"Nvidia is so far ahead that all the 4090s are nerfed to half speed"

Post by freedomben » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 9:51 PM UTC

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #94

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #45

Between EVGA getting out of the Nvidia card business, Nvidia continuing to be problematic under Linux (even if that’s improving), all the nonsense with the new power connector, and the company’s general sliminess, I’m increasingly leaning towards an AMD (or potentially Intel) card for my next tower upgrade. AMD and Intel might only be competing in the entry-to-midrange market sector but my needs aren’t likely to exce…

AMD has inexplicably decided not to invest in software. Just like car manufacturers don't realize that a shitty infotainment system can keep people from buying the $100k car, AMD doesn't seem to realize that people aren't buying a GPU for ML if their ML framework doesn't run on it... And this goes down to consumer drivers too. I've sworn to myself that I'm not buying AMD for my next laptop, after endless instability…

Post by deaddodo » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 10:01 PM UTC

creato wrote: post #52

NVIDIA is obviously not above market segmentation via dubious means (see: driver limitations for consumer GPUs), but I think binning due to silicon defects is a more likely explanation in this case. Some 4090s have this extra fp16 -> fp32 ALU disabled because it's defective on that chip. Other 4090s have it disabled because it failed as an Ada 6000 for some other reason, but NVIDIA didn't want to make a 4095 SKU to s…

Post by kube-system » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 10:01 PM UTC

sdwr wrote: post #24

kijin wrote: post #4

Binning and market segmentation are not mutually exclusive. Of course they're going to put their best-performing chips in the most expensive segment.

The difference is whether chips with no defects get artificially binned. In a competitive market, if you have a surplus of top-tier chips, you lower prices and make a little more $$ selling more power. With a monopoly (customers are still yours next upgrade cycle), giving customers more power now sabotages your future revenue.

Post by zeusk » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 10:14 PM UTC

evoke4908 wrote: post #82

zeusk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the 90% are charged absurd markup because clearly they can deliver the hardware for 10% use-case for 1000$ and still make money on top but they would rather charge the data centers 50k for the same product

Or they can't afford to sell the cards at consumer prices. If they take a loss in the consumer segmet, they can recoup by overcharging the datacenter customers. That's how this scheme works. The card is most likely not profitable at consumer price points. Without this segmentation, consumer cards would trail many years behind the performance of datacenter cards.

Post by Kirby64 » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 10:14 PM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #102

Kirby64 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bullshit. There will be hackers in the future who can do it in their garage. Just... not anytime soon. I'll take your bet on this. Silicon designers aren't unaware of this potential vulnerability, and if you want to prevent eFuses from being un-blown, you can design for that. I would place money on there not being any commercially viable way to restore an eFuse in a 4090 die at any point in the future. You can prob…

> You can probably do it, but it would require millions of dollars in FIB and SEM equipment and likely would destroy the chip for any useful purpose. The price tag and size of these things are what I'm talking about. SOME day it will get much cheaper and smaller. A 4090 will be useless at that point, but I still play with 8086s and vacuum tubes, so... No point in betting though. We'll both be dead by then.