Price of Vid Cards/ Are we Nuts?

O

OPUS1

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 25, 2003
Messages
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I was just crusing different places (CUSA,BB,NEW Egg & more) and it just hit me, the number of cards over $300.00 is amazing! I thought spending $200.00 on a card a few years ago was steep! Now there has to be at least alot of cards around the $500.00 mark and suppliers can't even keep them in stock!!!!!
Are we gettin boned?
Jeez anybody got the number for [H]ardware Anonomus! Dam I need a beer :eek:
 
what he said!

My last expensive vid is current 9700 pro.
I will never spend more than $200 on a video card again. :rolleyes:
 
Yea riiiight! Will go through the 12 step program together, Want a beer? :D
 
My video card price limit is generally $300... and my PNY GeForce 6800GT sure met the criteria!
 
Yeah it is pretty crazy. I payed $350 for a GF3 a few years ago and I thought that was as bad as it would ever get unless I was buying a CAD/Professional graphics card. Now it is like $500+ for the top card. It is insane, but unfortunately I don't see it changing. It does really make it harder to justify building a gaming system, I mean you spend $500 on just a card then depending on what games you want to be able to play you are goign to need a powerful system to compliment that card, then for the total cost of your system, there really ought to be more than 6 or 7 good games in the next 2 years that you can use to take adavantage of your system before you need to upgrade again. It really does almost seem crazy, but then why the hell do we do it? Are we indeed crazy? Maybe so.
 
If it's too expensive, don't buy it. But don't get all pissy at those of us who do.
 
Ludic said:
If it's too expensive, don't buy it. But don't get all pissy at those of us who do.
Click to expand...

I dont think thats the point are what he was even saying. But in anycase the prices of cards have gotten crazy I think. You once could get the high end for $300-$400. I can afford a hell even a $500 card but I will never go up to that. I also think buying cards in the $500-$600 even if you can afford them range just makes it worse for our selfs because even now you can see there taking adantage of this by releasing refreshers with no major performance gains and to an extent I think manufactors have the people who buy them as fools because a GT can be reach U speeds easily and I just found out even modded same goes for the X800 series. But to each his own, their money and no ones business.
 
Well your paying for the technology... which wasn't available mainstream about 4-5 years ago. I remember paying 300 for a gf2, and today you can buy a 6800nu for the same price... and look at what a better card your getting. These manufacturers are pouring tons of money into technology... do you really expect to buy a 6800 for 100 bux?? thats basically what your asking for... a 6800GT would be what, 150-200? and ultra for 250-300?? That just seems silly. I think were all a little spoiled.. what with all the great mobos and cpus for AMD systems for practically beans. It's not that bad the grfx companies are charging normal prices. Just my $0.02 bro.
 
Inside_line said:
Well your paying for the technology... which wasn't available mainstream about 4-5 years ago. I remember paying 300 for a gf2, and today you can buy a 6800nu for the same price... and look at what a better card your getting. These manufacturers are pouring tons of money into technology... do you really expect to buy a 6800 for 100 bux?? thats basically what your asking for... a 6800GT would be what, 150-200? and ultra for 250-300?? That just seems silly. I think were all a little spoiled.. what with all the great mobos and cpus for AMD systems for practically beans. It's not that bad the grfx companies are charging normal prices. Just my $0.02 bro.
Click to expand...

That and there is much more the new card offer, ps2.0 &3.0, hdr, aa, af, insane resoultions w/ all previously mentioned techs, your buying a lot more card than you were back in the day where fps is all that mattered and you could not set the resolution in games higher that 1024x7(if you could set it at all).
 
While they are more expensive than the last few generations of video cards I don't think they're really that expensive. Maybe they might be out of the reach of a 16 year old who has to beg his parents for money but when you think about $400 for an entire year is really not that much money. I recently took a trip to Chicago for a day and I ended up spending about $100 and didn't really do shopping.
 
Also we're paying for very high end ram gddr3 and 256megs of it. Probably that alone is worth 200 bucks.

In the old days cards had like 32 to 64mb tops.
 
Galvin said:
Also we're paying for very high end ram gddr3 and 256megs of it. Probably that alone is worth 200 bucks.

In the old days cards had like 32 to 64mb tops.
Click to expand...

Hey, I still have 64mg!!!!







GT is on it's way though :p
 
I wouldn't have bought a 6800GT for $400, but at $299 it was worth it to me. Especially since I subsidized the price by selling a second $299 6800GT for a $50 profit.

If you upgrade fairly regularly, the cost of upgrading isn't very much. I sold my 6 month old 5900 VIVO that overclocked to 475/950 with stock BIOS/cooling for $175.
 
