Graphic cards were not always this expensive, right?

[iLikeBananas]

So I told a friend that I will wait for graphic cards to go down in price before I upgrade to a new one. For context, a 3070 costs 950€ here where I live. Anyway, the friend claims that gpu prices wont go down ever again, and more importantly he said that you were never able to buy gpu's at msrp. Is that true? Because I have a hard time believing that. And do you guys know any websites that show pricing history? I need that to show my friend that gpu prices used to be normal. Looking for something like steamcharts (a website that shows price history for steam games) but for gpu's.

[jaslion]

I mean since that scalpers have found that the gaming market is a great way to make money, there are still shortages going on, production literally cannot increase and demand is not going down I'd say it will be years before we start seeing things calm down.

 

Pcpartpicker has a history graph. Buying at msrp was alway pretty hard and usually only happened near the end of the products life or if competition was fierce and supply was healthy.

[IPD]

Define "expensive".  Did you ever try to get your hands on a Voodoo 5 6000?

[tikker]

17 minutes ago, iLikeBananas said:

he said that you were never able to buy gpu's at msrp

Aside from reference or Founder's Edition cards this is true as far as I've known pricing. Third party cards are always more expensive.

18 minutes ago, iLikeBananas said:

Anyway, the friend claims that gpu prices wont go down ever again,

I think it will take a while, because people have basically demonstrated they don't care how expensive a GPU is and will buy it anyway. Resellers would be fools not to take advantage of that.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

12 minutes ago, IPD said:

Define "expensive".  Did you ever try to get your hands on a Voodoo 5 6000?

Why would you ever think that unreleased, prototype/preproduction products count in such a discussion?

[tkitch]

So there are two separate things happening in your post, or at least possible answers:

 

When the 1080TI came out back in 2016/7 - it was the most expensive consumer targeted gaming card that had been released then, with a MSRP of ~700$.  (Before you even try to start:  SHUT THE FUCK UP.  Titan cards were never consumer focused, ever.)

 

Then the 2000 series came out, and the 2080 TI landed...  and that had a MSRP of 1000$

 

And now with the 3000 series?  The 3090 is a 1400$ Card, and the TI will likely be at least 15 or 1600$

 

As for MSRP Availability?  Yeah, they used to (generally) be available around MSRP.  I bought a couple 10 series cards for retail, or less with sales.  But with Mining and other things going on, the 2000 were slim availability, and the 3000 is mostly not available, resulting in scalping everywhere, including at retailers who never did it in the past.

 

What does the future hold?  Nobody knows for sure, but that's where we are for now.

[iLikeBananas]

2 minutes ago, tkitch said:

As for MSRP Availability?  Yeah, they used to (generally) be available around MSRP.  I bought a couple 10 series cards for retail, or less with sales. 

Do you remember how much the 1080 or 1080 TI cost back then when they were new? Back then I wasn't really into gaming and never looked into graphics card. There is this website called gh.de, but their price history goes only back to 1 year with most products... also it only works for pricing in Germany.

[tkitch]

1 minute ago, iLikeBananas said:

Do you remember how much the 1080 or 1080 TI cost back then when they were new? Back then I wasn't really into gaming and never looked into graphics card. There is this website called gh.de, but their price history goes only back to 1 year with most products... also it only works for pricing in Germany.

I bought my 1080 for ~420$ just after the 1080 TI launched.  (And before Mining made those go stupid.)

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

No they weren't, the first ones where 200-300 bucks , and weren't even any good lol, it only went uphill from then on.

 

 

33 minutes ago, iLikeBananas said:

he said that you were never able to buy gpu's at msrp

Depends,  here in Germany,  since last 20 years , nearly impossible... basically retailers love to price gouge the shit out of everyone  -- in theory importing would often be cheaper even with taxes/fees but then you have the issue of warranty etc...

 

For example back then I bought a NEW limited edition PS3 from HK, cheaper than a normal John doe version here (without import fees, but still... ) so it's basically all electronics... as i said it depends.  

 

Maybe you will get your MSRP again,  it will just always be higher than before this 'crisis'...

 

[Ralf]

36 minutes ago, IPD said:

Define "expensive".  Did you ever try to get your hands on a Voodoo 5 6000?

Yeah ROG Ares and Mars cards did cost a lot too.

[IPD]

9 hours ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Why would you ever think that unreleased, prototype/preproduction products count in such a discussion?

Because they made 1000 of them.  Because they were stupidly expensive.  And because a modern equivalent would be a card that outperformed every gpu (current and future) except for a RTX 4090 Ti.

[da na]

10 minutes ago, IPD said:

Because they made 1000 of them.  Because they were stupidly expensive.  And because a modern equivalent would be a card that outperformed every gpu (current and future) except for a RTX 4090 Ti.

I don't have a Voodoo 5 6000 but I do have an engineering sample HD 5870... Bought it for $40 but really hoping that it'll get more valuable in like 20 years!

[IPD]

Never know.  The appeal of the voodoo was the unprecedented GPU power shoved into it--external power feed and all.

