Why are graphics cards so expensive?

Mira Yurizaki · December 15, 2019

Oh, this thread got necro'd. But I suppose I could throw in some two cents.

The cost of graphics cards over time in the high-end, except for Turing, haven't really changed much over the years. I recall buying a GeForce 7800 GTX for around $550-$600 (NewEgg nuked all of my order history prior to 2010, so I can't get the exact figure). Assuming it was $600 back in 2005, in 2016, when I bought my GTX 1080 for around $650, this would've been around $737, going up to $771 in 2018. I'm using https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/ to figure out inflation. So in reality, the relative cost of video cards hasn't changed all that much. There are reasons why it seems more expensive, but that's neither for here nor there. I must also emphasize again that Turing is an outlier, which is why I'm not really counting it.

(On a side note, the 7800 GTX's competitor, ATi's X1800 XT, launched at a cost of ~$550)

The only reason why AMD can offer a cheaper graphics card at the moment is because they're selling 7nm parts. This gives them a higher yield on top of the other benefits a smaller process node provides. And since about 2010, AMD has tried to keep their GPUs smaller in area so as to maximize yields. NVIDIA doesn't seem to care all that much, or they tend to pawn off their "big GPUs" to the consumer market when they probably shouldn't. But in the case of Turing, they're also still using a technically 16nm process which means larger GPU sizes and lower yields. It's up in the air why they didn't go with 7nm this time around.

Haro · December 15, 2019

On 10/11/2019 at 9:41 PM, 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?

i mean it depends on where you live but 150 to 200 can get you above mid tier performance there days i mean pc hardware is shaping up real nice i havnt seen prices that reasonable in a pretty long while i mean you can get a 2600 for like 120ish 6 cores and 12 threads but for gpus i mean the 570 goes for like 120ish as well and cant be beaten in terms price to performance i mean gpu's have been going down in price as well i dont know about where you live and the prices but its getting generally better

masethekiller · December 20, 2019

I have given it more thought because I was misled by marketing and reviews. Since video cards are in so many 'tiers' now it's hard to figure out what is actually mid-range and you could get a good card and look at reviews and think it's crap because 10 other cards are above it.

I would say a good midrange card is 1660 which is about 200. Then you have the 1660 Super which is a great card, that's what I have. It's basically a 1660 TI slightly slower and in some games faster.

The multiple tiers make it alot harder to identify what is 'midrange' , there used to be basically 3 tiers, low middle and high, and now there are many more. If your deliberate about you can get a good midrange card for 200 dollars.

dgsddfgdfhgs · December 20, 2019

5 minutes ago, masethekiller said:

Since video cards are in so many 'tiers' now it's hard to figure out what is actually mid-range and you could get a good card and look at reviews and think it's crap because 10 other cards are above it.

imo the tier should refer the same card but made by different manufacturer design