Inside_line said:
Well your paying for the technology... which wasn't available mainstream about 4-5 years ago. I remember paying 300 for a gf2, and today you can buy a 6800nu for the same price... and look at what a better card your getting. These manufacturers are pouring tons of money into technology... do you really expect to buy a 6800 for 100 bux?? thats basically what your asking for... a 6800GT would be what, 150-200? and ultra for 250-300?? That just seems silly. I think were all a little spoiled.. what with all the great mobos and cpus for AMD systems for practically beans. It's not that bad the grfx companies are charging normal prices. Just my $0.02 bro.
Click to expand...

At lower prices, they can sell more.
There are 3 times more people willing to buy those cards at let's say $300 than $500.
3 x 300 = $900
1 x 500 = $500

see...

I play games maybe 2-3 times a month top, so $300 is my limit.
I really hope AMD and Intel get into the GPU market.
Can you image 2-3ghz GPU cores with desktop DDR2 for graphic memory (upgradeable and all)?
 
spectrumbx said:
At lower prices, they can sell more.
There are 3 times more people willing to buy those cards at let's say $300 than $500.
3 x 300 = $900
1 x 500 = $500

see...

I play games maybe 2-3 times a month top, so $300 is my limit.
I really hope AMD and Intel get into the GPU market.
Can you image 2-3ghz GPU cores with desktop DDR2 for graphic memory (upgradeable and all)?
Click to expand...

But if the card costs 300$ to make it wouldn't make any money. Who cares if your selling more if your margin is 0.

Whoa I'm actually defening nvidia's marketing, I think I need to go lay down for a while.
 
OPUS1 said:
I was just crusing different places (CUSA,BB,NEW Egg & more) and it just hit me, the number of cards over $300.00 is amazing! I thought spending $200.00 on a card a few years ago was steep! Now there has to be at least alot of cards around the $500.00 mark and suppliers can't even keep them in stock!!!!!
Are we gettin boned?
Jeez anybody got the number for [H]ardware Anonomus! Dam I need a beer :eek:
Click to expand...

First of all $200 was never steep....the Voodoo1 came out in the 349 range

but besides that you have to realize that videocards have been progressing not only in speed...but what they physically do.

Things that were once heavily CPU dependent are now fully GPU integrated, the video card is physically doing more in the system so it makes sense that it should cost a bit more. That and heavy competetion means ultra high end products are being manufactured (as companies try to one up each other) in small quantities.

Not everyone buys a 6800 Ultra....but for the people who have $450-500 to spend in the ultra-highend...the option is there if they want it.

High End is still what it has been since the start of the 3d revolution ($300-400) and mainstream is still mainstream ($150-250)

Just always buy what you can aford :)

*EDIT* I meant to quote u as steep not cheap :)
 
The current generation of Nvidia cards has the advantage of releasing right before a highly anticipated game (that is believed to need such power) ships. Last generation Ati took advantage of the (supposedly) impending release of HL2. Are these coincidences? :rolleyes: :p
 
I stopped counting after shelling out for dual 12 meg voodoo 2 for SLI way back when.

Thing I've noticed about video cards though, is that mine pretty much never break, so they end up as hand me downs to lesser systems at home, or to friends.
 
Video card prices are hurting some more than others. $5 bucks goes a long way for a starving college student, while it's toilet paper for some corporate executive.
 
I just got a 6800GT, and it's the first time I've spend over $160 for a video card (that was a GF3 Ti 200). I also spent about that much for my GF1 and 2. The last card I owned was a GF4 Ti 4200, and I got it for a measly $88 last year.

So while I normally buy mid-range stuff (and a year or so after it debuts), this time I went all out for Doom 3. It was hard to stomach, but the fact is, there is nothing in the $150ish range that I feel will probably play Doom 3 well enough to satisfy me. The cost of other components is so low these days, so I just sucked it up, realizing that's the way it is now. The video card is going to be leaps and bounds more expensive than any other piece of the PC.

Reminds me of when I bought a new PC just to run Quake 1 well. Damn P166 cost me over $500 just for the processor.

-HM
 
spectrumbx said:
I really hope AMD and Intel get into the GPU market.
Can you image 2-3ghz GPU cores with desktop DDR2 for graphic memory (upgradeable and all)?
Click to expand...


intel is in the video card market. and all there current offerings suck for gaming.


and if you game only couple times then those highend cards arent meant for you. just like a ferrai or porche is priced.
 
