Why are graphics cards so expensive?

[masethekiller]

I was wondering why are graphics card so expensive and why isn't there more analysis or pushback on this?  A mid level graphics card used to be 150-200, now it's 250-300 and its the same with any tier except maybe the low end you can still get a card around 100.  

 

SSD prices have gone down, hard drive prices have gone down, Ram prices have gone down, the price of a mid-tier CPU is around the same and now you can get a Ryzen CPU that is great for the 150-250 dollar range.  So what is it with video cards?  Its the same competition that existed before Ati and Nvidia, so I don't think its exactly the lack of competition unless they are colluding.  Did bitcoin even after the video card  raze permanetly push the prices of video cards up?  

 

Is it the extra features cards have now like, faster memory and multi-core gpus and 'compute' abilities?  Or is it just video card companies being greedy?  

 

 

[NunoLava1998]

A mid-tier graphics card isn't 150-200.

A RX 570 can be bought for 100$.

A RTX 2060/5700XT equivalent is the GTX 1080 (if not Ti).

[Windows7ge]

Crypto-mining was the big thing that screwed over GPU prices for enthusiasts. I don't think they've fully recovered and as long as GPU mining is still viable for alt-coins they probably never will.

[TMobile]

1 minute ago, masethekiller said:

I was wondering why are graphics card so expensive and why isn't there more analysis or pushback on this?  A mid level graphics card used to be 150-200, now it's 250-300 and its the same with any tier except maybe the low end you can still get a card around 100.  

 

SSD prices have gone down, hard drive prices have gone down, Ram prices have gone down, the price of a mid-tier CPU is around the same and now you can get a Ryzen CPU that is great for the 150-250 dollar range.  So what is it with video cards?  Its the same competition that existed before Ati and Nvidia, so I don't think its exactly the lack of competition unless they are colluding.  Did bitcoin even after the video card  raze permanetly push the prices of video cards up?  

 

Is it the extra features cards have now like, faster memory and multi-core gpus and 'compute' abilities?  Or is it just video card companies being greedy?  

 

 

Technology in the storage department is going quickly just like gpu tech, however you are playing at way higher quality than then years ago, so you pay way more 

[Zando_]

Mid-tier GPUs are miles ahead of mid-tier GPUs from yesteryear though. Your $130 RX 570 is closer to the performance range old mid-tier cards were, the "mid-range" cards now are beating flagships from a couple gens back. The 980 Ti was a $649 card, a $330 2060 will beat that now. It's probably even cheaper by comparison due to inflation (according to an inflation calculator, the $649 980 Ti in 2015 would be $703.06 now). 

I don't think they made the midrange more expensive, I think they just added more on top. What we think of as midrange now is comparable to flagships a few years ago. 

[masethekiller]

Yes the way technology works too is it becomes more advance and the prices go down.  Cpus, ram and other components are way better but they remained in the same price tiers. 

[masethekiller]

The midrange with extra features makes sense but isnt the point that a gamer might not want extra features and save on cost? 

[VIVO-US]

GPUs have become more complex than CPUs, making the high end ones more expensive to manufacture.  They also tend to use high bandwidth RAM specialized for video processing, which costs more than your regular PC RAM.  GPUs are hotter and more power hungry than they were 10 years ago, which means they need bigger coolers to keep from overheating, and more users are demanding silent coolers which further increases the cost.  Manufacturing costs overall have also risen considerably over the past 10 years, and the manufacturers need to make a profit in order to invest in R&D to stay on top.  If the manufacturers were working at break-even income, they wouldn't be able to afford good R&D.

[Jurrunio]

1 minute ago, masethekiller said:

The midrange with extra features makes sense but isnt the point that a gamer might not want extra features and save on cost? 

they dont care about what you think of their new tech nearly as much as the effort they made (and cost in development).

[VIVO-US]

There's also inflation to consider.  The 8800 GTX was around $600 when it was released late 2006/early 2007.  Convert that to today's dollars, and you get $743.

[Fasauceome]

5 minutes ago, masethekiller said:

Yes the way technology works too is it becomes more advance and the prices go down.  Cpus, ram and other components are way better but they remained in the same price tiers. 

make sure you quote people so we know who you're responding to, and get notifications

[Zando_]

Just now, masethekiller said:

Yes the way technology works too is it becomes more advance and the prices go down.  Cpus, ram and other components are way better but they remained in the same price tiers. 

The point is that GPUs did too, they just added more tiers on top. A $650-700 card now is the 2070 Super, 2080, or 5700 XT. All on pretty much on par with a 1080 Ti and far ahead of a 980 Ti, then they added the 2080 Super and 2080 Ti on top of that. 

On Pascal, the $379 MSRP 1070 matched the $649 980 Ti, and the $699 (same price bracket) 1080 Ti beat it by a large amount. 
 

