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

FrankJH · 13 Sep 2015 at 13:26

andybird123 said:
The thing to bear in mind with AMD's current lineup is that the 390/X are basically just a rebrand with 8GB of the 290/X with a small OC, so you really only have one generation from the 7970 to the 390

The GTX 580 was around £300, when AMD released the 7970 at £450, just sayin... The 6970 was £300 at launch

smaller and quieter so Imo worth a different generation

FrankJH · 13 Sep 2015 at 13:27

TheRealDeal said:
It is a fair comparison, apart from the extra 4gb of ram and a higher memory clock they are pretty much the same cards. My card at 1200p will perform almost identically to a 390 and i don't need the extra 4gb of ram at this resolution. My card comes with stock clocks of 1040/1350

This is pretty much my card and it does not come with 4 games and is clocked lower on the core.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-178-PC&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=3059

My memory will happily sit at 1500mhz as well.

in regards to comparing a PRICE for a year old card compared to one that's a couple of months old makes it an invalid comparison.......

andybird123 · 13 Sep 2015 at 13:31

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
The GTX580 3GB cards and the ones with multi-display capabilities were around £400 to £500 or around the HD7970 3GB level. Examples include the Galaxy MDT 1.5GB.

The lowest end GTX580 1.5GB cards were roughly around the same price as the HD7950 3GB ones at launch at around £350ish.

Before the GTX680 launch,a few GTX580 deals sprung up and the cheapest I ever saw one go for was just under £300 on offer.

Edit!!

Just look at the Hexus Bang4buck ratings:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/33031-amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb/?page=17

Bittech:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/12/22/amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb-review/10

Hexus puts the GTX580 1.5GB at around £350ish and Bittech at around £350ish to £380ish.

Weird, I bought a 580 3GB for about £320 just before the 7970 came out, I remember the price because I sold it for the same when the 680 came out and bought a 670 for the same a couple of weeks later

I think the main thing at the time was that the 6970 had been £300, so everyone was expecting the 7970 to be around the same but instead was stacked on top of 580 prices

TheRealDeal · 13 Sep 2015 at 13:32

FrankJH said:
in regards to comparing a PRICE for a year old card compared to one that's a couple of months old makes it an invalid comparison.......

It's more than valid as i was replying to Cat who is not happy with how fast the performance on the mid range is moving forward. I jumped in and got steal which has not been the norm over the last 4-5 years and the 390 proves my point. Sure most people that are not into hardware will not know any different and see the 390 as a brand new card and will accept the new price but in the space of a year nothing has changed price wise maybe it's got worse for similar performance. That's the main point.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 13 Sep 2015 at 13:36

andybird123 said:
Weird, I bought a 580 3GB for about £320 just before the 7970 came out, I remember the price because I sold it for the same when the 680 came out and bought a 670 for the same a couple of weeks later

Well,I think those sites had a look on the usual pricing,not one off deals.

But,those GTX580 3GB and multi-monitor cards were still well over £400+ so I am not sure how anyone could say those slower GTX580 cards were better value.

Plus,the HD7950 seemed to be around GTX580 pricing IIRC. Not the best value at launch,but still with double the VRAM,better overclockability,better multi-monitor handling it makes me wonder why such an old tech card like the GTX580 wasn't dropped in price.

moogle · 13 Sep 2015 at 14:03

I remember back in 2004 when I was buying a hard drive, the 6800GT was around £300~ and I thought that was quite a lot back then. I think they've always been expensive.

sneakysnail · 13 Sep 2015 at 14:03

dont think things are so bad there's always a premium on new tech but they'll always be good price points on some tech such as the 390 right now. the performance gains over the last 5 years have been good it's just that they haven't kept up with the monitors. Lets be honest processors haven't improved much over the last 5 years but haven't had to so nobody cares.

You have to be reasonable, yes a £300ish GPU would play anything at 1080 60 fps maxed settings 5 or so years ago but monitor res (4k) has increased 4 fold, you aren't going to get 4 times the performance for the same price in only 5 years. the same performance for double the price like we have doesn't sound so bad to me. if you only want to game at the same level of 1080 60 fps you can do it damn cheap.