Credit card companies don't actually expect you to pay it back do they? I mean if you had the cash you wouldn't be using the damn thing in the first place. :p Who needs to pay for cable tv? I can live off Ramen and mac n cheeze for a good while..and while I'm at it FUCK THE LANDLORD AND HIS SILLY "RENT"!!! I'll just pay my electric bill and it's all good. :cool:


I just blew $400 for the first time on a vidcard...6800GT lovin though. :eek:
 
Look, here's my justification:

Graphics cards TRIPLE in speed every two years. Compare the 9700 Pro (released August 2004) to the 6800 GT (same price, released June 2004).

In 22 months performance has tripled. 22 months ago, the fastest CPU was a 2.53GHz P4. In 22 months, CPUs are perhaps 50% faster.

No one thinks a $400 Athlon 64 is absurd. Yet a GeForce 6800, with twice as many transistors, is overpriced.

The GPU is the single most important part of a gaming PC. You can get by with a 1.5GHz P4, but you can't get by with Intel Extreme AGP graphics.

It's the most complex, most powerful part of my PC. Why shouldn't I pay $400 for it?

(BTW: The 6800GT will be my first $400 GPU purchase. My most expensive GPU so far has been my 5900XT, at $190)
 
say what you will about whether or not the technology is worth the price or not, its still expensive.
 
Hehe if you think graphics cards have been getting more and more expensive then your memory is failing you.

Take a look at the prices for these cutting edge vid card offerings from 1995:

http://www.byte.com/art/9502/sec12/art5.htm


Theres a 4 meg VRAM ATI Pro Turbo for $699.

Also as we have seen the focal point of the gaming machine change from being the CPU to the GPU over the past decade, it follows that you should probably spend more on your GPU.
 
I spend $329 on a brand spanking fresh out of the press FX5800. I'm very careful now with new cards :).
 
I bought a diamond stealth I think thats what it was. It was a visa local bus. It made windows 3.11 really go fast. Microsofts arcade really flew. And I remember spending huge bucks back then around $400 or so. Maybe more.
 
IxGOxSOLO said:
Yeah it is pretty crazy. I payed $350 for a GF3 a few years ago and I thought that was as bad as it would ever get unless I was buying a CAD/Professional graphics card. Now it is like $500+ for the top card. It is insane, but unfortunately I don't see it changing. It does really make it harder to justify building a gaming system, I mean you spend $500 on just a card then depending on what games you want to be able to play you are goign to need a powerful system to compliment that card, then for the total cost of your system, there really ought to be more than 6 or 7 good games in the next 2 years that you can use to take adavantage of your system before you need to upgrade again. It really does almost seem crazy, but then why the hell do we do it? Are we indeed crazy? Maybe so.
Click to expand...

I dunno, I usually only find a few things I want to play a lot of anyways you know. I'll play a LOT of a particular FPS online for example, rather than play a lot of different games. If you add up the hours played of the game, it's probably not a bad value overall.

I don't play as much as I used to (old age) so I'm debating between 300 and 400 dollar cards right now.
 
Hello, my name is CIWS, I'm a Computer Hardware Enthusiast and I pay high prices for video cards and are nuts. :D


I can't remember the year specifically, but the first video card I paid approx 500.00 for was a Diamond Stealth 64 w/ 4 Megs of VRAM. I might still have the receipt somewhere.
 
Filter said:
intel is in the video card market. and all there current offerings suck for gaming.


and if you game only couple times then those highend cards arent meant for you. just like a ferrai or porche is priced.
Click to expand...

I believe me meant if AMD or Intel started making actual AGP (or now PCIe) video cards.



But the people who get the Ferrari's only drive them a few times a month ;)
 
Well to answer my own question YES WE ARE :eek:
It's not that we spend the kaasch, It's how quickly we become accustomed to the new stuff and forget how the old stuff was. Then on top of it everyone pisses and moans about why ain't it better!
These friggin cards have more computational power then what our boys had when they landed on the moon.
The real problem lies in that new stuff comes out faster then we can get use to the old stuff.
The card fabricators should wait till a significant improvement is realized, (such as not coming out with the 5900 series)
This past jump should have gone from the TI500 line to the 6800.
This would have given game developers more time to concentrate on games and not on future proofing,
Thus bringing more variaty and greater profits, which in turn would mean more competion.
Geez, I'm tired of my 6800 GT,Thinks me gets a 6800 Ultra
 
I dont think it's as big a deal as people are making it out to be. Overall prices for a whole PC have dropped drastically over the years, so spending an extra hundred or two on a video card still gives a price that's many many hundreds less than a top of the line PC was 2 years ago. Also, video cards carry more of the brunt of processing for video games, and in my opinion are a better value now than they ever were. That said, I'm too poor to afford a new PC, let alone a video card :)
 
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