Our economy increasingly is consumed to serve the rich. They are eating the world. Grocery stores increasingly cater to the wealthy. So do the automakers. Billionaires are buying up whole city blocks for themselves. And now we won’t be able to buy electronics because they’ve taken the resources for their speculative investments, and if they crash the economy our tax dollars will be appropriated to bail them out. It’s almost like we’re barreling towards a violent confrontation between the classes…
It’s just nonsense. Absolutely nonsense.
It’s such a shame to see high-performance computing and gaming more broadly become largely unaffordable. Hell, prior to the DRAM shortage, the current-generation game consoles were already MORE EXPENSIVE than they were at launch. And it’s just going to get worse.
Like it was before. In the, not so long ago, past a high end pc was too expensive for the average user.
This statement sounds defeatist.
None of this is “high performance computing”. Are you simulating nuclear explosions? Airflow around supersonic aircraft? Sequencing DNA?
This is all entertainment, it’s useless, it turns people into potatoes. Digital garbage to make AI fat people fart videos.
Good riddance I say.
“Dear Mr. President, there are too many states nowadays, please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot.”
Go use a type writer.
You posting on the Internet is also useless digital garbage, so put your money where your mouth is and go do something productive.
Lil bro thinks this is only about gaming
Probably never used his pc for anything other than
I simulated a nuclear accident in a i5 2540M
I just did on an esp32
On my steam deck. It was devastating 🤣
Nothing lasts forever. Even this.
It’s only going to get worse.
Or the PC market existing.
Yep. Being able to own a PC was nice while it lasted.
I mean… We will learn to make our rigs last, do more with less, and carry on optimizing Linux builds. Anything you can run today, you’ll be able to run tomorrow. And there is enough backlog to keep us all busy until at least 2028… Be honest with yourself lol
ELKS linux runs on 128 Kb RAM on ROM-based systems.
I mean, a PC from year 1999 is in the realm of possible for plenty of more localized production chains than needed to have that monster with Ryzen in the name.
And it’s not unreasonable to expect such a scattering of production. It happened with plenty of technologies. Also it’s not unreasonable to expect a return from more sophisticated and powerful material culture to one less so at both, but more accessible.
That’s what happened with automobiles a few times in history, that’s what happened with construction technologies and money many times in history, with food, with warfare.
That semiconductors are something challenging in complexity to produce - that actually makes such scattering more probable.
It’s not much different from chinaware or late medieval metallurgy needed for firearms. Strategic technologies are hard to achieve and it’s simpler to purchase their output, but eventually everyone realizes they need their own.
So I really hope that instead of the same not really diverse ecosystem of Intel, AMD and ARM powerful hardware we’ll have a thousand different local manufacturers of partially compatible hardware far weaker, like Amiga 1200, but more interesting.
Perhaps this will also be similar to the transition from late Rome to early Middle Ages.
It just makes sense historically. More distributed production environment can support smaller efficiency, - can’t make and sell on the same scale, - but there will be constant pressure to have it.
Of course, in reality this is all alarmism for no reason. There will be a bubble burst, suppose, - well, then there’ll be plenty of cheap hardware thrown out. The RAM manufacturers will have hard times, but it’ll balance out eventually. Just how it did after the dotcom bubble, not in the best way, perhaps with only a few manufacturers remaining, but it will. Or if there will be no bubble burst, suppose all that computing power founds an application with non-speculative value, - well, there’s still long way to go before your typical PC usage starts requiring really expensive amounts of RAM. If we drop the Web, even with modern Linux or FreeBSD one could survive on 2GB RAM and Intel C2D in year 2019. Then on 4GB, almost comfortable, even playing some games.
One good thing I’m seeing - those RAM prices can eventually kill the Web. It’s the most RAM-hungry part of our needs for no good reason. Perhaps Gemini is not what can replace it, it’s too basic, but I can see it becoming in corporate interest to support a leaner non-compatible replacement for the same niche. And corporate interest kills.
Or perhaps they’ll like some sort of semantic web gone wrong way - with some kind of “web” intended for AI agents, not humans, with humans having a chat prompt.
