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Is it me or are graphic cards prices totally off the charts

cosmogenesis

cosmogenesis

cosmogenesis

Soldato
Joined
15 Mar 2007
Posts
3,793
Looking around at the graphics market I can see that cost of playing PC games on some decent hardware is now looking a bit expensive. I mean the whole idea of 4K gaming for example (I know its new and extreme) needs two sli/xfire cards and ideally a 34" curved monitor and hence that as good as 2K.

Even more modest aims of true HD sees the graphics cards coming in around 350-400 and up.

Anyone else think its a little over the top these days?
 
I don't think so.

I'm beating the same drum I have for a while, but I'm playing 4K with a GTX 760 (of late, ME3 and GTA:V). OK, at some point I need to upgrade but I don't really need to yet.

If you want to play at 1080p, which was the standard for pretty much every year prior to now, you can easily do so with a £200 card, same as always.

Problem is, especially on enthusiast, people are willing to spend a lot of money to get the best - and it likely skews our opinions as to what is normal.
 
a second hand 290 or 970, or 390/970 if new are the price/performance sweet spots at under 300... everything in that bracket you mention are overpriced until you get up to the FuryX/980ti

the top end graphics card prices haven't really increased that much in the last 10 years by the time you factor in inflation, but yes where we are right now with 4K/widescreen being a big jump over the old 1080p standard, GPU's haven't quite caught up on the performance front to drive the latest monitors... having said that 2560x1440 has been out quite a while and was the old "premium" over 1080p, and that also required SLI for a number of years

now, for 2560x1440 @ 60hz you can do with one card, so we are making advances, albeit slowly... and that is on the assumption that you are chasing maximum settings, which a lot of people are less bothered about
 
Erm.

You can game off a 980Ti at 4k just fine, and that's at high/very high settings. If you don't mind toning down the settings a bit, you can get away with a GTX 980, which is a high end card in itself. For 1080p/1440p you can get away with a GTX 970, which sets you back £230 and it's a very good card.

I've yet to use an AMD card since the 79xx series, but from what I have heard the 380(x)/390(x) both offer epic price to performance at lower resolutions, and you can stretch them to 4k if need be.

4k is new technology in relation to 1080p/1440p, and the price of 4k displays is rather cheap if you don't mind not having an IPS panel, or technologies such as Free/G-Sync. I believe you can pick up a bog standard 4k60 monitor for around £250.

If you are looking towards the high end of hardware, and hardware requirements, of course it's going to be expensive, but if you look towards what the average user uses, you can build a really good system for a really low price.
 
4K is really high end if you want it for gaming, hence the price.

You can get a second hand 290x for under £200 and a 1080p monitor is relatively inexpensive.

For gaming at a budget, consoles tend to be your best bet though but then you are generally limited to 30fps on most games.
 
Yes they have increased a lot since my first PC when they were 150- 250 for a good one, I had 7900 GT, 8800 GTX and 9800 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2008/04/01/nvidia_geforce_9800_gtx_512mb/1

4K is not good value, for a decent one with IPS I am guessing it is going to cost around 1K just for the monitor

If using 1080p you can get a 700 series graphics card on fleabay for under 200 though and its basically as good as a 970 or a 980
 
Ash0787 said:
Yes they have increased a lot since my first PC when they were 150- 250 for a good one, I had 7900 GT, 8800 GTX and 9800 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2008/04/01/nvidia_geforce_9800_gtx_512mb/1

4K is not good value, for a decent one with IPS I am guessing it is going to cost around 1K just for the monitor

If using 1080p you can get a 700 series graphics card on fleabay for under 200 though and its basically as good as a 970 or a 980
Click to expand...

the 8800GTX was about £500 when it launched :)
the GTS was over £100 cheaper and actually performed faster in most games due to the only GTS cards being released were factory OC models, so you might mean that one
 
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andybird123 said:
sorry, I ninja edited above, the GTS was cheaper and in most things faster than a GTX, so most people bought that one, maybe?
Click to expand...

No definitely a GTX. Although just read the GTX was released in November 2006 so I bought mine over 6 months after release hence the price.
 
If you want to play games on the latest hardware, then you need to pay your monies. :)

We've got three of the new Asus/Acer 34" G-SYNC IPS 100Hz screens and the minimum requirement for surround according to Asus is 3x Titan X and to be frank we agree with them because at a resolution of 10000x1440 you need the 12GB and the horsepower. :)

However in just monitors and graphics alone that is around £5000 !!!!
 
it seems to me a lot of people have different definitions of "it plays fine @ 4k on my ...." for me if i was to say it plays fine it would have to be at 60fps minimum if i wanted lower fps i would have bought a console which is not fine ;)

But back on topic yeh graphics card prices are slightly of chart , tbh there well of chart considering how long they last these days before your toning down settings or losing frames. I would expect paying 900 odd pound for a titan it would last a while but i suspect next year if i want eye candy and minimum frames around 60 i will no doubt be upgrading again.
 
