
Nvidia Gives Lackluster Forecast on Inventory, Shares Plunge - throwaway5752
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-15/nvidia-gives-weak-forecast-citing-inventory-stock-slumps
======
craftyguy
I'm just excited that we might be able to buy graphics cards again at a decent
price, soon I hope. The cryptoshit folks really inflated the price of graphics
cards over the last few years..

~~~
vosper
There will be lots of used ones dumped on the market soon, presumably. From
what I've read there's really no difference between a working used card and a
working new one - no matter how heavily used they were. So there are bound to
be some bargains to be had in the used department.

~~~
craftyguy
Having spent some time in the silicon manufacturing business side of things, I
would have a hard time buying a chip that was run at 100% for 3 years with an
expected life span (which is something chip manufacturers calculate) of 5
years (which is about average). The 'how long will this thing last'
calculation almost never assumes 100% utilization.

~~~
Paul-ish
My understanding is miners don't keep it at 100% utilization, because that is
not energy efficient.

~~~
jaytaylor
It takes a certain level of technical sophistication to go the extra mile and
set that up.

Additionally, I've spoken with miners who rent with utilities included and
simply let their mining rigs mine nonstop.

------
DrJaws
Oh this sounds good for people who play videogames.

They've been milking consumers for over 2 years and they try to continue doing
it with the latest GPU iteration.

Hopefully this means that people is no that stupid and they are not to
purchase whatever they release at those prices.

------
modeless
It's clear they were underestimating how much demand crypto was driving. They
deliberately tried to limit how many gaming cards crypto people could buy. A
predictable consequence of that is that crypto people would start to hide how
much they were buying from Nvidia and Nvidia would lose their ability to tell
who was buying their cards.

~~~
ianai
A coworker and I recently talked about building gaming rigs. Then we went to
some benchmarks and all of the cards had problems rendering games with good
settings at 4k - unless you’re willing to drop several k on multiple
2080s/Tis. Maybe we’re still in an odd place with expectations and costs.

~~~
modeless
Honestly I don't see a point to 4k gaming. High frame rate, on the other hand,
is really great. Skip 4k and go for 144 Hz instead.

~~~
fyfy18
I posted about this a few weeks ago; it's a catch 22 situation. Gamers won't
upgrade until games and hardware support high frame rate 4K gaming. Hardware
manufacturers won't provide hardware until there is demand. Average businesses
will stick to 1080p until 4K monitors become cheap enough, and scale well
enough (which they don't on anything other than Mac).

~~~
Const-me
4k displays are cheap now, at least flat 60Hz ones.

On Windows 10, most of the apps I use scale just fine. Hi-dpi displays became
common in laptops several years ago already, e.g. for 13" FullHD you do need
scaling. By now, the majority of Windows software was updated accordingly.

------
agentofoblivion
I’m still bullish on Nvidia because they essentially have the entire deep
learning market. I think attempts from e.g. Google to develop their own chips
will fail, just as they fail in every non-software venture I can think of, and
even a lot of software ventures.

~~~
twtw
> I think attempts from e.g. Google to develop their own chips will fail

I'm curious what you think failure will look like. In a lot of ways, Google's
TPU program has already been extremely successful.

------
beerlord
Nvidia is shooting itself in the foot with their Gsync strategy. They are
relying on an extra $200 (for the Gsync module) from what - 1% of their
customer base?

Instead of adopting the open standards (adaptive sync or HDMI 2.1 VRR) and
adding support to all their cards.

1440p gaming really does well with adaptive sync, since you can less reliably
hit 60 fps. A 50-75 FPS window that even the cheap Freesync monitors offers
works pretty well.

Otherwise without adaptive sync, it doesn't make sense going to 1440p, and
without 1440p, it doesn't make sense upgrade the GPU. Even a very cheap old
980 will run 1080p very well.

~~~
theandrewbailey
Xbox One supports Freesync (open standards adaptive sync), too. I'm wondering
how long Nvidia can go against the current, but I guess 70+% market share is a
tough nut to crack.

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-one-x-1tb-
console/8nq...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-one-x-1tb-
console/8nq33jvv1s9v?activetab=pivot:techspecstab)

------
novaRom
The real problem is that there are only 2 significant players in this sector:
AMD and Nvidia.

Real estate of modern GPU chip has become astonishingly large and expensive.
It will make absolutely no economical reason to have GPU separately from CPU.
The future looks like desktop CPU and GPU will be placed on one die as it is
done in every modern mobile System on Chip.

In the near future AMD has a better chance on desktop because of x86 cores
used by desktop gamers, but Intel may start to compete here more seriously.
Nvidia might be more successful on mobile/robotics/automotive markets with
their ARM+GPU System on Chips, but Nvidia will start loosing desktop gaming.

Now data centers and AI. It is clear that CPU+GPU SoC is not a solution here
because right now one modern compute node has 2 multi-core Xeons and 8 Voltas.
Even if AMD will make very powerful SoC like EPIC+Vega right now, it cannot be
sufficient for many compute-bound problems. This looks like Nvidia will still
dominate in this sector for a while. But tendency will be to have 2-4 socket
mainboard of powerful SoCs because it's more efficient in terms of money and
energy.

------
lanevorockz
I’m a bit skeptical about this report. Share prices drops after hours don’t
necessarily mean drop in prices, if anything prices should be looked over a
weeks time.

Another point, crypto was never a cash cow for Nvidia which makes their point
quite silly. Spreads on power efficient cards were really small.

~~~
throwaway5752
[https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/nvda/after-
hours](https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/nvda/after-hours)

7.5M NVDA shares traded after hours today. That's more than half an average
day's volume.

Next quarter's guidance was really bad.

------
adamnemecek
RIP my portfolio it’s at like 50% compared with 6 weeks ago.

~~~
craftyguy
Well, I'm no financial advisor, but keeping the bulk of your portfolio in
individual stocks is probably a bad idea. Consider funds that track markets.

~~~
adamnemecek
I still have a good ROI tho.

------
akvadrako
Just like every Bloomberg article, this is clickbait. Going down 16% in after
hours trading is not unusual and words like "Plunge" and "Lackluster" are
clearly designed to invoke an emotional response.

I don't understand how articles from this garbage site keep making it to the
front page.

