing MSAA be anywhere between "miserable" and "impossible", and you have the situation we're in today.

kbolino · 5h ago
A lot of this is going to come down to taste so de gustibus and all that, but this feels like building on a foundation of sand. If the artifacts can be removed (or at least mitigated), then by all means let's keep going with cool new stuff as long as it doesn't detract from other aspects of a game. But if they can't be fixed, then either these techniques ought to be relegated to special uses (like cutscenes or the background, kinda like the pre-rendered backdrops of FF7) or abandoned/rethought as pretty but impractical.
andrewstuart · 3h ago
All symptoms of being number one.

Customers don’t matter, the company matters.

Competition sorts out such attitude quick smart but AMD never misses a chance to copy Nvidias strategy in any way and intel is well behind.

So for now, you’ll eat what Jensen feeds you.

system2 · 5h ago
Why does the hero image of this website says "Made with GIMP"? I've never seen a web banner saying "Made with Photoshop" or anything similar.
reddalo · 5h ago
I don't know why it says that, but GIMP is an open-source project so it makes sense for fans to advertise it.
goalieca · 4h ago
Were you on the internet in the 90s? Lots of banners like that on every site.
jdprgm · 5h ago
The 4090 was released coming up on 3 years and is currently going for about 25% over launch msrp USED. Buying gpu's is literally an appreciating asset. It is complete insanity and an infuriating situation for an average consumer.

I honestly don't know why nvidia didn't just suspend their consumer line entirely. It's clearly no longer a significant revenue source and they have thoroughly destroyed consumer goodwill over the past 5 years.

trynumber9 · 3h ago
>I honestly don't know why nvidia didn't just suspend their consumer line entirely.

It's ~$12 billion a year with a high gross margin by the standards of every other hardware company. They want to make sure neither AMD nor Intel get that revenue they can invest into funding their own AI/ML efforts.

another_kel · 5h ago
I’m sorry but this framing is insane

> So 7 years into ray traced real-time computer graphics and we’re still nowhere near 4K gaming at 60 FPS, even at $1,999.

The guy is complaining that a product can’t live up to his standard, while dismissing barely noticeable proposed trade off that can make it possible because it’s «fake».

ksec · 2h ago
>How is it that one can supply customers with enough stock on launch consistently for decades, and the other can’t?

I guess the author is too young and didn't go through iPhone 2G to iPhone 6 era. Also worth remembering it wasn't too long ago Nvidia was sitting on nearly ONE full year of GPU stock unsold. That has completely changed the course of how Nvidia does supply chain management and forecast. Which unfortunately have a negative impact all the way to Series 50. I believe they have since changed and next Gen should be better prepared. But you can only do so much when AI demand is seemingly unlimited.

>The PC, as gaming platform, has long been held in high regards for its backwards compatibility. With the RTX 50 series, NVIDIA broke that going forward. PhysX.....

Glide? What about all the Audio Drivers API before. As much as I wish everything is backward compatible. That is just not how the world works. Just like any old games you need some fiddling to get it work. And they even make the code available so people could actually do something rather then emulation or reverse engineering.

>That, to me, was a warning sign that maybe, just maybe, ray tracing was introduced prematurely and half-baked.

Unfortunately that is not how it works. Do we want to go back to Pre-3DFx to today to see how many what we thought was great idea for 3D accelerator only to be replaced by better ideas or implementation? These idea were good on paper but didn't work well. We than learn from it and reiterate.

>Now they’re doing an even more computationally expensive version of ray tracing: path tracing. So all the generational improvements we could’ve had are nullified again......

How about Path Tracing is simply a better technology? Game developers also dont have to use any of these tech. The article act as if Nvidia forces all game to use it. Gamers want better graphics quality, Artist and Graphics asset is already by far the most expensive item in gaming and it is still increasing. What hardware improvement is allowing those to be achieved at lower cost. ( To Game Developers )

>Never mind that frame generation introduces input lag that NVIDIA needs to counter-balance with their “Reflex” technology,

No. That is not why "Reflex" tech was invented. Nvidia spend R&D on 1000 fps monitor as well and potentially sub 1ms frame monitor. They have always been latency sensitive.

