Yes really. Performance that is cleverly hampered by RAM (and driver licensing) on the low end from an ML perspective. The only reason they can do this is because of lack of competition. The performance of 3000 series cards could be dramatically improved for large models at a modest increase in price if RAM was doubled.
It really is possible to be critical of a monopoly without disparaging the product itself. It is when a true competitor arises that we see the monopolist's true capabilities (see Intel and AMD).
The GeForce series is targeted at gamers. Video games are not making use of more than ~8GB of VRAM.
There is literally no benefit to 90% of the audience if they doubled the RAM. Of course, they also want to do market segmentation too, but you can’t blame GeForce for not being designed for ML training.