5 minutes ago, NunoLava1998 said:

A mid-tier graphics card isn't 150-200.

A RX 570 can be bought for 100$.

A RTX 2060/5700XT equivalent is the GTX 1080 (if not Ti).

The 2060 is about level with the 1070-1070 Ti IIRC, the 2070 fights the 1080, the 5700XT fights the 2070 Super (which is above the 2070, closer to the 2080), and the 2080/2080 Super match/beat the 1080 Ti. You're right on the RX 570 though. 
 

4 minutes ago, VIVO-US said:

GPUs are hotter and more power hungry than they were 10 years ago, which means they need bigger coolers to keep from overheating, and more users are demanding silent coolers which further increases the cost. 

Really? Because my 1660 Ti far outperforms older cards (it's slightly faster than a 980 AFAIK, closer to a 980 Ti but not quite there, beats a 780 Ti by a large margin though) while never breaking 60C under full compute load and they can barely sip 130W when pushed to the absolute max. 

[VIVO-US]

2 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Really? Because my 1660 Ti far outperforms older cards (it's slightly faster than a 980 AFAIK, closer to a 980 Ti but not quite there, beats a 780 Ti by a large margin though) while never breaking 60C under full compute load and they can barely sip 130W when pushed to the absolute max. 

The GTX 1660 Ti is a great card, but it can be considered a "mid tier" card for relative performance and power usage compared to others currently available.  For instance, The 8800 GTX was Nvidia's 2nd best of the 8000 series, and it had a TDP of 155W.  The GTX 1080 Ti is basically the 2nd best of the GTX 1000 series, and it has a TDP of 250W.  That's a 100W increase from 2nd best then to 2nd best now.

[Zando_]

15 minutes ago, VIVO-US said:

The GTX 1660 Ti is a great card, but it can be considered a "mid tier" card for relative performance and power usage compared to others currently available.  For instance, The 8800 GTX was Nvidia's 2nd best of the 8000 series, and it had a TDP of 155W.  The GTX 1080 Ti is basically the 2nd best of the GTX 1000 series, and it has a TDP of 250W.  That's a 100W increase from 2nd best then to 2nd best now.

If you look purely at the on paper power draw numbers, then yeah. But going off performance: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crysis-10-year-anniversary-benchmarks,5329-2.html 

Tom's did a handy review comparing performance in the classic Crysis test for all the flagships, including both the 8800 GTX and 1080 Ti:


That's a 73% increase in power consumption for a 152% increase in performance. So performance wise, the 1080 Ti is much, much more efficient than the 8800 GTX ever was. 

EDIT: By my rough calculations (am by no means good at math so I may have messed up) using this chart as a reference and going fps/watt, the 8800 GTX did 0.105806451612903fps/watt, the 1080 Ti did .4892fps/watt. That's a 128.87% increase in fps/watt. 

Going off price, the 8800 GTX's MSRP of $599 in 2006 would be $728.31 in 2017, when the 1080 Ti was released for $699. Making the 1080 Ti 4.1% cheaper while being over 150% faster. 

So both more bang for your buck and more bang for your watts. 

I can hunt down temp numbers for both on the FE (or as close to FE) coolers as well if you wanna compare those, the 1080 Ti is likely cooler than the 8800 GTX though. 

EDIT: so in summary thus far, the 1080 Ti does 128.87% more fps/watt, and 154.39% more fps/$ (in 2017 dollars). So both cheaper and more efficient. 

[melete]

There’s only two GPU manufacturers, and one of them has spent the past few years struggling to compete more often than not. When you have little competition, prices are just naturally higher. 

[Mathieu9836]

Hardware is expensive because they can charge you whatever they want and customer will still buy then anyway.... Look what Intel did for a few years, they charged the premium price for their CPUs and now AMD forced them to lower their prices, the new 10th gen will make them cut their prices in half, thats how market work, they charge you what you are willing to pay. Until chinese cards hit the market i don't think price will get lower then the actual prices unless customers stop buying them because they got enough of this sh*t.

[Vishera]

The current prices are a result of games being too slow to catch up with current hardware,creating more tiers of GPUs,

For example the 7 years old HD 7970 is capable of running Battlefield 1 on high 1080p

 

Also there is the slow progress of standard resolution due to the very high pixel density and the visual difference between 1080p and other resolutions is less than any older resolution.

 

Another cause is that consumers are losing their purchasing power,easily accepting higher prices without much resistance,some might blame millennials for it,lack of competition or both.

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, Vishera said:

The current prices are a result of games being too slow to catch up with current hardware,creating more tiers of GPUs,

For example the 7 years old HD 7970 is capable of running Battlefield 1 on high 1080p

Also there is the slow progress of standard resolution due to the very high pixel density and the visual difference between 1080p and other resolutions is less than any older resolution.

