61–70 of 402 posts
I used to sell 64kbit (yes, bit) DRAM at $7 in 1982. 1 year later was The memory business is a pure commodity and brutally cyclic. Big profit => build a fab => wait 2 years => oh shit, everyone else did it => dump units at below cost. Repeat.
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I think it's intended as a comparison of cost when building a gaming-capable computer vs. a console of somewhat equivalent power. It used to be a general rule of thumb that you could build a computer of roughly equivalent power for the cost of a game console, or a little more — now the memory costs more than the whole console.
It still is a rule of thumb, you dont need DDR5 for a gaming computer let alone 64gb. A low end am4 cpu + 16gb of DD4 3600 and a decent gpu will beat a ps5 in performance and cost. I dont understand why the headline made this strange comparison.
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RAM prices are cyclical. We are in the under supply part of the cycle. People just have to wait. As prices are sky high, production capacity will likely increase. Some AI companies will go bust. Demand will plummet and we will buy RAM for pennies while the market consolidates.
That's historically what happened when we had proper competition. Now we have a 3 party oligopoly and massive barriers to entry. Now at least 1 of the 3 is actively signalling than they're not going to not going to spend 100s of billions to expand fab capacity that will lower their profits because if one does it they'll all do it. It's a prisoner dilemma, and they're co-operating. When they co-operate we all lose.
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Well, what really prompted this crisis is AI, as well as Samsung shutting down some production (and I have to say I don't think they mind that the pricing has skyrocketed as a result!) But yes we're going to need more fabs for sure
> Well, what really prompted this crisis is AI, If the shortage of RAM is because of AI (so servers/data centers I presume?), wouldn't that mean the shortage should be localized to RDIMM rather than the much more common UDIMM that most gaming PCs use? But it seems to me like the pricing is going up more for UDIMM than RDIMM.
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Did Sam Altman buy out all gaming RAM?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, what really prompted this crisis is AI, as well as Samsung shutting down some production (and I have to say I don't think they mind that the pricing has skyrocketed as a result!) But yes we're going to need more fabs for sure
> Well, what really prompted this crisis is AI, If the shortage of RAM is because of AI (so servers/data centers I presume?), wouldn't that mean the shortage should be localized to RDIMM rather than the much more common UDIMM that most gaming PCs use? But it seems to me like the pricing is going up more for UDIMM than RDIMM.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's intended as a comparison of cost when building a gaming-capable computer vs. a console of somewhat equivalent power. It used to be a general rule of thumb that you could build a computer of roughly equivalent power for the cost of a game console, or a little more — now the memory costs more than the whole console.
To be fair, if this keeps up, expect the price of a PS5 to skyrocket too.
I used to sell 64kbit (yes, bit) DRAM at $7 in 1982. 1 year later was The memory business is a pure commodity and brutally cyclic. Big profit => build a fab => wait 2 years => oh shit, everyone else did it => dump units at below cost. Repeat.
Old enough here to remember Intel exiting the DRAM business.