I used to have a 8800 ultra and let me tell you that wasn't cheap, wasn't exactly the golden age of value. 850$ 8 years ago and when it died i replaced it with a 7770 that matched its performance with half the power, heat and noise and at a fraction of the cost. (something like 180$) If anything i think we got spoiled by some of the older generation of cards that had great value and now people are just a bit upset because they haven't continued too improve at that great rate they did 4-5 years ago. that period was just an outlier to me and not the norm, people have always had to pay stupid money for graphics cards.

andybird123 · 13 Sep 2015 at 14:06

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Well,I think those sites had a look on the usual pricing,not one off deals.

But,those GTX580 3GB and multi-monitor cards were still well over £400+ so I am not sure how anyone could say those slower GTX580 cards were better value.

Plus,the HD7950 seemed to be around GTX580 pricing IIRC. Not the best value at launch,but still with double the VRAM,better overclockability,better multi-monitor handling it makes me wonder why such an old tech card like the GTX580 wasn't dropped in price.

Because the 680 and 670 came out a couple of months later and 580 stocks had already been run down... I do remember some 480 deals at like £199 at one point, but 580's were all out of stock when the 680 came out iirc, the 7970 launch reviews weren't great either, so at £300-350 the 580 still looked like good value by comparison and the only game that came close to pushing the vram limit was BF3 (and that particular discussion saw a couple of people lose their posting rights!)

Id tried 560ti SLI and 5801.5GB SLI and had texture pop in, a single 580-3GB fixed it but then had no problems with a 670-2GB either as NVIDIA had introduced colour compression

FinglisHobbit · 13 Sep 2015 at 14:24

FrankJH said:
Are 2*7970's much better than a 390 (If I'm recalling correctly 2 gens later)

IE instead of buying the 2nd 7970, you put the money you had with money from selling original 7970 and you could practically get a non-x 390

Admittedly my 390 was bought mainly because of a new Dell 34" widescreen, so I wanted the extra Vram anyway - but to me your choice would have been very close indeed.

I dont really know how they compare to a 390. I was on the brink of buying a 390 but managed to get the 7970 rather cheap. If I sold them both Id probably get about £140 tops. Then I'd need £120 ontop of that to get a 390 which I understand wouldnt be much different at all.

The noise and power draw of 2x7970 is a bit of a difference but the performance is easily as good as anyone needs for 1440p gaming right now.

Id love a 980ti or FuryX but Id have to get a new 144hz monitor to showcase them too. So its a huge outlay for a bit better framerate in a hand full of games ive already played now.

MissChief · 13 Sep 2015 at 16:47

I generally look for an increase in performance of around 50% every time I upgrade. Hell I've kept the same CPU since I got my 460 and have gone to a 670 then a 780 and have seen better than that, BUT this time I had to spend what I personally consider a huge amount for the 780, £399.99, by far the most I've ever spent on a single component, never mind a single card. If I want another 50% increase in 2017 then, sadly, I think I will end up paying more than that again. Mind you I may have upgraded my board and CPU by then so might just double up the 780 with another one which, by then will likely be less than £100!

Final8y · 13 Sep 2015 at 17:14

Insanties_birth said:
That's not really necessarily true. We don't have stuff like Beats, Apple, Justin Bieber etc. because they're awesome. Some stuff is just 'good enough' but also marketed / memorable / pitched right to become popular. Even if AMD cards weren't better they were more often than not priced fairly and judging by Nvidia's recent botches with drivers, 3,5gb gate, half fat gtx 980 etc. Lots of people were sucking on Titan prices and bigging it up until the fury came out and they had to release the 980ti just to stop the the more sensible buyers from jumping AMD's way. That says something that Nvidia had to act around AMD. They might not be leading the way but clearly they are at least competing reasonably enough or Nvidia wouldn't be trying to jump gun them.

Indeed when AMD had the better CPU and GPU than the competition and when i was building my first PC i asked the 2 most geeky guys i knew at the time and they both were using Intel and NV and advised me to do the same, but i did my home work and found out that AMD had the better CPU and ATI had the better I.Q so i went that way.

Even enthusiasts get sucked in by good marketing but most would never admit it.

edscdk · 13 Sep 2015 at 17:28

There are cheaper cards available you don't need the most expensive cards, the games will run fine on a £100card

FoxEye · 13 Sep 2015 at 21:51

edscdk said:
There are cheaper cards available you don't need the most expensive cards, the games will run fine on a £100card

Between this and Gregster's "all you need is a 950", I can see that we have some real comedians in this forum

£100 gets you an R7 360. A card that can't even give decent FPS at 1080p.

arc@css · 13 Sep 2015 at 21:57

Depends on the game(s) and what settings you expect it to be able to run.

