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Verificus OP t1_j10n2fz wrote

Reply to comment by sumane12 in To all you well-read and informed futurologists here: what is the future of gaming? by Verificus

For point1, I am referring to the fact that going to 3nm or 2nm production processes is going to produce wafers at ungodly price levels. For future generation performance jumps that means that perhaps performance per dollar or performance at a 4090 level might come down significantly but enthusiast performance levels will go higher and higher with predictions saying in 5 years, Nvidia’s best GPU might cost 3k-4k.

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great_waldini t1_j12h27y wrote

We have no reason to think GPUs will get substantially more expensive than they currently are. They’re artificially inflated the last couple of years because of the crypto frenzy - let’s hope proof of work dies soon.

As for 2-3nm silicone, that’s extremely unlikely to ever happen. We can actually already get lithography down to those scales (not on a mass manufacturing scale obviously) but the problem we run into at those scales is actually quantum tunneling. Which is to say electrons start to spontaneously jump the gap and effectively short circuit. This leads to unreliability of the compute processor. Think flipping ones to zeros and zeros to ones when they shouldn’t be flipping. That makes for big problems at the metal level needless to say.

AMD has demonstrated one alternative however to keep us true to Moore’s law - expanding the breadth of parallel processing with more threads. There will be other such innovations in architecture as well, and surely more on the manufacturing side too.

Consumers will always pay a premium to be on the cutting edge of high performance, but if Moore’s law has held true this long, I’m not worried about costs decoupling from the patterns they’ve so far obeyed anytime soon. It’s certainly a “Lindy” type of situation.

If GPUs reach $3-5k, it’ll be because of inflation. Not for any fundamental reason to the technology itself.

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Verificus OP t1_j136zto wrote

I think you don’t get what I am referring to. 2nm and 3nm are real upcoming GPU production processes but obviously it is not really 2nm and 3nm, it’s how it is marketed. Doesn’t mean cost aren’t going off the charts, they will do so.

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great_waldini t1_j141pcw wrote

I see - maybe I'm not up on the latest marketing BS for GPUs haha. At any rate, I'm curious what you think will be the driving force behind skyrocketing prices? Am I missing a hidden variable on manufacturing costs increasing? Or where do you picture that coming from?

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sumane12 t1_j10pzie wrote

Perhaps, I personally believe the opposite, I think if 2 or 3nm is too expensive, we will go 3d, but I guess time will tell. But again, hopefully it won't matter too much if we can get higher fidelity graphics with the same cards

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Clarkeprops t1_j13b87d wrote

Trickle down economics are a real thing when it comes to tech. A 10 year old 3 thousand dollar video card is worth what now? Fifty bucks? Let the bleeding edge pay for the R&D. They’ll pay top dollar, and I’ll get it at a discount in 2-3 years. Tech ALWAYS has come down in price. Eventually, absolutely anyone can afford it.

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Quealdlor t1_j14duil wrote

GTX 1060 6GB was even better for gaming than the original, $999 Titan 3 years earlier.

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Clarkeprops t1_j14l4v2 wrote

And that card is barely 8 years old.

A 10 year old card is $75 on eBay. I was close.

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Quealdlor t1_j14rzh9 wrote

10 years ago top cards were going for $499-549.

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Clarkeprops t1_j1c50o2 wrote

The GTX 690 was $1000 in 2012, and in todays dollars that’s $1300.

It’s $130 now on eBay. That’s 10% of original cost.

My point stands.

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Quealdlor t1_j14swnz wrote

And btw, the OG Titan became available on February 21st, 2013. I remember it, because I have memory for such information. It was 9.83 years ago - almost 10 years, not 8. You can buy the OG Titan (used) for $140 on eBay - over 7x cheaper.

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Clarkeprops t1_j1c5phh wrote

GTX 690 was 1300 10 years ago (adjusted for inflation)

It’s now 130. That’s 10% of original cost.

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Quealdlor t1_j1cqqut wrote

I don't count double GPU cards, because they were problematic and there are no modern counterparts. RTX 4090 is GTX 580's current counterpart.

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Quealdlor t1_j1e3ans wrote

Look at this https://youtu.be/7gFxAlGjwms?t=984 to see how poorly games performed in 2012 on multi-GPU configurations. 16 teraflops theoretically, but in practice it could even perform close to Xbox One or PlayStation 4 which were only $399 not that long after that.

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