I’m sure it doesn’t help that motherboard manufacturers have increasingly been targeting “whale” consumers over the last 10-15 years. I remember when a top of the line motherboard would cost you $300; and an average board was around $100-150.
Have not built a PC since Windows7, what is the difference between a 150 and a top of the line motherboard?
I’m talking more like the Windows ME/XP days to be honest. But too many to count. It’s more that actually useful features that used to be fairly standard (like 7-segment status displays and speakers) are effectively being gated behind $500+ motherboards to make them more attractive. A board that would have come with alphanumeric status codes now is lucky to ship with a couple LEDs that just indicate where a problem is at, not what the specific problem is.
Or gpu prices or hdd/ssd prices that never recovered from the tsunami. Consumers just keep getting fucked.
A rising tide drowns those who can’t swim.
On the plus side, indie games that don’t require a rocket ship for a PC have never been better. So, can still play some good stuff on my old clunker. Thanks to Steam/Proton, they run even better on my old computer.
Would be nice to see the gaming industry pivot back to making innovative games within the constraints of hardware, instead of just expecting customers to throw ever more powerful (and power consuming) hardware at it.
As much (well deserved) hate that Nintendo gets, they are fantastic at this. They seem to be able to make games look good on low powered systems with stylistic decisions and smart optimization/coding. They learned some pretty important things in the NES/SNES era about using tricks to squeeze performance out of the few KB/MB they had to work with.
DLSS has made devs lazy. Why bother optimizing when you can have some whiz bang AI algorithm turn a low res input into a greasy looking high res output.
Some Indy games using unreal engine can still bog down a fast PC…
I’m on ryzen 9 5900x, rtx 3080, 32 GB DDR4, with mobo and psu that’s ~€850 today and it will play most modern games on high settings 1080p at +100 fps. Computer hardware these days is a lot more like car hardware than it used to be. Generational improvements aren’t as big and the price for a used 5 year old unit is a ⅓ of a new one. Unless you absolutely need the latest and greatest go with a used last gen.
Same specs as you except 5800x3D. Same sentiments at 1440p.
Same here, except 64GB of RAM, I can’t even remember how much that cost 4 years ago but I’m afraid to check the receipt at this point.
You’ll be happy with the government supplied computers whether you like it or not.
It won’t be government supplied. You’ll buy a basic terminal from some big tech company, and then subscribe to a plan that will grant you access to remote processing, memory, and cloud storage. Think Google Stadia but for everything. Using a computer will be more like using, say, the PlayStation store. You won’t be able to install whatever you like - only what is made available. Piracy or adblocking will be impossible. Privacy and anonymity will become things of the past. Even news and information will be curated. And you’ll have to keep paying for it all in perpetuity, while being tracked and forced to consume manipulative, targeted advertising.
Or you can install linux.
Alternately, perhaps we can look forward to
You’ll be happy to rent the megacorporation owned and configured computers whether you like it or not.
Still to optimistic.
You’ll be happy to rent the megacorporation owned and configured remote interface for the corporate remote computing server which you will also happily pay a subscription to access wether you like it or not.
Thanks. I hate it.
Wow, I can’t believe my plan for a cheap motherboard worked.
If sales are going down, prices of the motherboards are going up.
Going to gouge all the midstream businesses in the long run. Hardware retailers, PC assemblers, all those little companies selling custom cases and overclock kits and fancy cooling appliances.
The lack of cheap but crucial components will have some ugly coat tails for the rest of the industry.
Oh I didn’t even think of this. There are so many companies that could get into trouble because of this, and they will all get mad at the AI bullshitters.
Next up: MSI, ASUS, … are pulling out of the consumer market due to falling revenue causing major price hikes.
Here’s to hoping that it increases pressure to break the cartels and start getting the ball rolling on more independent foundries.
Problem I see with new foundries is that the profit is still going to be selling to data centers. It would take a philanthrope like Marc Cuban selling meds at cost, selling at a loss to enthusiasts.
Calling Marc Cuban a philanthrope feels icky, but he is doing a thing that I think is genuine.
