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UK 480 prices going up even further!

Madness I say. This gen of cards generally is shamelessly overpriced, as I see it everything with perhaps the exception of the 57** range should be -at least- a 100 quid cheaper.

It's all because of that damn new manufacturing trend of going ridiculously small, trying to fit so much in such a tiny space that its just not sustainable any more, the yields are silly, I have no idea wtf the suits are thinking. Striving to get on top with the tech I can understand, but going this far ? It's bad for everyone. There is so much silica yet unused on both sides of the cards and they can always go with depth or an additional layer, why go smaller when you cant do it with a reasonable cost-to-benefit-ratio. I get it not... :rolleyes:


- Shijeer
 
Shijeer said:
Madness I say. This gen of cards generally is shamelessly overpriced, as I see it everything with perhaps the exception of the 57** range should be -at least- a 100 quid cheaper.
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Agree big time, gf cards are a rip off this year. Yez are mad to be buying them, especially the new Nvidia ones :rolleyes:
 
wolvers69 said:
Bugger. I was hoping for another 5850 at 200 knickers. Ah well.
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£230 now. Most of the price increase is the 9% drop in the £vs$ since October. You have another £5.50 from the Vat increase too.

I suggest you buy now, as if we get a hung parliment next month, the pound will drop further.
 
Shijeer said:
It's all because of that damn new manufacturing trend of going ridiculously small, trying to fit so much in such a tiny space that its just not sustainable any more, the yields are silly, I have no idea wtf the suits are thinking.
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Well if you want new generations of hardware to actually offer greater performance than the previous gen, you kinda have to fit more stuff in the tiny space! The suits are probably thinking along those lines. :) Not exactly a new idea, either. The reality is we're not in fact able to shrink the processes fast enough to keep up with the increase in transistor counts of new architectures, hence ever increasing die sizes, heat generation and cost.

You have a point about unsustainability though - performance of CPUs/GPUs has been increasing quicker than our ability to keep it all viable for decades (the CPU cooler never used to be as big as the PSU ya know). Already cant shrink fast enough, and even if we could, cant shrink forever. Can't increase clocks forever either. Something has to give soon! Roll on superconductivity, quantum computing, fault tolerant architectures etc etc, I guess. Where's the future when you need it?

Liam
 
I was hoping 285 prices would drop through the floor when the 5850 arrived it did'nt happen, I hoped they'd do it when the 480's arrived it did'nt happen, whats going on!!!
 
Amakuma said:
I was hoping 285 prices would drop through the floor when the 5850 arrived it did'nt happen, I hoped they'd do it when the 480's arrived it did'nt happen, whats going on!!!
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285s are no longer in production, they are getting rare - scarcity causes prices to rise not drop. It doesn't matter if they aren't as good as the competition, their prices will not fall significantly.
 
Razor Time said:
I hope this isnt going to become the norm. We have had price rises on the 5800 series since launch with some 5870's going for £100 more than launch prices around xmas time.

TSMC have allot to answer for. :(
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TSMC really do, they've helped screw us all, though as others have shown, a certain site did a one of special for like 5-10 forum members, basically 5870's at cost, for £250, that was only a month ago. That pretty much tells us that the gouging is almost entirely by the retailers, NOT AMD, not due to TSMC and not due to anything but daft end users not waiting and refusing to pay above RRP. If OCUK make £50 a 5870 at £300, why would you happily pay more. Its a vicious circle though, retailer thinks they can get away with it being £30 more, distributor wants in on the action and starts charging retailer more, cheeky retailer passes that cost on rather than marking it up a little less, so it becomes £40 more.

The guys who ACTUALLY MAKE the card wonder why a retailer should make more profit than them, and add on £20 themselves, which is entirely fair, retailer and distro both get very cheeky and pass that cost on again.

I paid £193 for my 5850 and I'd never pay a penny more than £200 for another one if I get one. If people managed to go a whole week refusing to buy them, they'd get sold at RRP.

TSMC are at fault, they haven't increased production of 40nm, because its so horribly bad its got no long term value to them so why waste money on equipment that will get thrown out early next year, the equipment costs in the regions of BILLIONS, not a few million, fair enough. If their yields weren't awful it would be a worthwhile process and they would ramp production up and we'd be flooded with 5870's, and 480gtx's to be fair.

