This is why I stick with open source. Sadly, I don't know what to do about hardware. For a GPU, go with AMD I guess?

The worst is that this isn't even the lack of ownership I want! I'd love to not own a car and have reliable public transit, but can't have that. Instead, I'm not allowed to own the computers and software I buy, or the music I like, or pretty much anything else that brings me joy. Heck, you don't even own the posts you make in the large social media sites!

and with blackjack and hookers!!! lol

RiscV gang

They can’t react in 2026 unless they already have something in the pipe, and they don’t (yet) make their own RAM.

…That being said, it could be a good year for big APUs, which use system RAM you already have to have.

I don't think Chinese GPU vendors will be any better than Nvidia or AMD. That being said, Chinese GPU companies taking say 25% of the (global, B2C) market will probably force Nvidia and AMD to change their tone.

artificial scarcity

From the article:

This implies that Nvidia cannot get enough GDDR7 memory to produce GPUs at its current rate. Alternatively, it implies that Nvidia expects significantly reduced GPU sales in 2026, possibly due to rising NAND and DRAM costs and their impact on PC prices.

That seems a lot more plausible to me than Nvidia trying to intentionally constrain GPU supplies. They just need to expect that the memory shortage will affect their gaming sales. We know that there is a massive RAM shortage. I mean, you don't need to introduce other factors to explain that move.

On a similar note, I've seen articles talking about how PC vendors expect revenue to drop drastically in the near term (since they'll have to hike prices because of the RAM constraints driving up their RAM costs, which in turn will price some consumers out of the market, which will reduce their sales until more supply of RAM relative to demand becomes available). I haven't seen anything about them cutting production, but I would expect them to do so; otherwise they'd just build up a bunch of computers that won't sell.

And I'd bet that there are other companies that will be impacted, all kinds of things that one might not think of as computer vendors that use memory in their devices and suddenly need to hike prices and expect to see sales impacted.

They owe their start to the gaming community, but their success has largely been off the back of being first to "sell shovels" for crypto and AI.

They've kinda outgrown us sadly. I kinda wonder if they'll spin out the GPU business one day.

Alternatively, they see the writing on the wall and are pre-emptively raising GPU prices so they better weather the crash.

Alt: the money they helped launder through LLM firms for criminal orgs who started crypto farms is finally running out.

I just struggle to be...into it anymore.

After the whole COVID thing, after all this other crap, now the ram, like I'm just not into this scarcity thing anymore. A lot of the games suck, everything's released pre-alpha, all this pre buy hype and then the delays just to build more hype.

I dunno, call me jaded, but I'm just kind of over it, and I'm struggling to enjoy these newer games as much. I mean dont get me wrong, I love games still, I love computers and tech still (obviously), but I've as of late have discovered that I've missed so much over the past decade or so. I've been having a hoot playing older stuff, and it's so much more enjoyable. Hence I'm not really caught in the hype as much anymore. My last build is about to hit 2 years old, and honestly it's probably riding the decade out at this point, if not even longer.

9060 XT, for the same reason. My GTX1060 is fine for what I'm I playing right now, but I guess I, too, am a victim of F.O.M.O. (Fear Of Massive Overpricing).

And to hide the collapsing demand that fuelled their bad quarter numbers (higher stockpile and time to get paid for sales).

I think it is a two fold problem, the SSD and memory prices exploded, and made PCs unaffordable, which is also shrinking the demand for discrete GPUs, as less people are buying/building their own rigs.