Why are video card so expensive?

A graphics card is a much more complex system of components than a CPU, in fact it's more like a mini motherboard, a CPU and RAM and PSU all added together on one PCB, together it's much faster than any CPU on the market, the GPU speed and RAM speed in modern video cards can crush CPUs in pure number crunching performance.
 
CPU's are more complex. Why are you comparing a CPU to an entire video card? If you want to compare the card then you have to compare the entire system as well.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
A graphics card is a much more complex system of components than a CPU, in fact it's more like a mini motherboard, a CPU and RAM and PSU all added together on one PCB, together it's much faster than any CPU on the market, the GPU speed and RAM speed in modern video cards can crush CPUs in pure number crunching performance.
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Only in parallel floating point performance does the GPU win. Even if you look at single threaded floating point work I believe the CPU will come out with a huge lead. It has to be massively parallel and it has to be floating point - that is the only thing a GPU can do well.
 
Think about it, essentailly a video card is a gpu mounted to a specialized mobo (PCB) and has intergrated ram.....ati even throws in hi definition sound....so add in a sound card to the mix....no idea if nvidia has this so I' am not saying they don't....that and demand for cutting edge....still cheaper then the highest end Intel chip....when you put it inot perspective make sense why they cost so much.....not that I really agree that they do....you want good hardware you have to pay the difference. It is a specialized specific duty proc, even though it can be multi tasked to do something outside of it primary purpose I highly doubt it could crush high end cpu's .... especailly one that can run 8 threads...meh I don't think so.
 
GPU's have always been kind of pricey compared to just a CPU. At least over the last decade.

the price trend is kind of tricky though. sometimes a GFX card will drop in price very drastically and other times it will go up. On the other hand CPU's are usually pretty stable. the i7 920 i bought for $200 a few months ago is still $200 from the same retailer. but over the past few months GFX cards have drastically gone up in price. i bought an EVGA GTX275 for $200 with a $15 MIR ($185 total), now the same card is $300 before the rebate. i wanted to wait a few months and get a 2nd 275 to do SLI with but at that price forget it. Might as well just buy the new ATI 5xxx, not only will it be faster but it will be cheaper!
 
With different directx/shader versions, new types of memory, so many graphics apps/games changing so fast will be moving a Graphics card faster than a CPU.
 
I don't know about apps. It's just games really that require a decent gpu.
 
Or high end rendering. You can use these new cards to do some pretty complex calculations. Cluster a few of them together and you have a fairly powerful supercomputer on the cheap.
 
kllrnohj said:
Only in parallel floating point performance does the GPU win. Even if you look at single threaded floating point work I believe the CPU will come out with a huge lead. It has to be massively parallel and it has to be floating point - that is the only thing a GPU can do well.
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Well yes the GPU is more specialized, it always has been.

Doesn't downplay the expense of the hardware and the R&D required to produce it though, there is simply a lot more kit on a graphics card, the actual GPU itself is a lot more transistors than you'll find on a CPU by a factor of 2-3x more, you've got dedicated memory which is even faster than basic system RAM, its own dedicated cooling solution etc etc
 
A rat has more chromosomes than a human, but it's not a more complex species.
 
plus most people would rather upgrade from 9800 gt to a gtx 295 than from e8600 to a i7 965
 
if a cpu is more complex than a gpu, then that says a gpu is easier to design.

why hasn't intel designed a decent gpu?
 
Easier != Easy

CPU's have more complex control logic, branch prediction and prefetchers. THere are more, but those are the ones I recall of the top of my head. I wish I still had the link but there is a picture somewhere comparing a CPU core vs GPU core and the cpu core had far more going on inside than the GPU did. I'll try to find it again.
 
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mistachewey said:
if a cpu is more complex than a gpu, then that says a gpu is easier to design.

why hasn't intel designed a decent gpu?
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Haha... You want to see nvidia and ati (not amd) design a CPU? At least intel has or had larrabee. GPGPU? Yuk.
 
MirageMobile said:
Consumer's willingness to pay.
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FTFY. If there are people out there that will plunk down $500, $600, or $1000 for a high-end video card, then firms will take advantage of that. Especially since cards within that price range are geared towards a niche market.

Now for a more mainstream market, cards aren't priced high at all. I mean 20-30 bucks can give you Aero on Vista/7, sometimes hardware video decoding too, if that's all you cared about. And $50-$100 can get you hardware that's good enough for the latest games out there. Especially for many of those who want a good game for it's content and gameplay, not eyecandy (e.g. Crysis vs. The Sims, WoW, Solitaire:D ).
 
kppanic said:
Haha... You want to see nvidia and ati (not amd) design a CPU? At least intel has or had larrabee. GPGPU? Yuk.
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apparently gpus are easier to design than cpus. so i don't see them doing better than if they were to design something "easier" :D
 
mistachewey said:
if a cpu is more complex than a gpu, then that says a gpu is easier to design.

why hasn't intel designed a decent gpu?
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Because they require two very different approaches, and its hard to switch gears like that. Just because a GPU is less complex doesn't make it easy, and designing a GPU is going to require solving different problems than that of a CPU.