For over a year I've been saying the thing we need more than anything, is competition in manufacturing, not actual gfx card makers. Competition between GloFo and TSMC would have brought us far lower prices on this gen, than competition between Nvidia/AMD.

When AMD make the switch, its a higher quality process, we can probably expect a 20-30% jump in yield and more chips per core, their 28nm is likely to be some 20-30% smaller than TSMC's.

Great news for AMD buyers, cheaper cards, higher yields, more supply, less price gouging chances for retailers, distro's, AIB's. Awful for Nvidia, already 60% bigger cores for 10% more performance that could increase by 20% in size due to the difference between glofo/tsmc.
 
Razor Time said:
Solution is not to buy any of the cards until both companies sort their prices out. ;)

I guess the gpu war from the last few years is over which isnt surprising as they were selling great performing cards are very low prices.
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The gpu war has nothing to do with prices, 55nm was just a point where two things happened, AMD went for a tiny core, on a process that ended up being very cheap and giving AMD hugely high yields. Getting some 120 cores off a waifer, that cost $3500 ends up as $30 a core, thats at cost, no profit. Make that $80 to cover needed profit, salarys, R&D spent, $70 for pcb, mem, heatsink and the rest of the profit on a 4850 would be for AIB/retailer etc.

They were just uber cheap cores. AT the moment TSMC are giving them maybe 60-70 good cores per wafer, and a wafer costs $5000. You're at $80+ for the core at cost, theres less cores, less sales, and the same R&D costs and number of employees to pay, so you still need a decent profit, so now the cores cost more before profit, than they did last gen after profit.

The 5850 has about the same level of profit built into it, as the 4870 had last time around, almost all increases on prices are because we the consumer let retailers mark them up.

The 55nm process wasn't great, it just worked for a tiny core, the 55nm 260-285gtx's wasn't very profitable, and certainly not after they were forced to compete on price with AMD. They had yield issues on 65 and 55nm due to their high speed design and TSMC's cheapness, every option between quality and cost, TSMC choose the cheap option and gives us a worse process. Considering the yield problems worsened due to the 1.4Ghz clocks Nvidia ran at its kind of laughable they didn't forsee it coming, the smaller a process gets, even the best process's, the worse leaking issues are getting and the harder it is to make bigger cores at high clock speeds. Nvidia EOL'd their 55nm parts because they couldn't turn a profit and still went ahead with a bigger core, with higher speeds on a worse process again.

AMD's pricing on the 48xx series wasn't forced by competition, it was just fair pricing, as the 5850 is. Remember the 260gtx ended up dropping to £130 to compete, it was £300 when the 4870 launched. There was nothing at all to stop AMD launching the 4870 at £300 also, literally absolutely nothing. They could have gone to £280, or £250. There was no price war that meant they launched at £170, just the price of the core, + profit that let them cover costs and add a little on top of that and they had their price. Nvidia were forced to drop prices to compete, AMD most certainly were not.

I got a 4870x2 for £330 around launch, considering it was a good 50% faster than a 280gtx, and cost about £20 more after NVidia had dropped prices, again, the price was based on a reasonable price to be set, if competition was setting the prices, they would have been £500 on launch. IT was another card that retailers pushed the price up on massively, RRP was £330.
 
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What makes me laugh is the amount of money people are willing to spend on a top graphics card to play games in a market where games are optimised for consoles anyway, and are often poor ports to the PC. If the gaming market swings back in favour of the PC then yes. Must admit I don't like consoles but for £150 or so you get a whole gaming system.
The reason cards are going up is because the market for them is still there at the inflated prices.

I did this a few years back, kept chasing a few top graphics cards when they came out (namely 9800GX2) but later realised it wasn't really worth it. You think they will last a while (so future proof) but then when the next super duper card comes out you still want to upgrade anyway.

These days I prefer the mid range cards, slightly biased more towards the high range - £150 to £200 max. I say this kinda jokingly but by the time the drivers of the top cards are sorted they are mid-range cards anyway :)
 
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