GPU prices barely climbed up until ~5 years ago, before I used to buy each generation GPU for ~$250-300 for mid-high end card. Going from a Voodoo2 to Voodoo3 to GeForce Ti4600 to 8800GTX to GTX480 were all similar in prices (same for some ATI/AMD cards, I remember the Radeon 770Pro, HD7770...