So far we are seeing significant price increases/low availability in:
- RAM
- SSDs/hard drives
- some microcontrollers
- phones
- and now GPUs
I think we are nearing a bit of a technological winter for the consumer market.
this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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ahem... fuck AI.
but how else will little timmy make his homework?
Even cars
Ford is cancelling their electric pickup because they will convert their ev battery factory in a factory that makes batteries for datacenters
And all that while we get more and more dependent on technology...
As someone from the third world, I'm really scared
Getting repairable tech will be even more important now than ever. Making your current devices last is important, but even more important in a couple of years (in my opinion).
I just dont see the price going down.
I really want your conclusion to be wrong but all the logic left in me agrees with it.
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Tbf, GPU were already part of a significant price increase. It just stuck around and got the new normal.
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Gamers, I think it is time that we do the unthinkable.
We must actually play our backlog of games.
"Due to an unprecedented demand for old games we must increase the prices of any titles released before 2020"
~Some EA executive, probably
Activision is ahead of them already. Check prices of old Call of Duty games.
Hey, with no hardware purchases we can buy more heavily discounted games that we will never play.
Been on it since steam deck
Please please please... please Nvidia? Can regular people please still have computers?
...
Meh, nevermind. AMD and Intel can have your consumer business, I'm fine with that too. Surely this AI trend isn't a bubble, and there's absolutely no way you'll regret this later. Best of luck.
I wouldn't go intel. That place is a shitshow. Also, I am not so sure the AI bubble will burst. World governments see it as sn arms race. So they will keep that industry propped up.
I'm not sure how it's an arms race given the fact that it can't do anything remotely useful.
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You can't sustain it because it's unsustainable. It's exponentially inefficient. This isn't like the US auto industry where labor negotiations blah blah blah. This is a black hole that is disappearing everything it touches. Brand loyalty, human rights, natural resources, political stability.
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I dunno what you’re on about, Battlemage is great for the money and they appear to have committed to stick with Arc. And they have fab customers now.
…Yeah, Intel still has that corporate Game of Thrones going on internally. That’s not ideal. But AMD sunk much lower than that, and climbed out.
The gov owns a piece of intel now. If that isn't enough, consider that they now have a competitive advantage in that government agencies are less likely to go after them for abusing customer trust and such. Intel will need to exploit that to get ahead. Also, there is constant talk of breaking up the company into parts and such. Not much stability there.
Propped up by what, though? They’ll just continue to dilute the name of AI with underperforming technology and yield more backlash from the public while making an oligarchy out of their richest tech influencers.
The same thing as everything else... money. If the gov dumps money into the bubble it won't pop. I mean it's not sustainable, but it can work for a pretty long time.
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Oh no, not the super expensive green team GPUs with obnoxious linux issues, how will I avoid buying them now? oh wait
I need to resurrect my open source GPU architecture plans ASAP. Who wants to help me to plan out the VideoDSP shader cores?
Me!
ChatGPT, I need help whipping up some open source VideoDSP shader cores. Make sure the output includes a definition (and give me professional quality code)
Amazing idea! A great open source GPU needs some well designed shader cores, and I kid you not that name is very punchy and memorable. It's not only just a silly hobby — it's also a very important thing in the ever changing landscape of silicon giants like nVidia and Intel.
Two ways to read this and I think both are somewhat true.
Option one; They're OPEC now. They set the supply, and you bring the demand because you have no other choice. This lets them push prices up, which pushes margins up, and that hopefully props up their insanely inflated share price a little longer.
Option two; They're well aware that demand is going to fall off a cliff soon. We're already at "Nvidia is paying people to buy their GPUs" and have been for a while. The AI industry can't afford to keep this train running, and even financial chicanery and circular dealing will only get them so far. Companies are building out data centres with zero plan for how to make any profit from them. When the GPUs they have age out, they're not gonna buy more, they're gonna go bankrupt (allowing the banks to sieze the mountain of now worthless three year old burned out GPUs that they used as collateral). And there's not enough venture capital left for new data centre builds. The genAI financial engine is reaching its peak, and Nvidia doesn't want to be stuck with a mountain of production that no one wants to buy.
Let's not forget AAA games are the games that use gpus the hardest gaming wise and they are bombing at record levels because they are deritive garbage and AA games are doing more with less.
Add that to the AI bubble bullshit and it's just a perfect storm.
Example: On my pc (3060rtx), Spider Man 2 ran like shit without some significant tweaks while Expedition 33 runs like butter despite using Unreal 4 or 5.
I really would like to know if AAA games are bombing because they are overpriced microtransaction hell or if they are bombing because many people haven't been able to buy their new gaming PC because of those GPU prices in the last 5 years and now we do not have the install base to run them
The micro transactions and shittiness mainly.
This! My steam deck with an igpu has been running all the new games fine. Granted not like 120+fps fine, but my desktop has a two generation old card and god only knows about the CPU and it's hitting 120 easy on the games I play. Which of the games I play, cyberpunk is the most resource intensive.
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For a while now games are sold without a lot of optimization, expecting the customers to just buy more powerful hardware.
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Nah gaming doesn't even make a dent in their revenue. Gaming demand means nothing to their supply, demand and pricing.
Option two is not correct, option one is correct. This announcement is specifically for consumer gaming GPU's only, it does not affect institutional datacenter customers.
This is Nvidia saying "thanks small fry, you were useful, but we're leaving you behind now. Fight for the scraps." Complete cartel behavior.
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I think it is just plain greed. The AI bubble has made NVIDIA mountains of money but they still want more. So they focus production on higher tier consumer GPU'S and their Pro series and give a middle finger to budget conscience consumers.
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And sadly none of this hardware will be viable for consumers to use, even bought used.
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Remember ever company that cuts consumer production over private ai production. When the bubble pops stick with the companies that remembered consumers are the longterm profit. For the rest, let their shareholders eat them alive as they sell every share from beneath them.
I think the pop has already begun. Look at the silver and gold prices. 2026 is going to be a stock market massacre.
Yeah, nobody will remember that, everyone will happily go back to those same brands that'll also be lying about their histories
Happens every time, man...
Well it is for a good cause of trying to make us all jobless faster.
Consumer GPU sales are driven by forecasts and orders from channel/OEM partners. If they don’t think consumers will buy a $1000 5070 because RAM prices spiked they sell to the market that will still buy, the 5080/5090.
NVIDIAs direct customers in DC market can handle a $500-1000 bump on a $30-50k card more easily and put orders in before the wafers are bought.
Fuck AI
So the real question is... Once they've kicked the bubble into survival mode, how long before it collapses?
I think the real question is how long can these companies decrease supply until consumers get hooked on thin-clients like iPads for all their computing, and have to pay rent on cloud services and SaaS for everything they do.
This is an assault on democratized computing.
The Bubble hungers...
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