[GDRRiley]

If you weren’t trying to get into the first few months of a product cycle you could get okay cards at or below MSRP. 
GPU pricing is likely to go up with the sub 150$ market being gone. Top cards will keep climbing till no one pays for them which means we may end up with a lot more spread. DRR5 may also mean we finally got APUs that fit the traditional sub 150$ market 

instead of buying a 100$ cpu and a 120$ GPu buy a 200-250$ APU

[xg32]

15 hours ago, iLikeBananas said:

.

TLDR: gpus were underpriced, especially the 1080ti and the msrp of the 3070 and 3080 is bs, and a perfect storm of price adjustments, crypto, pandemic, rise in demand corrected that.

 

Consumers got lucky with cards 10-series and back, electronic prices were rather slow at adjusting for inflation, the 1080ti both had too much performance for what they had in the pipeline and was too cheap, lets just say it was always worth more than its msrp

 

then came the 20-series nvidia were focusing on tensor cores so performance improvement sucked. Someone calculated the cost of a 2080ti with leaked yields and it came out to be 500usd for nvidia, so msrp at 1k, and people still bought it up.

 

then 30 series came out during a pandemic and the price of a 3080 was exactly 1 Eth (it's exactly what it'd mine in 6 months or so) for a bit until the Eth mining changes (not an expert on that), the 3070 and 3080 msrp are just wrong (they can never make enough to sell at msrp) and 3080ti and 3090 are still priced slightly below where people would pay for them. but the current ebay prices are the lowest i've seen in a long time.

 

Based on the tsmc leaks the 40-series situation will be even worse, hopefully at least nvidia will price them so it'd be harder to scalp. (2k msrp inc?)

[tikker]

18 hours ago, iLikeBananas said:

Do you remember how much the 1080 or 1080 TI cost back then when they were new? Back then I wasn't really into gaming and never looked into graphics card. There is this website called gh.de, but their price history goes only back to 1 year with most products... also it only works for pricing in Germany.

Bought my 1080 Ti for MSRP at launch: €829. There's this topic that kept track of launch prices over the years, including a link to a spreadsheet with the 3000 series included:

 

 

[jones177]

I am basically paying the same as I did with the 20 series when it comes to EVGA cards. 

XC 2080 ti = $1200

XC3 Ultra 3080 ti= $1200

 

FTW3 Ultra 2080 ti = $1500

FTW3 Ultra 3080 ti = $1450

 

It is my MSI and ASUS cards that have gone up.

[Mick Naughty]

I bought to original titans at $1100 usd a piece. Dont see an issue with the pricing today or the past year. Only issue now is the rest of the hardware needed to keep up with todays cards.

[Mister Woof]

Well yes and no. Computers in general used to be really expensive. I recall my parents buying a Tandy 1000 (286, 640k RAM, 3.5" floppy, no hard drive, with a shitty CRT) for $2000 in 1988. That's about $4600 in 2021 US Dollars.

 

On a personal level, I remember paying $600 on 2x Voodoo2 12mb PCI cards in 1999. That translates to around $1000.

 

So no, in comparison to that, no they have no become more expensive. Given you're able to snag a 6600 for around $330ish if you're dedicated enough.

[Daethz]

I skipped the 2000 series because the 2080tis sold for $1300 the entire generation.

So yes

but also no, pre-2k series was more reasonable

[8tg]

Heres the simplest explaination:

 

GTX 295, flagship to end all flagships, dual gpu absolute end game enthusiast monster of a card

Cost about 600$ from AIBs, or ~770$ USD in 2021 accounting for inflation

 

The RTX 3090 has an MSRP of 1500$

and a street price right now of about 2500$

An RTX 3070 is the card with the closest MSRP of about 650-700$ from AIBs

 

Thats how bad gpu pricing is

[Bobbysixjp]

I got into PC gaming pretty late but I remember buying a new GTX 1070 for around 400 USD in June of 2017. About a year later I sold it and bought a used GTX 1080 for 350 USD. 
About a month ago I paid 1200 USD for a 3080. 

[ADarkBard]

New releases and flagship cards were always expensive, by that I mean $500 or more. What used to happen is the previous generation would hit the used market for half that, with mature stable drivers these were your best bet. That sadly thanks to miners and scalpers doesn't happen any more.

[joecomp2000]

as long as I can remember price go up and down, and depend heavily on competition and timing. . I remember there was a point where an ATI was considered way better than nvidia, then nvidia dominated for years later. but at that point they battles on price and my hd 5850 ( or was it 70 ) was under 2 bills and had an amazing 2 gb of ram ....it rocked .so the closer they are to performance the better the price...if (and this is a big if )miners and scalpers are not screwing up supply.

[Bobbysixjp]

On 10/25/2021 at 6:32 AM, ADarkBard said:

New releases and flagship cards were always expensive, by that I mean $500 or more. What used to happen is the previous generation would hit the used market for half that, with mature stable drivers these were your best bet. That sadly thanks to miners and scalpers doesn't happen any more.

True, but since the 20 series the flagship cards are now more than 1000 USD. The 2080 Ti was 1200 USD and the same for the 3080. To be honest I can’t see prices ever going back to that level, for example the 4080  selling for 6-700 USD? More like 1000+.