> But instead AMD has just followed Nvidia into making slow, uncompetitive GPUs at high prices.
This seems like a needlessly conspiratorial and complicated cope to avoid recognizing that the low end is simply suffering from fixed overhead and rising costs.
The alternative/null hypothesis is that both companies are responding to the market options that TSMC and BOM costs provide them, and the technology is simply moving slower in some segments. In this null hypothesis, it's not an active conspiracy to screw anyone, and nobody is deliberately "followed anyone into noncompetitiveness", there simply isn't a big market opportunity to sell $150 enthusiast GPUs anymore (7850 HD!) and make a decent profit based on the actual costs of building the product and getting the product through design/validation and manufacturing/shipping cycles.
Like, it's kinda facially absurd that gamers think that there's some golden opportunity to make low-margin $150 GPUs that everyone is just choosing to ignore because "they'd rather do AI/because they hate gamers". That's a shitty low-margin product and everyone is choosing to ignore it because it's not profitable, gamers are just kinda operating under this fallacy that $150 is a lot of money for an enthusiast-tier dGPU. And of course gamers will not touch a card with less than 8GB, and will scream a fit with 4060/6600 style 128b buses not being enough width. They don't like any of the compromises that are necessary to get down to this price point, they want a $150 card that's no-compromises quasi-midrange.
Shockingly, most companies are not interested in chasing the customer who wants the corvette for $25k. And yes, you can sustainably build a car for $25k, or maybe even a bit less... but it's not gonna be a corvette either. It's gonna be a midrange that you've "cut down" with feature lockout, or it's gonna be the shitbox econo-model that was bad to start with.
This seems like a needlessly conspiratorial and complicated cope to avoid recognizing that the low end is simply suffering from fixed overhead and rising costs.
The alternative/null hypothesis is that both companies are responding to the market options that TSMC and BOM costs provide them, and the technology is simply moving slower in some segments. In this null hypothesis, it's not an active conspiracy to screw anyone, and nobody is deliberately "followed anyone into noncompetitiveness", there simply isn't a big market opportunity to sell $150 enthusiast GPUs anymore (7850 HD!) and make a decent profit based on the actual costs of building the product and getting the product through design/validation and manufacturing/shipping cycles.
Like, it's kinda facially absurd that gamers think that there's some golden opportunity to make low-margin $150 GPUs that everyone is just choosing to ignore because "they'd rather do AI/because they hate gamers". That's a shitty low-margin product and everyone is choosing to ignore it because it's not profitable, gamers are just kinda operating under this fallacy that $150 is a lot of money for an enthusiast-tier dGPU. And of course gamers will not touch a card with less than 8GB, and will scream a fit with 4060/6600 style 128b buses not being enough width. They don't like any of the compromises that are necessary to get down to this price point, they want a $150 card that's no-compromises quasi-midrange.
Shockingly, most companies are not interested in chasing the customer who wants the corvette for $25k. And yes, you can sustainably build a car for $25k, or maybe even a bit less... but it's not gonna be a corvette either. It's gonna be a midrange that you've "cut down" with feature lockout, or it's gonna be the shitbox econo-model that was bad to start with.