Complain to Nvidia, it might help with price gouging.

[Think]

Resellers or not, I think that Nvidia can have a huge influence on the subject with there parnter chain.

Ok, it rough but what do you think?:

Dear Nvidia
In recent years it has become apparent that the scale of which video cards have been increasing in price has become a source of disappointment for the loyal group of pc enthusiasts. In no short measure, the flagship video cards can account for a substantial cost of our pc?s but with a substantial depreciation of our investments.

We are disappointed because Nvidia has not taken into consideration the purchasing limitations for a majority of seasoned and especially the new pc enthusiasts on the market.

To resolve the problem we would appreciate a substantially lower cost for your line of products, but especially the top of the line versions that will be available in the next few weeks. To pay $680US and/or $1378US for SLI is just an exorbitant amount and as mentioned prohibitive to most of us.

I look forward to hearing from you and to a resolution of this problem. I will wait for the release of the 8800 and hope it will make a home in many of your loyal pc customers once the pricing has been reconsidered to a level that can be accepted.

Yours sincerely

Best I can find for sending information to Nvidia is here:

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvid...cF9jYXRzPSZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MQ

 

[rbV5]

Don't be an early adopter of Premium high-end hardware if rapidly depriciating technology bums you out.

A budget minded gamer is wise to look below the high end stuff for price/performance models that make sense for their budget. It certainly isn't going to be necissary to grab an 8800 at launch in order to have a great PC gaming experience, thats for sure. "Tell them" with your dollars.

 

[Old Hippie]

I always "Vote with my Wallet".

 

[A5]

Originally posted by: rbV5
Don't be an early adopter of Premium high-end hardware if rapidly depriciating technology bums you out.

A budget minded gamer is wise to look below the high end stuff for price/performance models that make sense for their budget. It certainly isn't going to be necissary to grab an 8800 at launch in order to have a great PC gaming experience, thats for sure. "Tell them" with your dollars.

That's the solution right there. The market will adjust itself once the initial demand is gone.

 

[pkme2]

Originally posted by: A5

Originally posted by: rbV5
Don't be an early adopter of Premium high-end hardware if rapidly depriciating technology bums you out.

A budget minded gamer is wise to look below the high end stuff for price/performance models that make sense for their budget. It certainly isn't going to be necissary to grab an 8800 at launch in order to have a great PC gaming experience, thats for sure. "Tell them" with your dollars.

That's the solution right there. The market will adjust itself once the initial demand is gone.

Very well made point. When demand settles, the market will adjust itself as always.
Do get by with what is needed, and later when it's prices have dropped or in your "comfort zone", go for it. I'm sure that a couple months wait will make it easy on your wallet.

 

[imported_Imp]

I don't see how this complaint has much (if any) merit. Their budget/medium line is totally affordable and cheaper than ever. The 7600gt came out at around $200 US/ $260 CDN, that is what I paid for a craptastic Geforce 2 64MB months after it came out. You are saying that their line of products, but especially the top of the line versions are overpriced is kinda missing the point. To go to the old cliched comparison, I doubt you'd bad mouth Porsche about their pricing. Now I don't know much about the new G90 or whatever line coming out soon, but their 7000 series are more than affordable in PC terms, and can handle anything right now at pretty high settings. No, I'm not an Nvidia fanboy, but complaining about high-end products for their high prices...

 

[Seekermeister]

The problem with high prices for the new models, is that it keeps the prices higher than they should be for the older models...even used.

 

[kuqdew]

nvidia 's prices are good!
ati is bad!

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: kuqdew
nvidia 's prices are good!
ati is bad!

*rolls eyes*

it's the same crap across the board from both mfgr.

 

[Slugbait]

This kind of pricing has been around forever, and is not exclusive to videocards. Heck, I remember when the P6/200 was released...just two thousand dollars, and it was yours. You'd then have to buy a box, mobo, videocard, hard drive, CD-ROM, etc...and if you wanted the 8x CD drive, the 4meg Matrox card, the 2gig hard drive, etc, you paid a lot more for those than lesser components.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Nvidia and ATI have been increasing performance per dollar for video cards faster than intel and AMD have for CPUs and micron, etc. have for RAM, so your complaint is without merit.

This year's midrange card will generally be faster than last year's premium card and twice as fast as a premium card from 1.5 - 2 years ago.

Complaining about the price on the highest-priced, premium, "enthusiast" cards is silly. If you don't want to amputate a pair of limbs to acquire one just buy one of the midrange cards instead.

For most computer parts there is a steep jump and a sharp drop off in performance gain per dollar for the highest-rated parts including Core 2 Extreme CPUs, 2-4 GB RAM sticks, 750 GB hard drives, and 1,000 watt PSUs.

 

[smthmlk]

There's plenty of people willing to pay at every price-point. If you can't afford that 911 Turbo, do you try to get a bunch of people to complain to Porsche? There are plenty of people out there buying 911 Turbo's, enough so that Porsche considers the model profitable and continues to offer it (and similar models) at the same or very similar price-points. Hop in your Honda Civic and enjoy it, or make the money to afford that Porsche

Personally, I'm loving my 94' geo metro! 3 cylinders for the motherfvcking win!

