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cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/post/152656
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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Funny thing is 'Local ML' tinkerers largely can't afford GPUs in the US either.
The 5090 is ludicrously expensive for its VRAM pool. So is the 4090, which is all but OOS. Nvidia will only sell you a decent-sized pool for $10K. Hence non-techbros here have either been building used RTX 3090 boxes (the last affordable compute GPU Nvidia ever sold), EPYC homelabs for CPU offloading, or have been trying to buy those modded 48GB 4090s back.
The insane supply chain is something like this:
Taiwan GPUs -> China
China GPU boards -> US
US GPU Boards -> Smuggled back into China
Deneutered GPU Boards -> Sold back to US
All because Nvidia is playing VRAM cartel and AMD, inexplicably, is uninterested in competing with it when they could sell 48GB 7900s basically for free.
It's not explicable why AMD is not breaking rank on VRAM and vGPU, same reason as failing Intel.
But the reason is not mentionnable in polite company and it relates to why AMD exists at all.
By all accounts, AMD should have gone under decades ago, instead they're one of the only x86 platform licensee and they got that basically because of a fluke in history.
But here's the real deal, because of the regulatory environment, monopolies are technically illegal. Of course since 1980s enforcement of that has been a total joke as proven with the failure of the Microsoft anti-trust case. Anti-trust is currently neutered and even back then it wasn't really "anti-trust", merely anti-monopoly. That is the playbook for Intel and Nvidia that allows AMD to continue existing. They exist so that the other two aren't monopolies. They are kept alive as long, some market segments will have some competition and other will simply not be touched by Intel and AMD, dynamically decided, kind of like splitting territory, so that AMD can always survive.
So that Intel and Nvidia don't became actually illegal monopolies. This is a very conservative playbook as since the 90s they could have very well become monopolies and the neolibs wouldn't have squeaked. They would have cheered !
That's why you're not getting that actually threatening to Nvidia amounts of VRAM and vGPU from AMD and why they're dropping support for their 2018 datacenter GPU if they get a little too much of a good deal on the used market.
The solution is simple, destroy nvidia, not a calculated and gentle trust bust, no, break the company so it stops existing as a coherent entity.
Nvidia is a bunch of software and PNGs on top of TSMC. Break Nvidia, break Intel, break microsoft, break cisco, broadcom, break everything in silicon valley and put it all in a blender. And if anything grows too big again, break it the duck up again.
This isn't a good explanation for why AMD would act stupid. But there still needs to be one.
It's not stupid of AMD not to start a turf war where both they and they patron saint are hurt.
They get to eat the scraps and have the occasional win so that nvidia and intel don't face impotent mealymouthed anti-trust procedures.
You can either come up with a better alternative explanation, I can lawyer up a perfectly cromulent explanation that doesn't require exposing the corrupt underbelly of the silicon industry, or you can think that everyone at AMD is an idiots snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
AMD is far ahead of intel in iGPUs. Key to laptop and mini pc segments. Desktop motherboards are bad at USB 4, and so 4 monitor support, and performance per watt. Desktop PC vendors, with external GPUs, don't promise exact number (3+) of monitors supported.
Intel is the one that needed AMD to survive to avoid monopoly designation many years ago. That hasn't stopped AMD from kicking Intel's ass in iGPUs. 2+ generations ahead where latest high end intel barely outperforms 680m, with AMD having 780m cheaper, and 8600s and 890m. AMD is not "being thankful" to Intel by refusing to compete with it.
Nvidia was never under monopoly scrutiny. AMD making stupid decisions on drivers and memory configurations has no explanation. Industry underbelly NVIDIA bribes to CEO would be an explanation.