Why does a GPU cost more than CPU, RAM and a PCB?

FloatingPoint

FloatingPoint

FloatingPoint

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9 Feb 2017
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241
Why does this:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £353.47 (includes shipping: £10.50)​
​

Cost £353.47

Versus This:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £359.89 (includes shipping: £9.90)​
​

costs: £359.89

or this:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £368.69 (includes shipping: £8.70)​
​

costs: £368.69

There is 8GB more of DDR4 with a CPU, RAM and MB at a similar price compared to GPU's with 8GB DDR5/8GB HBM2. Can anyone explain why please?
 
Collusion and price gouging on the DDR by the manufacturers (Class action against them in China now, IIRC) as well as the short but manic mining craze meant supply well down, and drastically, which in turn meant the prices skyrocketed. Now the mining bubble burst, and manufacturers are releasing new stocks, the prices are slowly coming down again.
 
Basically a lack of competition in the GPU market, but most people try and balance their configurations to their budget, so an RX580 8GB is still an excellent card for 1080p gaming and even 1440p gaming with tweaked settings.

There are so many factors at play, but GPU prices have skyrocketed with RTX, memory and storage prices are dropping. AMD has brought competition to the CPU market, however they don’t have anything compelling at the higher end of the GPU market, obviously with Radeon 7 independent reviews should be out in less than a month but it’s more a professional GPU rather than a gaming card.
 
You're comparing top end gpu's with mid end parts for the others

If you picked top end on each thing, prices will be closer than you think
 
GPU cores are pretty big - the same silicon for a single Vega 64 core could produce 2 or even more depending on layout AMD 1600X cores and a single defect would kill an entire GPU core while you'd normally get atleast one working CPU out of the same area resulting in a lot higher costs for producing a GPU core. The PCB for a GPU isn't hugely less complex or expensive to produce than a whole motherboard while the extra 8GB of DDR4 would be more than offset by the extra cost of the bigger GPU core.
 
Massive cores, lower sale volume, R&D into custom cooling solution... and perceived market value.

Why does a 2080ti cost £1200?

Historically it did always blow my mind how cheap motherboards were though. These days not so much *glares at Maximus X Formula*.
 
Your looking at it wrong, the products are made to hit price points that people want to (or a willing to) pay. So they decide to make a range of GPUs hitting $200, $400, $600 and $1000 or whatever, they do the R+D and make them to that price point, they dont just throw stuff together then add up the cost of the components, add there cut and charge whatever that happens to be.

If they thought people would pay £10k for a GPU, then they would make it. The cost of the bits making the GPU would probably only be a few hundred dollars or whatever, but your paying for all the R+D and also paying to get the top % of silicone that made the cut.

If people only wanted to pay $30 for GPUs, then that is what they would make. Comparing the prices to something else just doesn't make sense when the cost isn't in the raw materials.
 
15 years ago a decent graphics card didn't cost the earth and it would last ages before needing upgraded.

It's mind boggling that people spend over 1k on a graphics card in the first place then risk damaging it by installing a water cooler. Seen so many stories of leaks taking out expensive cards.

Its a shame that pc gaming has turned into a rich man's hobby.
 
Yeah as said basically they will charge what they think the market can take - its used to be that you could buy the top end dual GPU card for about £450. Inflation and local currencies are obviously a factor, but that was generally the price for the best card.

Once the Titan was released and a lot of people bought them they knew they could charge more and the prices have been going up and up ever since. This is how we get 20 series cards that are are close to double the price of the 10 series
 
TBH I think RAM prices make the cost of modern graphics cards look pretty good (excepting the RTX 2080+), considering they tend to come with a fair quantity of DDR5X/DDR6/HBM, while 16 GB of comparatively slow DDR4 can still set you back the best part of £200, and certainly no less than £100.

I think higher resolution/high hz displays are also driving demand for GPUs these days far more than in the past, where resolutions went up in relatively small increments from about 1024x768 to 1920x1080 (1080p) over quite a period of time.
 
Because people are prepared to pay, gaming market is huge, many tech heads are perfectionists and will want the best eg monitor (& thus gpu), people prepare for the future and get a card to last xyz years, its meant to be a long term investment so £400/(365*3) is nothing, techology is addictive if youre a fan, people are hooked aftr the first gpu upgrade and seeing the difference etc
 
Pricing for different components fluctuate, RAM prices have come down around 20% from their 2018 peak and are expected to fall further in 2019 as the market is in oversupply. GPU prices are a more interesting phenomenon as a lack of competition has enabled NVIDIA to slowly move the price tiers up with recent generations.

However once the “enthusiast” demand to have the latest RTX cards has been fulfilled sales have sagged and poor RTX demand was one of the factors cited by NVIDIA in their poor recent quarterly financial results. Whether the rumoured Turing-based GTX1660 and GTX1660ti releases are a factor.

Hopefully AMD’s Navi cards will bring some competition, but we will have to at least to wait until June to find out.
 
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