AI's insatiable demand for memory has set the entire PC market back by several years.
With memory prices constantly rising and the cost of building a system skyrocketing, AMD is considering reviving older chips to reduce user costs.
Tom's Hardware attended a roundtable interview, where David McAfee, AMD's Senior Vice President and head of Ryzen business, hinted at the possibility of AMD re-releasing older AM4 desktop chips, likely the 5000-series Ryzen processors and Zen 3-based APUs, when discussing the current chip crisis.
Even those who aren't technically inclined now know that buying a brand-new computer is expensive, mainly due to the absurd price of memory.
Moreover, for users who have had their computers for just a few years, upgrading to DDR5 means replacing both the memory and the motherboard, which puts them in a difficult situation because upgrading to DDR5 also means changing the CPU socket for both Intel and AMD processors.
When asked about this dilemma faced by these users, McAfee said, "AMD is certainly considering all possible measures to increase supply and reintroduce products into the AM4 ecosystem to meet the needs of gamers who want to make significant upgrades on the AM4 platform without rebuilding the entire system."
He also added that he believes this is "definitely something AMD is actively working on."
It should be noted that this decision has not been finalized yet, but at least on the surface, this move makes complete sense for both AMD and its customers. Additionally, the background of the above statement is that AMD's telemetry data obtained through Adrenalin software confirmed that a significant portion of users are still running 2000-series and 3000-series chips.
Furthermore, McAfee pointed out that many of his retail partners have noticed an increase in standalone CPU purchases, indicating that under the current economic conditions, consumers are buying new and old chips to actually boost the speed of their existing machines, as simply purchasing 32 GB of DDR5 memory, a new CPU, and a new motherboard can easily cost over $1,000.
At the moment, for many enthusiasts, continuing to use their existing machines may be a better choice.
Regarding graphics cards, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang also hosted a Q&A session, raising several questions about the current gaming landscape, two of which were particularly noteworthy.
The first question was whether NVIDIA would be willing to utilize new technology to revive older GPUs in light of the current market challenges facing gaming PC hardware.
In response, Huang said it was entirely possible, but to re-launch older GPUs using new technology, especially NVIDIA's AI advancements in DLSS and RTX, such as DLSS 4.5 and MFG 6X, would still require additional R&D investment. Theoretically feasible, but whether NVIDIA will take this approach remains to be seen.
"Hi Jensen, I'm Paul Alcorn from Tom's Hardware. The price of game graphics cards, especially the latest and highest-end models, has indeed increased significantly, which may be due to supply and production capacity constraints. Do you think increasing the production of some older graphics cards (using older process nodes, which may have more available capacity) or increasing the supply of low VRAM graphics cards could help? What measures do you think could be taken? Or can you provide some specific suggestions?"
Huang: "Yes, it's possible. And depending on the situation, we might even be able to apply the latest generation of AI technology to the previous generation of GPUs. This requires a lot of engineering work, but it is achievable. I'll go back and look into it. This is indeed a good idea."
The second question was raised by Adram Patrick Muray from PC World, regarding the future of gaming graphics and the role of artificial intelligence.
Regarding this question, Huang stated that neural rendering is the future direction of gaming and graphics technology. He pointed out that DLSS will continue to drive the development of graphics technology, and we will see more images and frames generated by artificial intelligence.
"The future belongs to neural rendering. It's essentially DLSS. I think you'll see DLSS making increasingly significant progress. I expect that we will be able to generate almost any style of image, from photorealistic, ultra-photorealistic (basically photos interacting at 500 frames per second), all the way to cartoon styles, if you like, and this range will be fully achievable."
Huang also said that traditional shaders will eventually be replaced by neural shaders, and more computation will be done on fewer pixels, resulting in pixels that are not only "beautiful" but also produce hyper-realistic or near-realistic images and frames.
The RTX 3060 was launched in 2021 and officially discontinued in 2024, available in 8GB and 12GB VRAM versions.
The combination of Ryzen 5000 series + RTX 3060 really makes one wonder what year it is.
Original article: toutiao.com/article/7592605173625684532/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author himself.