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The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

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Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#261

Post by zozbot234 »

3836293648 wrote: post #260
zozbot234 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1440p and 2160p is a total waste of pixels, when 1080p is already at the level of human visual acuity. You can argue that 1440p is a genuine (slight) improvement for super crisp text, but not for a game. HDR and more ray tracing/path tracing, etc. are more sensible ways of pushing quality higher.

I'm sorry, you need to go to an optician. I can see the pixels at a comfortable distance at 1440p. Alternatively, you play modern games with incredibly blurry AA solutions. Try looking at something older from when AA actually worked.

You're probably looking up close at a small portion of the screen - you'll always be able to "see the pixels" in that situation. If you sit far back enough to keep the whole of the screen comfortably in your visual field, the argument applies.

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#262

Post by staz »

bombcar wrote: post #77
forrestthewoods wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it would be a good thing. This is an insane thing to say. > Game and engine devs simply don't bother anymore to optimize for the low end All games carefully consider the total addressable market. You can build a low end game that runs great on total ass garbage onboard GPU. Suffice to say these gamers are not an audience that spend a lot of money on games. It’s totally fine and good to build premium content…

I wonder what Balatro dos that wouldn’t be possible on a 486.

Some fans ported Balatro to the VBA if you want a comparison of what is possible.

But the buffer for a full HD screen fill most of the memory of a typical 486 computer I think

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#263

Post by pdimitar »

vachina wrote: post #118
sombragris wrote: post #33

I doubt that this would ever happen. But... If it does, I think it would be a good thing. The reason is that it would finally motivate game developers to be more realistic in their minimum hardware requirements, enabling games to be playable on onboard GPUs. Right now, most recent games (for example, many games built on Unreal Engine 5) are unplayable on onboard GPUs. Game and engine devs simply don't bother anymore…

You wish. Games will just be published cloud-only and you can only play them via thin clients.

More like they wish. That would mean a globally good internet infrastructure which is absolutely never happening.

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#264

Post by pdimitar »

moffkalast wrote: post #109
jaapz wrote: post #12

AMD will be very happy when they do. They are already making great cards, currently running an RX7800XT (or something like that), and it's amazing. Linux support is great too

AMD will certainly be very happy to raise prices significantly when they have a defacto monopoly over the market segment alright.

I keep hearing this and yet history has proved, time and again, that any overly greedy monopolist achieves the reverse effect of monopoly.

Don't get too worried. People still can and do vote with their wallets. Additional vector of attack against greedy capitalists is also the fact that the economy is not doing great either.

They cannot increase prices too much.

I also predict that the DDR5 RAM price hikes will not last until 2027 or even 2028 as many others think. I give it maximum one year, I'd even think the prices will start slightly coming down during summer 2026.

Reading and understanding economy is neat and all but in the modern age some people forget that the total addressable market is not infinite and that the regular customers have relatively tight budgets.

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#265

Post by pdimitar »

weaksauce wrote: post #192
fruitworks wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's intel and they're not bad

pretty sure i heard that they were stepping down from doing discrete graphics in the next year or two

Source? (Your username makes your claim a touch funny btw.)

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#266

Post by Zetaphor »

sorushn wrote: post #205
shaky-carrousel wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they do it all gamers will boycott LLMs. Which would be a godsend. Decades trying to save power, moving to LED, trying to improve efficiency everywhere, and now... We are wasting terawatts in digital parrots.

You are vastly overestimating the standards of the median gamer.

Also the influence they have on the tech industry, consoles already dominate the market share

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#267

Post by pdimitar »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #114
_23sd wrote: post #70

This is just DRAM hysteria spiraling out to other kinds of hardware, will age like fine milk just like the rest of the "gaming PC market will never be the same" stuff. Nvidia has Amazon, Google, and others trying to compete with them in the data center. No one is seriously trying to beat their gaming chips. Wouldn't make any sense to give it up.