Gregster · 13 Sep 2015 at 22:01

FoxEye said:
Between this and Gregster's "all you need is a 950", I can see that we have some real comedians in this forum

£100 gets you an R7 360. A card that can't even give decent FPS at 1080p.

In fairness, it is only recently that I have bought top end and was always happy with low to mid for many years. You don't need to have the best although it is nice to be able to max every game out.

FoxEye · 13 Sep 2015 at 22:34

arc@css said:
Depends on the game(s) and what settings you expect it to be able to run.

Looking at something recent, The Witcher 3, at 1080p on medium settings an R7 360 gives ~30 FPS.

Since most of us aim for 45-60 FPS, it's not exactly a great card for 1080p. You could lower the settings to 'low', of course.

But let's face it, a £100 (new) card is not a good choice for gaming unless you just play WoW or something.

@Gregster: No-one talks about maxing on such a cheap card, but the R7 360 struggles to play games on medium settings.

arc@css · 13 Sep 2015 at 22:43

I think the sweet spot for cards has generally been approximately around £150 - £200. That will usually deliver the user a reasonably good experience, providing they aren't dabbling too much with options like high amounts of AA.

nashathedog · 13 Sep 2015 at 23:08

Demands have also increased unfortunately,

I used to have a 1600x900 screen and an 8600gt then the second Stalker came out with DX10 and I wanted to be able to run it better than on static lighting (DX8?) so I got a 1gb HD5570 and thought it gave great performance even though it broke the bank at 60 odd quid, Then came another upgrade for Stalker 3 and DX11 in the form of a 1gb 5770, Then I wanted a bit more oomph for visual mods and moved to a 2gb 7850 which was great but then I got a 1080p monitor so I had to move up again, This time to a 7950 boost, That did not quite cut it so I went through a 4gb 770 and then a 780, Then I found I needed more ram and more oomph due to dsr/vsr and in preparation for a real 1440p screen so along came Hawaii and then Fiji. Then I took stock and found that to run what I want to run, how I want to run it means I need to spend as much on a card as a gamer spends on a console.
How did that happen?
I remember sitting there fantasizing about a 2gb 560ti but going with a 2gb 7850 because of the price difference. And now I'm eating baked beans from a can and forcing the cat to catch his own dinner while I chase that unobtainable 60 fps average I used to get on my ZX81. :eek:

arc@css · 13 Sep 2015 at 23:14

nashathedog said:
Demands have also increased unfortunately,

I used to have a 1600x900 screen and an 8600gt then the second Stalker came out with DX10 and I wanted to be able to run it better than on static lighting (DX8?) so I got a 1gb HD5570 and thought it gave great performance even though it broke the bank at 60 odd quid, Then came another upgrade for Stalker 3 and DX11 in the form of a 1gb 5770, Then I wanted a bit more oomph for visual mods and moved to a 2gb 7850 which was great but then I got a 1080p monitor so I had to move up again, This time to a 7950 boost, That did not quite cut it so I went through a 4gb 770 and then a 780, Then I found I needed more ram and more oomph due to dsr/vsr and in preparation for a real 1440p screen so along came Hawaii and then Fiji. Then I took stock and found that to run what I want to run, how I want to run it means I need to spend as much on a card as a gamer spends on a console.
How did that happen?
I remember sitting there fantasizing about a 2gb 560ti but going with the 2gb 7850 cause of the price difference. And now I'm eating baked beans from a can and forcing the cat to catch his own dinner while I chase that unobtainable 60 fps average.

I think people place 'demands' on themselves, though. A lot of what you have described isn't out of the capabilities of a decent bang for buck card, but when mods are thrown in to the equation, which understandably aren't always well optimized, then it's not surprising that one might need to upgrade.

nashathedog · 13 Sep 2015 at 23:45

arc@css said:
I think people place 'demands' on themselves, though. A lot of what you have described isn't out of the capabilities of a decent bang for buck card, but when mods are thrown in to the equation, which understandably aren't always well optimized, then it's not surprising that one might need to upgrade.

You're right, I could still be running games perfectly well on my 7850 even the 5770 would just about manage with a few settings tweaks seeing as I'm only on a 1080p screen but once you've experienced amazing maxed out visuals and the smooth performance you get from 60+ fps it's hard to go back without kicking and screaming.