It doesn’t matter as long a the supply continues to grow. It also helps make the rest of the world less dependent on a US hegemony that’s now going sour. When investment firms are buying up so much inventory for data centers that aren’t even operational, a big part of that exists as an excuse for market manipulation by the really big hitters that have their presence in those cartels anyway. Once they start feeding their own demise and market competition, they will back off pretty quickly and will likely saturate the market from the surplus inventory they are clearly hoarding under bullshit excuses to try to eliminate and buy up the nascent competition.
Do MSI and ASUS have enough corporate/enterprise sales to offset the loss of consumer demand? With the RAM companies the consumer crunch is caused by AI companies bidding up the price of raw memory silicon well beyond what makes financial sense to package and solder onto DIMMs (or even directly solder the packages onto boards for ultra thin laptops).
Asus is a significant ODM, supplying boards for brands like HP. I’m not sure what lines/models they make today, but they are a lot bigger than just their consumer lines.
This is hilarious. Intel after many years finally fixed their manufacturing process, but won’t be able to sell chips because of memory crunch
If only they had a solid state technology that expanded system memory… Shutting down optane comes to bite them, again.
Burst the fucking bubble already. I’m edging so hard right now.
It’s a play to make at home compute unachievable, forcing people to pay for subscription cloud services and cloud compute in walled gardens.
I don’t agree. The prices will rise across the board no matter where you site the memory or if it’s in a gaming computer or otherwise. Renting will always be more expensive than owning because competitors must recoup the capital cost of buying and make margin at the same time.
At least people aren’t buying at these high prices, wouldn’t want them to stay there after all.
This is a good point, we don’t need PCs to be this expensive.
I just hope we don’t fuck up the whole thing and end up with cloud computers or end up not making new PCs…
I’m pretty convinced this is the play. Drive up DIY PC parts then promote thin cloud clients as a way to have a PC without paying the crazy prices that they set. It’s a lot easier to tell you “it’s safer for the children” and pillage every file, action, and keystroke for AI training and data brokerage. Your owned PC is a black box for them and it’s their wet dream to own it for you… As a subscription of course.
thin client machines that you have to lease with a cloud subscription and which are locked down to the intended purpose only. basically the death of generic computing. delevoper machines will be tied down devel kits.
Isn’t that what windows is anyway?
While it might actually end up going that way, I don’t think that’s a deliberate play. The tech bros and C-suite execs tend to be sociopathic dumbasses. I think they’re legitimately just loading themselves up with tons of debt just to buy hardware to capture market share thinking that things could never collapsed on them.
Like a Chromebook.
If the only affordable option for using computers is cloud-based subscriptions, that’s when computers are no longer worth it to me. I’ll just take up something else.
Computer with cloud-based subscription sounds like a great example of enshittification.
I might prefer no PC over that. Ew. I mean, the libraries have PCs you can borrow if I’d really need to use one.
Just keep old computers is all. Eventually your spec will be considered ‘retro computing’ and you can still enjoy the thousands of games that are playable on real hardware.
5 years ago I would’ve called you insane, but with everything happening right now… it’s a distinct possibility.
RAM’s unaffordable, GPU’s will likely be harder to come by and more expensive. Microsoft is actively driving people away from Windows, Steam is launching their Steam Machine…
Here’s hoping many gamers will jump to Linux and grow that platform instead. But even then, too expensive hardware will be an issue.
We’re living in interesting times.
I would have called myself insane five years ago too!
Yeah, jumping to Linux could help a bit. I did that a couple of years ago, but that was more because I couldn’t upgrade to Win 11 on my almost a decade old PC. Now I’m glad I couldn’t upgrade to Win 11 haha.
I had a laptop with Win 11 tho but I never got used to it and don’t want AI and shit in any of my computers so I jumped over to Linux on that to.
Maybe Steam will save the day with the Steam Cube? Isn’t that pretty much a normal gaming PC?
That in itself might act to make linux attractive as it can be a much lighter weight alternative to windows to stretch the useful life of hardware they own.
That’s actually the main reason I switched my PC from Windows 10 to Linux. I couldn’t upgrade to Win 11. Now I’m happy I couldn’t!
That is an increasingly high risk I can see, PCs just no longer exist.