------------------------------

I have no idea how modern Gamers become what they are today. And this isn't the first time I have read it even on HN. You dont have to buy Nvidia. You have AMD and now Intel ( again ). Basically I can summarise one thing about it, Gamers want Nvidia 's best GPU for the lowest price possible. Or a price they think is acceptable without understanding the market dynamics and anything supply chain or manufacturing. They also want higher "generational" performance. Like 2x every 2 year. And if they dont get it, it is Nvidia's fault. Not TSMC, not Cadence, not Tokyo Electron, not Issac Newton or Law of Physic. But Nvidia.

Nvidia's PR tactic isn't exactly new in the industry. Every single brand do something similar. Do I like it? No. But unfortunately that is how the game is played. And Apple is by far the worst offender.

I do sympathise with the Cable issue though. And not the first time Nvidia has with thermal issues. But then again they are also the one who are constantly pushing the boundary forward. And AFAIK the issues isn't as bad as the series 40 but some YouTube seems to be making a bigger issue than most. Supply issues will be better but TSMC 3nm is fully booked . The only possible solution would be to have consumer GPU less capable of AI workload. Or to have AI GPU working with leading edge node and consumer always be a node lower to split the capacity problem. I would imagine that is part of the reason why TSMC is accelerating 3nm capacity increase on US soil. Nvidia is now also large enough and has enough cash to take on more risk.

d00mB0t · 6h ago
Sounds about right :D
sonicvrooom · 4h ago
it would be "just" capitalist to call these fuckers out for real, on the smallest level.

you are safe.

delduca · 5h ago
Nothing new, it is just Enshittification
jekwoooooe · 5h ago
This guy makes some good points but he clearly has a bone to pick. Calling dlss snake oil was where I stopped reading
Retr0id · 5h ago
Yeah, computer graphics has always been "software trickery" all the way down. There are valid points to be made about DLSS being marketed in misleading ways, but I don't think it being "software trickery" is a problem at all.
ThatPlayer · 4h ago
Exactly. Running games at a lower resolution isn't new. I remember changing the size of the viewport in the original DOOM 1993 to get it to run faster. Making a lower resolution look better without having to run at a higher resolution is the exact same problem anti-aliasing has been tackling forever. DLSS is just another form of AA that is now so advanced, you can go from an even lower resolution and still look good.

So even when I'm running a game at native resolution, I still want anti-aliasing, and DLSS is a great choice then.

imiric · 2h ago
It's one thing to rely on a technique like AA to improve visual quality with negligible drawbacks. DLSS is entirely different though, since upscaling introduces all kinds of graphical issues, and frame generation[1] even more so, while adding considerable input latency. NVIDIA will claim that this is offset by its Reflex feature, but that has its own set of issues.

So, sure, we can say that all of this is ultimately software trickery, but when the trickery is dialed up to 11 and the marketing revolves entirely on it, while the raw performance is only slightly improved over previous generations, it's a clear sign that consumers are being duped.

[1]: I'm also opposed to frame generation from a philosophical standpoint. I want my experience to be as close as possible to what the game creator intended. That is, I want every frame to be generated by the game engine; every object to look as it should within the world, and so on. I don't want my graphics card to create an experience that approximates what the creator intended.

This is akin to reading a book on an e-reader that replaces every other word with one chosen by an algorithm. I want none of that.

sixothree · 36m ago
But we're not talking about resolution here. We're talking about interpolation of entire frames, multiple frames.
ThatPlayer · 33m ago
I don't think we are? Article talks about DLSS on RTX 20 series cards, which do not support DLSS frame-gen:

> What always rubbed me the wrong way about how DLSS was marketed is that it wasn’t only for the less powerful GPUs in NVIDIA’s line-up. No, it was marketed for the top of the line $1,000+ RTX 20 series flagship models to achieve the graphical fidelity with all the bells and whistles.

kevingadd · 5h ago
The article doesn't make the best argument to support the claim but it's true that NVIDIA is now making claims like '4090 level performance' on the basis that if you turn on DLSS multi-frame generation you suddenly have Huge Framerates when most of the pixels are synthesized instead of real.

