What is the most expensive Video Card you ever bought?

6990 about 3 years back. it was used but it cost me 200. Still on of the best cards(minus newer games and their damn lack of CF support) I've had.
 
3 GTX 780's at $650 a pop. I'm hoping one 1080Ti can replace all three this time around as I don't want to have to think about footing that kind of bill at this point in my life.
 
Think the HD7870 was the most expensive; got a deal on it for just under $300 at the time.
But I wanted smooth 1080p gaming and this card more than delivers.
 
Probably my Fury X, for 660 on Day 1. Although, I once bought a HD 5970 for 200 and turned around and sold it for 700 a week or so later. That was someone else's most expensive card.
 
6800 Ultra or SLi 7900GTO's because the added cost of a power supply back then to run them.
 
I try to stay under the $500 mark any time I upgrade, but I did have a pair of 7900 GTXs a decade ago that were $500 a piece. As awesome as they were they were quickly eclipsed by the 8800 GTX and I felt like it was a waste to spend that much on GPUs at the time. My former GTX 780 Ti was $530, but I got Watch Dogs free with it and sold my key for $40, so I consider the cost of that card only $490.
 
Single card, the 5970 I bought for about $700. Most expensive GPU upgrade was for the 3x 7970s plus water blocks which came out to over $2,200
 
Radeon 9700 Pro, it was $400 and drew so much power that it couldn't get all of its power from the AGP slot. It required a power feed directly from the power supply.
 
I bought my old VooDoo 2 aqnd 3 as well as a Geforce 2 with allowance savings and early job money as a kid, no bills was nice. My 7970 is the most expensive to date, I think it was 550 or 600, cant remember exactly. Its still going strong although I see it fading down in newer games lol.
 
The most I've ever spent on a single card is the $500-600 I put down on my Fury's. I did get them second hand and used funds from spare/redundant gear I sold to off-set the cost though so my out of pocket actually ended up being less than I've spent on other cards in the past.

Not quite a single card but the most I've ever spent out of pocket on a single GPU upgrade cycle was my HD4870 crossfire setup that I picked up on launch day.

The last 3-5 years my home network has grown and I've got multiple machines/boxes that I use for different purposes and I've been trying to get into a cycle where when I upgrade one I can then float the replaced hardware into another machine providing both an upgrade and a way to offset my TCO's by then selling hardware I no longer need.

There's a point of minimal returns, imo, with GPU's. When I had my 290X Crossfire setup I could spent a shitload more money and gone with Titan's in SLI but for me the performance increase offered compared to the cost just wasn't justifiable. I am then able to take some of that budget into building new machines or buying new parts for my other systems and avoid spending all of my "disposable income" on my computer shit.
 
By absolute dollars, pretty sure it was my GTX 970 @ $290, bought in Sept '15.

If I adjust for inflation, it was my GTX260 Core 216. $280 in November of 2008 is equal so ~$308 in 2015.

Nearly all of my GPU purchases have been in the $200-$300 range.
 
I try to stay under the $500 mark any time I upgrade, but I did have a pair of 7900 GTXs a decade ago that were $500 a piece. As awesome as they were they were quickly eclipsed by the 8800 GTX and I felt like it was a waste to spend that much on GPUs at the time. My former GTX 780 Ti was $530, but I got Watch Dogs free with it and sold my key for $40, so I consider the cost of that card only $490.

I can't believe that the 7900's were out a decade ago, I read that and I had to re-read it like 4-5 times. That literally blows my mind, time fucking flies.
 
Are you parting with that for pascal?

Right now I am waiting for 1440p Gsync ultrawides to drop in price. It is a fantastic card and only a card that can really run a 1440p ultrawide in a single card setup would sway me. I expect I will be waiting for the 1080TI or something.
 
I think my most expensive card was the 970 that I'm using till 1070 or 1080ti come out. Before that my most expensive was 9800 GTX+ that I've been using for quite a long time.
 
Bought a EVGA 980ti FTW for $585 back in December before that the most i spent on a GPU was $400 on a 670.
 
EVGA GTX 690 ($999) in May 2012.
Still using it right now, 4 years later.
 
I suppose it depends on point of view. Does time value of money count? I paid 320 dollars for a Canopus Pure 3D 6Meg Voodoo 1. Everyone thought I was crazy to spend that much on a video card. I posted pictures of it on this sight long long ago before all the hotmail accounts were originally deleted.