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Yeah cards are on the up and up with each generation but they are also selling like wildfire so why not?!

It has always been the case to be on the bleeding edge of technology has cost a lot of money but the gulf is getting slightly larger but so is the technology gap.
 
Gibbo said:
If you want to play games on the latest hardware, then you need to pay your monies. :)

We've got three of the new Asus/Acer 34" G-SYNC IPS 100Hz screens and the minimum requirement for surround according to Asus is 3x Titan X and to be frank we agree with them because at a resolution of 10000x1440 you need the 12GB and the horsepower. :)

However in just monitors and graphics alone that is around £5000 !!!!
Click to expand...

:eek::eek::eek:
 
It's not so much the pricing as the lack of real competition between AMD and NVidia. NVidia rule the roost and they know it so price accordingly/extortionately. If there was a card that AMD managed that would beat NVidia at their own game without having to resort to 'gimmicks' like more VRAM (seriously, 8GB? the only game that filled my 6GB 780's VRAM was Shadows of Mordor with the UHD texture pack at 2560x1080, even BF4 on Ultra barely nudges over 3GB) then NVidia can almost price with impunity and, sadly, people pay it. 4k has something to do with it but there's always that nagging doubt that The Green Team are holding back and drip feeding us because they can.

AMD need to really step up their game, sort their drivers out once and for all and actually release something that people will buy because it's better and cheaper than what the Green Party have. I keep hoping that someone with real financial muscle will come in and buy up AMD so they can really invest in CPU's and GPU's properly. Someone like Samsung or LG but I can't see it. NVidia have too much of a lead I fear which means, to all intents and purposes, a Monopoly for them. Which is bad.
 
Yep,agreed and the people suffering the most are not enthusiasts but anyone stuck in the sub £200 area for buying graphics cards.

MissChief said:
It's not so much the pricing as the lack of real competition between AMD and NVidia. NVidia rule the roost and they know it so price accordingly/extortionately. If there was a card that AMD managed that would beat NVidia at their own game without having to resort to 'gimmicks' like more VRAM (seriously, 8GB? the only game that filled my 6GB 780's VRAM was Shadows of Mordor with the UHD texture pack at 2560x1080, even BF4 on Ultra barely nudges over 3GB) then NVidia can almost price with impunity and, sadly, people pay it. 4k has something to do with it but there's always that nagging doubt that The Green Team are holding back and drip feeding us because they can.

AMD need to really step up their game, sort their drivers out once and for all and actually release something that people will buy because it's better and cheaper than what the Green Party have. I keep hoping that someone with real financial muscle will come in and buy up AMD so they can really invest in CPU's and GPU's properly. Someone like Samsung or LG but I can't see it. NVidia have too much of a lead I fear which means, to all intents and purposes, a Monopoly for them. Which is bad.
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Nvidia had more sales when they launched the FX and AMD had the 9700 PRO. That was going back to 2003.

The FX was horrible in DX9. Look at what Valve had to say about it:

http://techreport.com/review/5636/valve-steamed-over-nv3x-performance

They still sold more....

Its only during the days of the X800 that ATI/AMD sold MORE cards than Nvidia.

Even when Nvidia had six to nine months of inferior DX10 hardware when compared to the HD5000 series,they SOLD MORE.

So,ATI/AMD firing on all cylinders with the HD4000 and HD5000 series,really did not help them sell more than Nvidia.

Here are some marketshare(they mean sales AFAIK) charts since 2003:

emvQALG.png

They need more than good hardware and good drivers and good dev relations.

They actually need competent PR and marketing. Nvidia is much better at that.

But I expect that is the result of when you have your founder still in charge of the company.

Its also why Apple has done so well with their iPhones(and despite the hate for them they are still competent devices).

You know when AMD hit its stride with the Athlon??

It was under the guidance of this chap:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Sanders_(businessman)

He took the bull by the horns.
 
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It's always been the same. New hardware carries a premium price tag.

I paid £300 for a 120mb hard drive for my Amiga 500 back in 1990.
My 9700pro GPU back in 1999 was over £350, & XP2700+ CPU £280. Nothing has really changed.
 
Gibbo said:
If you want to play games on the latest hardware, then you need to pay your monies. :)

We've got three of the new Asus/Acer 34" G-SYNC IPS 100Hz screens and the minimum requirement for surround according to Asus is 3x Titan X and to be frank we agree with them because at a resolution of 10000x1440 you need the 12GB and the horsepower. :)

However in just monitors and graphics alone that is around £5000 !!!!
Click to expand...

I've been thinking about that monitor a lot lately. Is it worth the £950 or what ever it may be?
 
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