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Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

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Re: Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

#71

Post by littlestymaar »

zonkerdonker wrote: post #39
654wak654 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best we're getting is probably a stop to the price raises, but no price cuts. Kids will continue to grow up not knowing a $600 flagship GPU or a $1000 gaming PC.

It really is a damn shame, but before AI, it was cryptomining. Desktop GPU prices have been inflated to nonsense levels for gamers, to the point where console vs. PC isnt even really question anymore.

If you're willing to accept the performance level of a console, then you can buy a second-hand 3060 for cheap.

Re: Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

#72

Post by chronciger »

9rx wrote: post #47
sleepyguy wrote: post #18

Manufacturers learned a valuable lesson a few years ago: overproduction leads to lower prices. Samsung was the first to address this issue by scaling back, and other manufacturers soon followed suit (collusion, cough cough). The past couple of years have been extremely profitable for the entire industry, and they’re not about to increase production and risk hurting their profits. I suspect they would rather face shor…

> I suspect they would rather face shortages then satisfy market demand. Doubtful. A shortage is normally a scary prospect for a vendor. It means that buyers want to pay more, but something is getting in the way of the seller accepting that higher price. Satisfying market demand is the only way to maximize profitability. Why do you think companies would prefer to make less profit here?

> Why do you think companies would prefer to make less profit here?

Because if you make too much profit, you get regulated by government.

Re: Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

#73

Post by andreybaskov »

philipallstar wrote: post #59
nostrademons wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's always been a rent-seeking middleman service. In the 80s it was retail: you'd go to a physical computer store to buy a game for $50 (note: that's $150 inflation-adjusted, more expensive than most games today), and the retail store, the distributor, and the publisher would all take a cut. In the 2000s it was the developer's ISP, web developer, and credit card payment processor, which were non-trivial i…

None of this is rent-seeking.

Retail store literally had to pay rent to a landlord. How’s that not a rent seeking business?

Re: Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

#74

Post by littlestymaar »

nostrademons wrote: post #55
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly how it works. A whole generation is already unaware that you used to be able to buy PC games anonymously, offline, without a rent seeking middleman service.

I think there's always been a rent-seeking middleman service. In the 80s it was retail: you'd go to a physical computer store to buy a game for $50 (note: that's $150 inflation-adjusted, more expensive than most games today), and the retail store, the distributor, and the publisher would all take a cut. In the 2000s it was the developer's ISP, web developer, and credit card payment processor, which were non-trivial i…

> credit card payment processor, which were non-trivial in the days before Wix and Stripe.

Stripe is way more expensive than regular payment processors. Convenient for sure, but definitely not cheap.

Re: Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

#75

Post by zargon »

MyOutfitIsVague wrote: post #60
Ekaros wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even with increased priced you often still get paltry amount of RAM. All for market segmentation due to AI use cases. Which is bad as requirements have crept up.

Really frustrating for a hobbyist 3D artist. Rendering eats gobs of RAM for complex scenes. I'd really love a mid-level GPU with lots of VRAM for under $500. As is, I'm stuck rendering on CPU at a tenth the speed or making it work with compositing.

3d rendering can use multiple GPUs right? Maybe pick up a couple MI50 32GB cards off Alibaba. A couple months ago they were $100 each but it looks like they're up to ~$160 now.

Re: Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

#76

Post by 9rx »

chronciger wrote: post #72
9rx wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect they would rather face shortages then satisfy market demand. Doubtful. A shortage is normally a scary prospect for a vendor. It means that buyers want to pay more, but something is getting in the way of the seller accepting that higher price. Satisfying market demand is the only way to maximize profitability. Why do you think companies would prefer to make less profit here?

> Why do you think companies would prefer to make less profit here? Because if you make too much profit, you get regulated by government.

It's not the 1980s anymore. If you make too much profit nowadays you pull a John Deere and start crying to government that your customers aren't profitable enough (because you siphoned off all of their profit) and need a bailout so that they can pay even more for your product in the future.

Re: Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

#77

Post by jonas21 »

654wak654 wrote: post #28
Ekaros wrote: post #25

I hope this AI craze will crash soon enough. Maybe then various things normalize in price again. And consumers get cheaper products with less limitations.

Best we're getting is probably a stop to the price raises, but no price cuts. Kids will continue to grow up not knowing a $600 flagship GPU or a $1000 gaming PC.

For $50, kids these days can buy a Raspberry Pi that would have run circles around the best PC money could buy when I was a kid.

Or, for $300, you can buy an RTX 5060 that is better than the best GPU from just 6 years ago. It's even faster than the top supercomputer in the world in 2003, one that cost $500 million to build.

I find it hard to pity kids who can't afford the absolute latest and greatest when stuff that would have absolutely blown my mind as a kid is available for cheap.

Re: Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

#78

Post by epistasis »

vondur wrote: post #2

Desktop memory has also increased in price. I think it’s twice as expensive for DDR5 than it was 6 months ago.

Even used memory has doubled in price. I was thinking of putting together a high-memory box for a side project, and reddit posts from a year ago all have memory at 1/2 to 1/3 of current ebay prices for the same part.

Re: Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

#79

Post by KronisLV »

riskable wrote: post #66

Hopefully this will put pressure on the market to produce much more efficient AI models. As opposed to bigger, then bigger, and then even BIGGER models (which is the current trend). FYI: gpt-oss:120b is better at coding (in benchmarks and my own anecdotal testing) than gpt5-mini. More importantly, it's so much faster too. We need more of this kind of optimization. Note that gpt5-mini is estimated to be around ~150 bi…

For what it’s worth, even the Qwen 30B model has its use cases. And as far as some of the better open models go, by now the GLM 4.6 355B model is largely better than the Qwen3 Coder 480B variant, so it seems that the models are getting more efficient across the board.
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