However the Time value only puts that at 422 dollars. 1997 to 2016. But in 1997 that card was a Titan X. It was powerful for its day.

Now I bought 3 brand new 290X's on pre-order what was that? 699 each so about 2100 dollars. I sold the set for 750 dollars a couple weeks ago. Lol they don't hold value well do they.

I currently have 2 Fury's at 425 each or so which is 850 bucks. So I managed to upgrade for only 100 dollars. That isn't to bad.

What truly surprises me is how old my processor is now. I used to upgrade it so much and I havn't even thought about it. 3770K overclocked. I just don't feel the need I suppose.

List of video cards I have owned.
Cirius Logic 5430 onboard PCI with 1MB upgrade.
S3 Virge 325 2MB Diamond Stealth 3D 2000
Canopus Pure3D 6MB
Voodoo 3 3000 AGP 16MB (this was the longest I have ever waited between upgrades.)
Hercules 3D Prophet DDR DVI 32MB (aka Geforce 256 or Geforce 1)
Hercules Geforce 3 TI500 64MB
MSI Geforce 4TI-4400 VTD 128MB
Nvidia Geforce FX 5900 Ultra (Nvidia Branded Reference card) 256MB
2X EVGA Geforce 7800GT 256MB in SLI
2X EVGA Geforce 8800GTS 320MB in SLI
3X EVGA Geforce 260 Core 216's 896MB in SLI
4X EVGA Geforce 470 GTX 1280MB in SLI (This is a dark time for me because my original box's all say support 4X SLI and then Nvidia released new drivers to not support it on the 470 and I had to do my 1st bios modification to allow it on both the motherboard and the video cards. I was not very happy.)
3X EVGA 570 Classified 1280MB + 1 470 for Physx.
This marks the end of a long relationship that really came to an end due to the 4X SLI issue. I just never trusted Nvidia after that and they began messing with their board partners with not allowing voltage and certain overclocks and options and it really just hurt my opinion of Nvidia at the time.
3X XFX 290X 4GB in Crossfire all custom watercooled.
2X Gigabyte Fury Windforce 4GB HBM in Crossfire

It's been a long road in video card history. I hope you enjoyed a peak at the history of one mans quest to play PC games at high resolution at fast frame-rates with great quality settings.
 
My current 980TI. First nVidia card in years and I just wanted the best (without going silly for the Titan). £530 I think.
 
my titan x - considering the value of the trade and the cash i paid close to 800
 
7990 for $1050

Wasn't the best buy, considering a pair of 7970s standalone were a lot cheaper at the time. I ended up actually turning a profit on the card when I sold it thanks to the whole BItcoin/Litecoin mining craze though.
 
X800XT AIW cost me something like $500 so either that or my 290X for $500 (but that was b1g1 free for... reasons). The X800 was way more expensive adjusted for inflation and my relative purchasing power :D
 
A QuadroFX 1000 for $860 back when I was doing a lot of 3D animation work. That card was such a joke, DX8 games ran ok, DX9 games ran at something like 2FPS, didn't even make up for it by being something special in 3D packages. Replaced it with a GeForce 6700 that had much better performance in everything.
 
My last two cards were my most expensive cards. 980Ti - $680; 780Ti $620. I'd imagine my next card likely to be a 1080Ti, guessing it will be around that much as well.
 
It was either an X1900XTX or 7800GTX (both around $500 iirc) from back in the day. And in fairness that wasn't me buying it; my parents were far too kind as a teenager. I've become much more frugal since having to spend my own money lol.
 
I used one of those inflation calculators, this is what that upgrade cost in 2015 dollars,
$3,145 of 1993 dollars would be worth: $5,215.59 in 2015

And this is what the computer system would cost,
$7,000 of 1993 dollars would be worth: $11,608.62 in 2015

The CPI isn't a very good indicator of inflation in any particular market, since it measures the cost of survival, not the cost of how apples to apples cost rise for any particular product segment. The way the BLS calculates the CPI is based on what's called Hedonic Adjustments and Substitution. If Beef goes up in price 50% and Chicken stays stable, and everybody buys chicken and decides not to buy beef, inflation for meat products is considered 0% for that time period. Since GPUs and discrete computer components were once a large part of the semi-conductor industry, but today are an ever dwindling percentage of electronic sales (the vast majority today being dominated by smart phones since 2007), the CPI would under-estimate the inflation of PC components by several hundred percentage points most likely since the basket of goods for electronics for discrete components has gone from being a large percentage of the basket to almost non-existant.
 
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