Why are GPUs so expensive?

[Guest2]

Not that long ago I remember a midrange GPU costing ~£200, low end £100 and top of the range £500.

Now we are looking at top of the range costing £1500/£2000, midrange £500-£1k and low end £300.

I know there’s inflation over the past 10-15 years to take into account but RAM, CPUs, motherboards etc. have not jumped this much. Is it the lack of certain GPU components, R&D or simply greed of companies and people willing to pay the extortionate prices? (me being one of these people)

 

[robj20]

Because idiots pay it.
Each year the price goes up a bit of sales stay the same or increase so does the price.
Until people vote with there wallets it will continue.

 

[TNA]

Not that long ago I remember a midrange GPU costing ~£200, low end £100 and top of the range £500.

Now we are looking at top of the range costing £1500/£2000, midrange £500-£1k and low end £300.

I know there’s inflation over the past 10-15 years to take into account but RAM, CPUs, motherboards etc. have not jumped this much. Is it the lack of certain GPU components, R&D or simply greed of companies and people willing to pay the extortionate prices? (me being one of these people)

Someone has to pay for those expensive leather jackets you know!

 

[CuriousTomCat]

Nvidia charge what people are happy to pay. If everybody is only happy to pay a maximum of £300 then that would be the price of the highest end GPU. Although it wouldn't be anywhere near as fast as a 2080Ti. It wouldn't matter though because games would have lower detail textures and would be optimised for the GPU's we have. We'd have the same framerates as we do now.

Likewise, if everybody is happy to throw all there cash at a GPU, Nvidia would make them faster and more expensive. More ram, more transisters, bigger chips, faster busses etc and the price would double. Also games would have better quality textures, more detail etc to use the extra performance. So our framerates wouldn't be any better and 4k would still be a struggle.

Everything adjusts to what the market wants. Right now there's the right balance with people buying low/mid/high end GPU's to make it all worth it and games can adjust using settings. It just works.

The dymanic has changed though. About 20+ years ago, games had a good range of graphical settings to future-proof them. Settings nobody could use when the game is released. Then years later, people could go back to old games and play them again on newer hardware with the settings turned up. This was especially good when games were rereleased as a budget title.

Times have changed now though and people want to play games at maximum settings on release. That's not what people were able to do in the old days. Yet now people moan when they cant.

 

[TNA]

It just works.

 

[Kelt]

I still remember going to a computer fair, many, many moons ago.

Picked up a top of the range Voodoo 2 card for the princely sum of £89.

*Sigh*, those were the days.

 

[gary996]

Because idiots pay it.
Each year the price goes up a bit of sales stay the same or increase so does the price.
Until people vote with there wallets it will continue.

Spot on

 

[BigBANGtheory]

Why are GPUs so expensive? In a nutshell its not enough competition so its all about maximising share holder value against what the market will sustain aka customer last policy.

 

[Guest2]

The dymanic has changed though. About 20+ years ago, games had a good range of graphical settings to future-proof them. Settings nobody could use when the game is released. Then years later, people could go back to old games and play them again on newer hardware with the settings turned up. This was especially good when games were rereleased as a budget title.

Times have changed now though and people want to play games at maximum settings on release. That's not what people were able to do in the old days. Yet now people moan when they cant.

Good point, i remember playing Unreal on a 4mb onboard graphics chip. It ran the game at something like 8fps Dark match was playable, just. But only when no-one turned a torch on
Fast forward to SLI Voodoo 2 and the glorious 1024 x 768 was available and high details!

I think in-between I had a Matrox Mystique 220. What a big pile of poo that was for £150

3dfx / Voodoo cards were definitely the high point of GPU history. Watching the intro on Unreal and first seeing the water effects were mind blowing when ''3d acceleration'' was utilised

 

[TonyTurbo78]

lack of competition in all areas and because to many gamers need the biggest shiniest GPU for epeen

 

[Zenduri]

It's purely because they can charge that much and folks will still complain but pay for it because they want the biggest and the best. The lack of strong competition hurts the market too.

I've never owned a GPU above "mid range" performance wise until now mainly due to the fact the prices have been skyrocketing over the years and I can safely say i've never paid over £200 for one despite years ago being tempted to drop £400 back in the 7970/GTX 580 days.

 

[D1craig]

Greed. simple as that.

 

[DELETED_195422]

Bawbags buying overpriced cards.

 

[Rroff]

I still remember going to a computer fair, many, many moons ago.

Picked up a top of the range Voodoo 2 card for the princely sum of £89.

*Sigh*, those were the days.

I walked into Game once somewhere around 1996/7 bought a top of the range Voodoo Obsidian (minus the daughter board) for £60 - I don't think they knew what they were selling though that model was usually £200 cards even back then. (The Obsidian Pros were like £2000 LOL).

 

[Drumroll]

If you're looking for the very best, correct. But performance per pound wasn't ever on flagship.
Same goes for cars, phones...
But there's the increasing cost of developing a new chip, which isn't simple or cheap, the production cost, despite going down in size, the number of transistors and the complexity of the process all reflect the price, but mainly the lack of viable alternatives.
Just as a side note, many car makers are sharing platforms and engines, and still, cars more expensive than ever.

 

[Poneros]

Everything's going up in price, and people are happy to pay it. Just look at phones, it's disgusting how much the prices ramped up (all while gutting features). And yet, there's no shortage of great phones on a budget - it's just that people aren't interested because they don't look as cool with a £200 phone instead of saying they got Apple's latest and greatest.

Kinda similar situation with GPUs too, there's plenty of cheap cards offering great performance. It's just not gonna be at 4K & >60 fps, or with ray tracing.

 

[TNA]

If you're looking for the very best, correct. But performance per pound wasn't ever on flagship.
Same goes for cars, phones...
But there's the increasing cost of developing a new chip, which isn't simple or cheap, the production cost, despite going down in size, the number of transistors and the complexity of the process all reflect the price, but mainly the lack of viable alternatives.
Just as a side note, many car makers are sharing platforms and engines, and still, cars more expensive than ever.

The thing is though mate, looking at their financials, you can see they are making more profit per sale now then they did before. So a lot of it is mainly that.

Same with mobile phones, the cost of making is nowhere near the price they charge. But they charge it as people are happy to pay. You can see this as their share price soars...

That is why I do not take too seriously when people say the cost of R&D is going up etc. Sure it is, but not that much for them to increase prices like they have. Most of it is just profit.

 

[b00merang69]

Blame bitcoin also.

 

[BUDFORCE]

I dunno, I'm not sure they've gone up that much, I bought an sapphire ATI x1800xt not long after release, and I think that was £200 odd quid then, and it wasn't quite the top, the x1900xt was, anyway add 14 years of inflation....

Inflation calculator says that about £300 equivalent.

I dunno it might have been more than £200 it was 14 odd years ago.

I guess they have gone up a bit, the other thing is maybe PC gaming is becoming a little more niche?

Maybe as third world countries develop more they want to get paid more so things like this will cost more.

 

[Bluntwrapped]

Providing value and performance to the end user isn’t good for business so you’ll pay Nvidia's planned obsolescence tax bitches, then comment on discussion threads as to how awesome it is

Jensen gets more of a thrill out of it than a trip to the Red Light District in Amsterdam.