Personally I'm happy with DLSS on balanced or quality, but the artifacts from framegen are really distracting. So I feel like it's fair to call their modern marketing snake oil since it's so reliant on frame gen to create the illusion of real progress.

honeybadger1 · 5h ago
A bit hyperbolic
ls-a · 5h ago
Finally someone
oilkillsbirds · 5h ago
Nobody’s going to read this, but this article and sentiment is utter anti-corporate bullshit, and the vastly congruent responses show that none of you have watched the historical development of GPGPU, or do any serious work on GPUs, or keep up with the open work of nvidia researchers.

The spoiled gamer mentality is getting old for those of us that actually work daily in GPGPU across industries, develop with RTX kit, do AI research, etc.

Yes they’ve had some marketing and technical flubs as any giant publically traded company will have, but their balance of research-driven development alongside corporate profit necessities is unmatched.

oilkillsbirds · 5h ago
And no I don’t work for nvidia. I’ve just been in the industry long enough to watch the immense contribution nvidia has made to every. single. field. The work of their researchers is astounding, it’s clear to anyone that’s honestly worked in this field long enough. It’s insane to hate on them.
grg0 · 3h ago
Their contribution to various fields and the fact that they treat the average consumer like shit nowadays are not mutually exclusive.

Also, nobody ever said they hate their researchers.

gdbsjjdn · 3h ago
It pains me to be on the side of "gamers" but I would rather support spoiled gamers than modern LLM bros.
deepGem · 4h ago
So I did what any person will do in the age of AI. ChatGPT this but I used o3 instead of the default 4o.

The negativity posted in this article is a hand wavy at best.

tl;dr nVidia is using constrained supply to maximise datacenter GPUs. Consumer GPUs are collateral damage and nVidia understands that. You can't blame a company for maximising profit.

Case in point https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20241122PD200/nvidia-tsmc-ca...

Substrate (CoWoS) is TSMC’s 2.5-D “sandwich” assembly method. So nVidia is blocking all of this capacity for datacenter GPUs.

The melting cables claim is a bit overblown as well.

From o3

• Yes, the 16-pin 12 VHPWR/12 V-2×6 power plug used on RTX 40- and 50-series boards really has a track-record of occasional “melting” events. • The root cause is almost always high contact resistance created by a half-seated or bent connector; once that pin pair sees 35-40 A it heats up and chars the plastic housing. gamersnexus.net

• The problem is rare (low-single-digit failure rates in large user surveys) but visually dramatic, which is why it dominates headlines. gamersnexus.net

• PCI-SIG and Nvidia have already revised the design (12 V-2×6, ATX 3.1), yet isolated incidents are still being reported on new RTX 5090 cards, proving the fix is not bullet-proof. tomshardware.com

• Calling this “planned obsolescence” is a stretch; it is more an example of an aggressive power spec colliding with real-world tolerances and user handling.

scrubs · 4h ago
Another perspective: Nvidia customer support on their mellanox purchase ...is total crap. It's the worst of corporate America ... paper pushing beurceatric guys who slow roll stuff ... getting to a smart person behind the customer reps requires one to be an ape in a bad mood 5x ... I think they're so used to that now that unless you go crazy mode their take is ... well I guess he wasn't serious about his ask and he dropped it.

Here's another nvdia/mellanox bs problem: many mlx nic cards are finalized or post assembled say by hp. So if you have a hp "mellanox" nic nvidia washes their hands of anything detailed. It's not ours; hp could have done anything to it what do we know? So one phones hp ... and they have no clue either because it's really not their IP or their drivers.

It's a total cluster bleep and more and more why corporate america sucks

grg0 · 3h ago
Corporate America actually resembles the state of government a lot too. Deceptive marketing, inflated prices that leave the average Joe behind, and low quality products on top of all that.
scrubs · 3h ago
In the 1980s maybe a course correction was needed to help capitalism. But it's over corrected by 30%. I'm not knocking corporate america or capitalism in absolute terms. I am saying customers have lost power... whether it's phone trees, right to fix, a lack of accountability (2008 housing crisis), the ability to play endless accounting games to pay lower taxes plus all the more mundane things ... it's gotten out of whack.
ksec · 2h ago
I have guessing you have HP "mellanox"? Because Connect-X support are great.
scrubs · 1h ago
>I have guessing you have HP "mellanox"? Because Connect-X support are great.

I'll have to take your word on that.

And if I take your word: ergo not Connect-X support sucks

So that's sucks yet again on the table ... for what the 3rd time? Nvidia sucks.