SharpeXB

You make it sound like Nvidia has a monopoly on the market and is engaged in price fixing. They aren’t the only company that makes graphics cards but they do command a lead in this particular segment. PC gamers are split 75% Nvidia 17% AMD and 8% Intel. AMD makes 100% of the GPUs for the PS and Xbox consoles though and those are about 50% of the whole gaming market. Comparing prices between Nvidia and AMD reveals them to be about equal kind for kind. The most common card is an RTX 3060 at $290 and its AMD equivalent RX 6600 sells for $200. The RTX 4080 and AMD 7900 XTX both weigh in at about $1,000. So there is competition here. Sure, they are usually oriented around some particular segment. What’s amazing to realize is how many people probably own a chunk of Nvidia. Assuming they are allocated correctly the largest segment they’ll be in is a large cap US stock or S&P Index fund. The largest holdings in those will be the current “Magnificent Seven”, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. So Nvidia is probably one of the largest holdings that some 55 million people have. Every one of those companies is striving, as you decry to “squeeze as much dough from the market as possible” and that money is funding millions of retirements and sending kids to college and so on.

I saw that. Yeah it’s pretty good.

Wags mentions it here

My favorite false advertising was Nvidia’s claim that Dynamic Super Resolution “provides 4K 2160x3840 quality on any screen” Literally telling people it will put more pixels on their monitor I notice that’s been taken down, maybe somebody sued them

An interesting point although as I see it that theory would tend to justify the higher prices. It implies that regardless of price there are only so many customers for a certain product. So the market for graphics cards is limited to people who own a compatible PC and lowering the price would not increase demand. Unless you consider scalping etc. Therefore Nvidia would have less to gain by lowering prices and selling higher quantities as could be done with something like game consoles. The demand for crypto mining sure seems like the very definition of infinite demand. You can literally use these to make money and there’s no upward limit for that. A Dividend Reinvestment Plan? No perhaps I wasn’t clear. Many investors (in the US) like me are into mutual funds. They own shares of that which in turn owns a variety of equities or other securities. It’s a better option than directly owning the stock for many reasons. 60% of Americans have such accounts mainly for retirement. So yes that doesn’t apply to literally everyone but it’s a very large segment. The profits made by companies like Nvidia benefit huge numbers of ordinary people, not just a “handful of super-rich guys”

Your posts come across as if you don’t understand much of it, so… You should see how much this can work for the average investor. Not just super wealthy people. The average US worker (or the kind that can afford PC games) will retire on what they make in the market, continually reinvesting those dividends over decades. Companies that lose money certainly don’t help anyone.

Yes it is. That’s Econ 101. Did they teach economics where you went to school? Do you remember trying to buy toilet paper during the pandemic? And that’s millions of people. The money those people earn then funds so many other things. Every market is influenced by the same forces. Seems like you need to educate yourself on how the economy works, you’d be less upset and confused.

My DCS takes 30 seconds to start up. I’m greeted by a “15 Years of DCS” splash screen and a progress bar. Seems ok to me

From an economic standpoint it doesn’t matter who the customers are, they’re still buyers. Supply and demand are interrelated. Supply is always finite and demand is infinite. If they were priced higher they wouldn’t sell out and vice versa. Right, all you have to do to get a good price is wait. If you just gotta have anything right away you’ll pay a premium. That’s how every market works including this one. There’s nothing cynical or nefarious about the pricing. If anything they are initially priced too low which is why there’s a shortage. Price is just a rationing mechanism and the substitute for a more restrictive price is something else like a waiting list. Such as standing in line for a sellout show. Every company tries to maximize profit unless they’re incompetent. If AMD could create such demand for their products they would do the same. In the larger scheme of things everyone in the economy benefits from companies being profitable.

And yet, even at these prices graphics cards like this will be sold out and on wait lists upon launch. The customer they are targeting these at can clearly afford them. The average person doesn’t buy a 5090, they own a PlayStation. There’s also such a thing as voluntary inflation where the cost of living is exceeded by the cost of living well. We live in an age where it’s possible to buy a $400 toothbrush.

No thanks

You keep misunderstanding that MSRP means Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price. The actual price you pay for anything depends on market conditions and your own priorities.

A simple search here finds graphics cards at MSRP or up to maybe 25% more for the same product depending on where you buy. Savvy shopping or in some cases just the willingness to wait will get you a good deal. If you just gotta have the hot newest thing right away you’ll pay the premium. That’s normal when buying anything.

It sure woulda been exciting though Hey the F-10 map stuff was kinda out of character for these. I’m guessing it was hinting at the Dynamic Campaign.

I really don’t think I have. I wasn’t buying them from third party sites, I think every card I purchased before the 4090 was direct from EVGA. And before the pandemic. Of course I had to wait for them. I certainly never paid 25%-50% more than the MSRP like you mention. And shopping for the last 4090 they all seemed to be consistently priced. Funny all the 4090s now I see are more expensive than what I paid You can see some crazy prices on Amazon but again I didn’t shop there. The US does not have a VAT. Fun fact, until several years ago there was no sales tax here on anything you purchased online. So my previous gaming PC and these cards were all tax free. That’s changed now but it sure was great. The price for anything isn’t “justified” it’s simply the result of supply and demand. Unfortunately with these things demand is very high. Again the MSRP doesn’t reflect the actual market conditions. It’s just a baseline. The “S” there is for suggested. If anything these things are priced unrealistically low as hard as that is to deal with.

The 2025 and Beyond video coulda showed a mouse pointer clicking on “Resume”. That woulda been awesome!

Oh I know about Necksafer. Don’t you think that can make people sick? I would think combining that with the VR zoom view is

Are those map images in the 2025 and Beyond video a hint at the Dynamic Campaign?

There’s competition in the GPU industry, it’s not a monopoly. But Nvidia definitely is in the lead, that’s for sure. At least in this segment. Again I don’t feel taken advantage of because I probably made enough money off them last year to buy a trunk full of those cards. If Nvidia was actually greedy they’d be selling those cards for the real “free market” price you see on eBay

The wait list to buy these things tells you clearly that customers do see a value in them. Even if those customers are crypto miners In fact when you look at how they sell out like they do they’re actually underpriced. As hard as that is to say… Making a profit isn’t greed, it’s just business. Fortunately anyone who can afford a card like that probably owns Nvidia stock, so… cheers

It’s certainly possible IRL to look at your 6:00 it just requires effort that can’t be simulated in a PC game. Realize that looking 180 IRL doesn’t mean literally turning your head 180 like a VR HMD forces you to do.

Providing feedback, which is what this topic is all about. That’s not an ideal solution to the whole problem either. More like a “cop out” if you ask me. A good solution would simply be a default in the game.

Yeah but at this stage they’re just simplistic in the extreme. They’re just dot labels. You’d have to make the label actually read the aircraft livery or something. On a monitor you don’t need the dot in order to see the aircraft model anyways. Why make the dot livery-colored when you can just look at the aircraft livery itself? Heck some aircraft have different colors on each side. When they go inverted over the sea they stand out really well. A dot can’t show target aspect like that either.

It would be great if the game could do reflections like that in a realistic manner. But again dots wouldn’t be able to do this.

A flaw that’s inherent to dots is that they aren’t able to show the target color. They can’t show the difference between a light colored aircraft against the sea or a dark camouflaged one against terrain. In some cases (without dots) you can practically ID a target by its color alone.