To be fair, AMD is trying as hard as they can to not be appealing there. They inexplicably participate in the VRAM cartel when… they have no incentive to.
When the bill of materials is really only like $100-$200 more, at most. Nvidia can get away with this because everyone is clamoring for their top end cards
In other words, with a phone call to their OEMs like Asus and such, Lisa Su could lift the VRAM restrictions from their cards and say 'you’re allowed to sell as much VRAM on a 7900 or 9000 series as you can make fit." They could pull the rug out from under Nvidia and charge a $100-$200 markup instead of a $3000-$7000 one.
…Yet they don’t.
It makes no sense. They’re maintaining an anticompetitive VRAM ‘cartel’ with Nvidia instead of trying to compete.
Intel has more of an excuse here, as they literally don’t manufacture a GPU that can take more than 24GB VRAM, but AMD literally has none I can think of.
My theory is that they’re just scared to annoy Nvidia too much. If they priced their GPUs so as to really increase their market share, Nvidia might retaliate. And Nvidia definitely has the deeper pockets. AMD has no chance to win a price war.
Wait wait wait… If I push your theory a bit, it then means that Nvidia could crush AMD at any time, becoming a full fledged monopoly (and being able to rake in much more profits), but they are… Deciding not to? Out of the goodness in their hearts maybe?
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To be fair, AMD is trying as hard as they can to not be appealing there. They inexplicably participate in the VRAM cartel when… they have no incentive to.
What’s the VRAM cartel story? Think I missed that.
Basically, consumer VRAM is dirt cheap, not too far from DDR5 in $/gigabyte. And high VRAM (especially 48GB+) cards are in high demand.
But Nvidia charges through the nose for the privilege of adding more VRAM to cards. See this, which is almost the same silicon as the 5090: https://www.amazon.com/Blackwell-Professional-Workstation-Simulation-Engineering/dp/B0F7Y644FQ
When the bill of materials is really only like $100-$200 more, at most. Nvidia can get away with this because everyone is clamoring for their top end cards
AMD, meanwhile, is kind of a laughing stock in the prosumer GPU space. No one’s buying them for CAD. No one’s buying them for compute, for sure… And yet they do the same thing as Nvidia: https://www.amazon.com/AMD-Professional-Workstation-Rendering-DisplaPortTM/dp/B0C5DK4R3G/
In other words, with a phone call to their OEMs like Asus and such, Lisa Su could lift the VRAM restrictions from their cards and say 'you’re allowed to sell as much VRAM on a 7900 or 9000 series as you can make fit." They could pull the rug out from under Nvidia and charge a $100-$200 markup instead of a $3000-$7000 one.
…Yet they don’t.
It makes no sense. They’re maintaining an anticompetitive VRAM ‘cartel’ with Nvidia instead of trying to compete.
Intel has more of an excuse here, as they literally don’t manufacture a GPU that can take more than 24GB VRAM, but AMD literally has none I can think of.
My theory is that they’re just scared to annoy Nvidia too much. If they priced their GPUs so as to really increase their market share, Nvidia might retaliate. And Nvidia definitely has the deeper pockets. AMD has no chance to win a price war.
Seems like a weird strategy to not compete out of fear of success.
It’s fear of failure not success because success isn’t an option.
Cause if they start to “succeed” then they actually fail since they will be crushed by Nvidia.
Their options are to either hold the status quo or lose more because they angered the green hulk in the room
Wait wait wait… If I push your theory a bit, it then means that Nvidia could crush AMD at any time, becoming a full fledged monopoly (and being able to rake in much more profits), but they are… Deciding not to? Out of the goodness in their hearts maybe?
You don’t want to anger the 800 pound gorilla.