[mikepurvis]

> higher than expected 4090 demand

Has anyone done analysis on this? My layman's assumption is that with the shortages and gouging/scalping over the past two years, an awful lot of people decided to tough it out on their 10-, 16-, and 20- series cards, and now the narrative is that the shortages are over (whether or not the actual prices really back that up) and those people who skipped a generation or two are now emotionally and financially prepared to "treat" themselves to the new top of the line.

If this is it, though, it seems weird that it could really have caught Nvidia by surprise. Don't they have driver-level telemetry that would show them all those older cards plugged into new-chipset motherboards, and could give them some indication of demand?

[cinntaile]

Plenty of people do have the money to spend on these cards. It's entirely possible that it's really just a vocal minority that refuses to pay these prices. I agree with the grandparent and the 4090 probably sells better than expected. The card performs well too.

[AdrianB1]

We are in an economic recession, so even if the people have the money, many are not willing to spend it on a graphic card. If you also consider parts of the world like Europe where the price of electricity more than doubled and the power consumption of 4xxx series (practically secondary room heaters), there are even less people here willing to pay the price.

[q-big]

> If you also consider parts of the world like Europe where the price of electricity more than doubled and the power consumption of 4xxx series (practically secondary room heaters)

Considering the worries about heating in the winter this year in some European countries, marketing the 4xxx as a secondary heater might actually be a good idea ...

[cinntaile]

That's what you think and expect, but it might not be what is happening. The 40xx series is already priced above a point where people that don't have the necessary disposable income can afford a 40xx. I doubt the electricity prices affect hobby and professional users of these cards all that much.

[injinj]

China fomo? Are these good enough to fill the needs of AI workloads of the datacenters which can no longer get the next gen NVIDIA GPUs?

[mattnewton]

Benchmarks I have seen absolutely put them above existing workstation cards in everything except memory. If your model and embeddings fit into 24gb vram, it absolutely makes sense to buy this over an a5500 or even a a6000

[D13Fd]

That’s me. I spent 4 years with the last gen and I don’t feel bad about spending $1600 this time. I actually feel lucky that I kind of skipped over the whole shortage.

[mikepurvis]

Absolutely, and that's pretty serious coin even for us wealthy tech workers! You could buy both next gen consoles for the price of a single component in your computer.

[sdenton4]

A computer is the thing you attach to your graphics card.

[mikepurvis]

Sure, if the card costs $1600. But for most mere mortals, their GPU is built into the CPU, soldered onto a laptop motherboard, or if truly discrete, is at most a quarter of the total BOM.

[Scaevolus]

You still can't easily buy a PS5.