What we've all been waiting for, might just have appeared and what we're talking about is of course the pricing of NVIDIA's upcoming graphics cards. @wxnod has posted a single screenshot on X/Twitter of what could be the MSRP of the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 in China. The MSRP of the RTX 4080 was 9,499 ...
Best option for consumers would be ~10 GPU design firms with ~10 semiconductors fabs all fighting for every minuscule fraction of gross margin percentage point.
I do recognize that there are legitimate barriers to entry and economies of scale factors at play. But that being said, the fact that the patents relevant to the Nvidia 3080 (released in 2020) will expire in ~2040 and the copyright for the last GeForce4 Ti 4600 (released in 2002) driver expire in ~2081 suggests that there are ways to improve competition.
None of them are true heroes.
Best option for consumers would be ~10 GPU design firms with ~10 semiconductors fabs all fighting for every minuscule fraction of gross margin percentage point.
I do recognize that there are legitimate barriers to entry and economies of scale factors at play. But that being said, the fact that the patents relevant to the Nvidia 3080 (released in 2020) will expire in ~2040 and the copyright for the last GeForce4 Ti 4600 (released in 2002) driver expire in ~2081 suggests that there are ways to improve competition.