Also, GPUs require very complex, very optimized, and very stable drivers - CPUs don't. Intel can't write a GPU driver, and that is a rather huge sticking point ;)
 
It is a pretty good and basic observation - I never even thought about why GPU's are so much more expensive than CPU's but like I read in one of the first replies - you're buying so much more... The PCB, the RAM, a built-on Cooler, and in some cases it's a necessity - so it's not like adding the extra case fan or a certain type of hard-drive.

Heck, I'm going to have to pay at the very least $300 on my upcoming Crysis2 rig.. And that's only if I can catch the 1GB 5770's on sale @ $150/ea.
 
mistachewey said:
why hasn't intel designed a decent gpu?
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Funny you say that given that Intel actually controls about 50% of the GPU market and already dwarfs the market share of both ATI and Nvidia in that regard. Yes, I'm talking about Integrated Video Chipsets, but clearly they know where the money is.
 
GotNoRice said:
Funny you say that given that Intel actually controls about 50% of the GPU market and already dwarfs the market share of both ATI and Nvidia in that regard. Yes, I'm talking about Integrated Video Chipsets, but clearly they know where the money is.
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True, though it is kinda irrelevant to the question you quoted. Market share does not a decent gpu make.
 
mistachewey said:
apparently gpus are easier to design than cpus. so i don't see them doing better than if they were to design something "easier" :D
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You got it wrong. Intel, rather than trying to compete at current rasterization phase they'd rather skip that and pave the way for Ray tracing something they believe is the way forward. They are also trying to integrate it into their chipset or CPU, rendering(pun?) a dedicated video card defunct. I believe they see the current video card market as non critical but they do blieve that gpus some day need to be an integrated seemless part like a cache.

Think about it intel would not make money off a dedicated videocard. It is already known that IGP brings in a heap amount of income for intel. If yu had given a little thought this would not have even constitute a basis for an argument.
 
i didn't say anything about a dedicated card.

they could make a fast gpu and stick it under a cpu socket for all i care, as long as it works.

and i didn't mention anything about profits or revenue. just that if something is "simpler" to design than what they are already owning the market designing why didn't they come out with something better already.

what is ray tracing?
is that the thing carmack was going on about?
 
kllrnohj said:
Because they require two very different approaches, and its hard to switch gears like that. Just because a GPU is less complex doesn't make it easy, and designing a GPU is going to require solving different problems than that of a CPU.
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this is what i'm thinking....neither is easier or harder. they both have different problems with different approaches.

saying one is easier to design than the other is a diminishing their accomplishments and ingenuity.
 
Am I the only one who spent more on the CPU than the GPU?
My i7 920 cost me $340CAD while the 4870 1gb was less than half @ $160CAD.

Though I imagine BC2 next year will make me want at least a 5850 which is about the same price as an i7 920 right now.
 
mistachewey said:
i didn't say anything about a dedicated card.

they could make a fast gpu and stick it under a cpu socket for all i care, as long as it works.

and i didn't mention anything about profits or revenue. just that if something is "simpler" to design than what they are already owning the market designing why didn't they come out with something better already.

what is ray tracing?
is that the thing carmack was going on about?
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You are still missing the point, why would Intel even begin to design a GPU, whether socketable or not, or whatever idea you might hold in your head, when it DOES NOT need to??? I told you already, IMO Intel views the whole current "graphics market" as non-critical or just a waste of their time to jump in... You begin to sound like you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Profits or revenue is what drives the market.. the word "simpler" is a relative term -- it does not mean a company just pick it up, design, engineer, manufacture and sell them just because it is "simpler" to make.

Please look up ray tracing. Carmack is a raytrace advocate, not the "inventor."
 
IMO price vs performance is better than it has ever been.

I remember X1900XTX cards being around 600usd at release, and another already brought up 8800 Ultra cards.

HD 5770 start @ around 162usd which isn't bad for a DX11 card with the push of about a HD 4870 to HD 4890. HD 5750s are about 140usd. HD 5850s have inflated prices currently due to demand. Still they are about 309usd and perform just as well as a GTX 285 in most all cases, if not better.

If I remember correctly my 9700Pro was around 300usd way back when.
 
Yoda4561 said:
i7: 731 Million transistors

5870: 2.15 Billion transistors.

So that's just a gnat's hair under 3x the transistors. You also get free ram with that, and a heatsink, and a "motherboard" (graphics card pcb).
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This pretty much sums it up.
 
krupted said:
Demand
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this and nothing else.
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No, it isn't. If I (or anyone else) could make a GPU that matched (or came anywhere close) to a 5870 or even a GTX 260 and make it for 1$ per card with no capital investment required, I'd go out and start selling them for 100$ and be fucking rich. There is a cost associated with Graphics cards. Now there are lots of graphics cards out there that will run a hell of a lot of games for close to 100$. I.e. the G92 (ala GTS 250 or whatever previous name) or a 5750. Nothing requires you to spend a lot of money on a graphics card except peoples want for faster and faster.
 
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