Took what, four years for PC cases to get back to reasonable prices after COVID? And that’s a relatively low-tech field that (therefore) admits new entrants. I don’t know, I’m not feeling much optimism right now (haven’t at any point after the crypto boom), perhaps because I’ve always leaned towards stocking up on (main) RAM as a cheap way to improve a PC’s performance.

Huh? Only thing I noticed during COVID was a few GPUs and some HDDs getting insanely expensive. Surprise surprise, not even 18 months later (I think more like 14 on my local market) the sellers finally got it through their thick skulls that economy is not what you see in simulations and that 95% of people absolutely will not pay ~$4000 for an RTX 3090 / 4090. And similar for the 18TB HDDs.

I am not saying you are wrong but here in Eastern Europe, while we did suffer the price hikes (and are suffering those of the DDR5 RAM now as well), the impact was minimal. People just holed up, said "the market's crazy right now, let's wait it out", and shrugged. And lo and behold, successfully wait it out they did.

As I mentioned in another comment in this thread, I highly doubt high RAM prices will survive even to 2027. Sure a good amount of stores and suppliers will try to hold on to the prices with a death grip... but many stores and vendors and suppliers hate stale stock. And some other new tech will start coming out. They would not be able to tolerate shelves full of merchandise at prices people don't want to buy at.

They absolutely _will_ budge.

I predict that by July/August 2026 some price decreases will start. They are likely to be small -- no more than 15% IMO -- but they will start.

The current craze of "let's only produce and sell to the big boys" has happened before, happens now, and will happen again. I and many others don't believe the hysteric "the market will never be the same again after" narrative either.

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#268

Post by pdimitar »

venturecruelty wrote: post #168
_23sd wrote: post #70

This is just DRAM hysteria spiraling out to other kinds of hardware, will age like fine milk just like the rest of the "gaming PC market will never be the same" stuff. Nvidia has Amazon, Google, and others trying to compete with them in the data center. No one is seriously trying to beat their gaming chips. Wouldn't make any sense to give it up.

Yeah, sure, every tech company now acts like a craven monopolist hellbent on destroying everything that isn't corporate-driven AI computing, but not this time! This time will be different!

I guess time will tell, will it? Your sarcastic remark does not bear any prophetic value.

They can act as monopolist as they want. They can try anything and cackle maniacally at their amazing business acumen all they want.

Turns out, total addressable market is not infinite. Turns out people don't want to spend on RAM as much as they would on a used car. How shocking! And I am completely sure that yet again the MBAs would be unprepared for these grand revelations, like they are, EVERY time.

Still, let us wait and see. Most of us are not in a rush to build a gaming machine or a workstation next month or else puppies will start dying.

I am pretty sure the same people now rubbing hands and believing they have found the eternal gold, will come back begging and pleading for our measly customer dollars before not too long.

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#269

Post by john01dav »

bluescrn wrote: post #191
ogogmad wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe then the year of Linux (or OpenBSD?) on the desktop would finally arrive. Maybe anti-trust could get used. Maybe parts could get scrapped from data centres. Interesting times they would be!

Linux isn’t much use if you can’t get hold of (non-locked-down) hardware to run it on

For now, such hardware is readily available. Every Walmart, for example, will have it. Amazon has it. Pcpartpicker lists numerous other places that you can buy it from.

Re: The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?

#270

Post by john01dav »

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #157
TehCorwiz wrote: post #108

If they do it'll likely be part of an industry wide push to kill off the home-built PC market. It's no secret that MS and others want the kind of ecosystem Apple has and governments want more backdoor access to tech. And which mfg wouldn't want to eliminate partial upgrades/repairs. Imagine that the only PC you could buy one day has everything tightly integrated with no user serviceable or replaceable parts without a…

I think China will then try to sell their own PC parts instead, their semiconductor industry is catching up so who knows in a decade. But perhaps then the US will probably reply with tariffs on the PC parts (or even ban them!) Which is slowly becoming the norm for US economic policy, and which won't reverse even after Trump.

US already banned Chinese EVs, even though, from what I've heard, they're excellent
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