What specifically happened in June to set this off? It can't just be "waves hands AI/LLMs" because ChatGPT has existed for years.
Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months
41–50 of 423 posts
Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's their costs, not our costs. Regular PCs will cost more, which means Valve can price their consoles higher and collect margin, because there's no other competition/substitutes.
Maybe, but from a platform and brand development perspective, there may be smarter strategies. Their interest isn't necessarily in squeezing out the most margin on each unit. If unexpected market conditions let them more or less hit their original margin targets but get far more units installed in homes, that could be much better for them in the long term. There's a lot we can't know as outsiders, at the moment.
> that could be much better for them in the long term.
i agree. Valve's money machine is with the steam platform, rather than any hardware sales - breaking even on hardware is sufficient imho.
Valve's existential threat is from microsoft closing off windows somehow (or extracting rent...like a store!). Therefore, pushing steam machines which can be run without windows, is both business expansion as well as an insurance policy.
Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months
#43A possible answer as to why this is happening. https://thememoryguy.com/some-clarity-on-2025s-ddr4-price-su...
Scroll down. The same trend is happening for DDR5 prices. It's AI demand.
Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months
#44Who are the main players that make or benefit from these inflated DRAM prices?
Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months
#45I hate this. PC gaming is my hobby, the only one that’s lasted my whole life. It’s always been there. It’s how I met my wife. It’s how I relax after a long day. It’s how I’ve participated in so many stories that stick with me and given me so many memories. All of it is being murdered by the AI bros. Before them it was the crypto bros. It’s one thing after the other and I hate it so much.
Just live with the PC you have for two more years. It's probably not a big deal? A moderately capable machine from 5 years ago is still marginally capable.
Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months
#46Who are the main players that make or benefit from these inflated DRAM prices?
Make? The market of course.
Benefit? The manufacturers of course.
Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months
#47the other side of the AI bubble are a huge amount of 2nd hand parts of all kinds going to come onto the market?
A lot of the goods won't be essily repurposible for consumer or small business work loads. Imagine if auto manufacturers all refitted their factories and supply chains to produce military vehicles for a war effort. New family cars would run dry, and when the war ended, some folks would figure out make clever use of some surplus military vehicles for street travel and commerce, but most of the surplus would just be sh…
You can buy old rackmount servers on ebay for relatively cheap and used them as desktop PCs AFAIK (though they can be on the noisier side).
Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months
#48https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram... On October 1st OpenAI signed two simultaneous deals with Samsung and SK Hynix for 40% of the worlds DRAM supply... the shock wasn’t that OpenAI made a big deal, no, it was that they made two massive deals this big, at the same time, with Samsung and SK Hynix simultaneously! In fact, according to our sources - both companies had no idea how big each other…
The cynic in me thinks this would be a convenient way for these memory producers to manufacture demand, while also making OpenAI look good on paper. It’s not like they haven’t been caught price fixing in the past. Win win for these companies and a loss for everyone else.
Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months
#49What specifically happened in June to set this off? It can't just be " waves hands AI/LLMs" because ChatGPT has existed for years.
"Waves hands at AI/LLMs"
The problem is that training these models and using these models has required exponentially increasing amounts of memory.
ChatGPT has existed for years and in those years it's userbase and model size has increased tremendously. Not to mention the fact that a lot of competitors have sprung up in the wake of GPT. Including the likes of cloud based open model hosting services.
Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months
#50https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram... On October 1st OpenAI signed two simultaneous deals with Samsung and SK Hynix for 40% of the worlds DRAM supply... the shock wasn’t that OpenAI made a big deal, no, it was that they made two massive deals this big, at the same time, with Samsung and SK Hynix simultaneously! In fact, according to our sources - both companies had no idea how big each other…
> Had Samsung known SK Hynix was about to commit a similar chunk of supply — or vice-versa — the pricing and terms would have likely been different
Wouldn't this be ... collusion?
Implicitly arguing that the memory oligopoly should have been coordinating is ... quite something.
OpenAI may well be doing something anticompetitive by cornering supply to foreclose competitors, but saying "they tricked the suppliers into not colluding!" is certainly a take you can have I guess.