Another cause is that consumers are losing their purchasing power,easily accepting higher prices without much resistance,some might blame millennials for it,lack of competition or both.

7970 as a $499 card in 2012 ($532.74 in 2017 dollars), how does it compare to the $499 MSRP Vega 64 that came out in 2017? Willing to bet the Vega 64 was a massive uptick both in performance per dollar and probably in performance per watt as well.

 

Really failing to see how GPUs are so much more expensive now. Unless of course you look at the on paper power consumption and gloss over the MSRP and totally skip the actual performance numbers (last I checked performance was really important for a GPU and is the main reason people buy them). 

[Vishera]

2 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

7970 as a $499 card in 2012 ($532.74 in 2017 dollars), how does it compare to the $499 MSRP Vega 64 that came out in 2017? Willing to bet the Vega 64 was a massive uptick both in performance per dollar and probably in performance per watt as well.

 

Really failing to see how GPUs are so much more expensive now. Unless of course you look at the on paper power consumption and gloss over the MSRP and totally skip the actual performance numbers (last I checked performance was really important for a GPU and is the main reason people buy them). 

You are missing my point,the HD 7970 still performs well in games,as a result of developers being slow to catch up with modern GPUs or over optimizing games,

7 years is like a millennium in the PC world,It's the first time in history that the demand for GPU resources is so slow,

If you compare 2006 GPUs to 2011 GPUs,2006 GPUs can't play 2011 titles at all.

[Mathieu9836]

Who really need to play in 4K? I mean i'm playing 1080P Ultra in most game at 75FPS with an RX580 and i'm happy with that, why in the world would i want to buy a 400$ GPU to play 1080P with a 75hz panel? IMO spending 1000$ on a monitor and a GPU just to play 1440P ultra at 120FPS is way more then i'm willing to pay. And currently i don't think there is a demand for better GPUs, realism is very good right now IMO, only thing i would see is features like RTX and other things like that giving you a very noticable improve on graphic experience.

[Zando_]

5 minutes ago, Vishera said:

You are missing my point,the HD 7970 still performs well in games,as a result of developers being slow to catch up with modern GPUs or over optimizing games,

7 years is like a millennium in the PC world,It's the first time in history that the demand for GPU resources is so slow,

If you compare 2006 GPUs to 2011 GPUs,2006 GPUs can't play 2011 titles at all.

Yeah, the 7970 still performs well for its age. But it was also a high end card that's beaten easily by cards much, much cheaper than it now. I'm not arguing whether or not games are harder to run now compared to a few years ago, I'm saying new GPUs are much cheaper than the old ones ever were, while being more efficient and often running cooler. 

 

The OP of this thread was "Why are graphics cards so expensive?", and my point as been that they're not. Other than the crypto craze bump, they're significantly cheaper than they've ever been, even with the MSRP hike per category by the 2000 series on Nvidia's side. 

[Mathieu9836]

Another reason that might not help about the GPU cost is Silicon issue some time ago and the fact that Nvidia lost a lot of profit in the last months, i guess they have to fill up the bank.

[Vishera]

2 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Yeah, the 7970 still performs well for its age. But it was also a high end card that's beaten easily by cards much, much cheaper than it now. I'm not arguing whether or not games are harder to run now compared to a few years ago, I'm saying new GPUs are much cheaper than the old ones ever were, while being more efficient and often running cooler. 

 

The OP of this thread was "Why are graphics cards so expensive?", and my point as been that they're not. Other than the crypto craze bump, they're significantly cheaper than they've ever been, even with the MSRP hike per category by the 2000 series on Nvidia's side. 

When a flagship in 2012 is $499,but in 2019 is more than double,yeah,2019 is more than double the expense for GPUs.

[Zando_]

Just now, Vishera said:

When a flagship in 2012 is $499,but in 2019 is more than double,yeah,2019 is more than double the expense for GPUs.

Comparing to the 2080 Ti? So the 2080 Ti is like 200% the price for more than 300% more performance, how is that actually more expensive? In order to make that argument you have to completely ignore the entire reason people buy GPUs, which is their performance. The Radeon VII (AMD's flagship) also massively outperforms the 7970 even with it's $699 MSRP. The 5700 XT (so far the flagship for Navi) would best that even more due to only having an MSRP of $399 (the 7970 would be over $550 in today's money) while massively outperforming it. 

Again, where and how are you coming to the conclusion that GPUs cost more now, other than sorting all the GPUs by price (highest to lowest) and picking the top one? 

[Mathieu9836]

Cars are getting more fuel efficient and more equiped, they don't sell them 200% higher then 5 years ago....

This ridiculous price increase came because of cryptomining, many generations before that saw a very small price increase for a good increase in performance and power efficiency.