To make it clear, look around at the number of people with top-shelf nvidia cards in SLI. Nvidia recognized that there is a segment of people who would not only buy 1 $400-650 card, but would buy two! People are willing to spend the money, regardless of whether it makes sense given the rate of change of performance vs. price in the positive direction. Then look at what happened with the 7950GX2 -- people bought two of those put them in quad sli! That's upwards of $1100-1200!

Sooner or later you have to face the fact that some people have more money than you, and companies are going to cater to them as well It's not like the only option in the video card market is the 7950GX2 or X1900XTX. If ATI and Nvidia ignored every price-point below $400 then another company would pop up and make a card to fill the demand for cheaper, capable video cards. There's plenty of good deals out there for cheap in the video card market, even if you're looking to pay only about a hundred dollars.

 

[Varun]

I agree with the other posters. I have to admit the top end products have really gone up in price but so has the performance. The best part is the trickle down to the mid range cards which are an incredible value right now. A 7600GT is really an amazing card for the money.

 

[Duvie]

This is a capitalistic system.....You vote or send a message with your purchase....You dont like it? Dont buy it....fact is they wouldn't raise the prices if they were not sure someone would pay the price for it. remember early adopters deal with very limited supply and often once production really ramps up these cards drop 25-30% fast....I say find a nice 250-300 price point for a GT type model and be happy. Often imes there is a model that will OC to the higher card levels for a fraction of the cost.

 

[westihockey09]

The one advice I have on the letter is that you might want to dumby it down. : p
The nvidia customer service is going to read it and my stereo typical guess is that they don't have the highest iq's. Now I could be wrong, but if they don't understand what you are talking about, they might dismiss it.



Westi

 

[Think]

They replied:


A GPU architecture can cost up to 300 Million Dollars or more to develop. The scale at which GPU semiconductor transistors and density increasing is a cause of this. Newer GPUs have more pins and more memory which increases the complexity of the Printed Circuit Board also know as the card. More layers and more surface mount components equals higher cost. Factor in inflation and the cost of energy and there you have it.

NVIDIA may design the reference card for the highest end GPU for proof of concept to show that our chip works and this is how it works. The highest quality component$ and top notch de$ign is used. No corners are usually cut for the sake of performance. Card manufactures / vendors usually stick with that design in order to meet critical time to market but they can change it to make it cheaper but maybe that's not in their interest for the high end. Please note that NVIDIA only sells GPUs and doesn't make nor sell the end product which is the graphics card.

Bottom lines is top of the line products require big wallets. If you cant afford the top product I would suggest stepping down to a product to start off with that you can afford. NVIDIA offers top to bottom GPUs for all market segments. It will be hard to try and keep up with the industry as new high end GPUs are released every 6 to 8 months. This has been the tradition for about 10 years if you haven't noticed. An alternative could be a next Gen Game Console such as Play Station where the life cycle of such units can be as much as 7 years instead of 7 months.

Best regards,
NVIDIA

Actually, it was a good response except for the last part. Makes you feel like buying a Dell for $299 and use the rest for the sony?

 

[IndyJaws]

Originally posted by: Slugbait
This kind of pricing has been around forever, and is not exclusive to videocards. Heck, I remember when the P6/200 was released...just two thousand dollars, and it was yours. You'd then have to buy a box, mobo, videocard, hard drive, CD-ROM, etc...and if you wanted the 8x CD drive, the 4meg Matrox card, the 2gig hard drive, etc, you paid a lot more for those than lesser components.

Heck, I remember when the 386 was released. It was crazy to see the prices going through the roof back then. Forget GPU's or RAM, it was all about storage at that time.

 

[jleves]

Supply and Demand - it's simple. NVIDIA like every other computer company is trying to maximize profit. If you think it's too high, don't buy it.

 

[Seekermeister]

Demand does spark innovation and improvement in performance. So I don't mind the idea of paying a little more, but there is a limit to what these improvements are worth. Whatever improvements that each generation of cards brings, the user doesn't get the full benefit of, because the software developers uses this to boost their software, instead of designing the software to conserve resources and makes their jobs easier. In the very few years that I have been using computers, what was considered the newest and best of just a few years ago, is now abandoned...not because the old cards were bad, but because they can't keep up with the software.

Instead of focusing on the hardware, we should do so with the software. As long as we don't, we will never see any real improvements.

 

[Think]

Originally posted by: Seekermeister
Demand does spark innovation and improvement in performance. So I don't mind the idea of paying a little more, but there is a limit to what these improvements are worth. Whatever improvements that each generation of cards brings, the user doesn't get the full benefit of, because the software developers uses this to boost their software, instead of designing the software to conserve resources and makes their jobs easier. In the very few years that I have been using computers, what was considered the newest and best of just a few years ago, is now abandoned...not because the old cards were bad, but because they can't keep up with the software.

Instead of focusing on the hardware, we should do so with the software. As long as we don't, we will never see any real improvements.

Very true indeed!

 

[Genx87]

The best option is to not buy their product at those prices. I think your problem stems from wanting their product but the guy next door is willing to pay prices you arent and it ends up making you wait or paying more than you want.

 

[Think]

Originally posted by: Genx87
The best option is to not buy their product at those prices. I think your problem stems from wanting their product but the guy next door is willing to pay prices you arent and it ends up making you wait or paying more than you want.

Very true but I would also like to add that I am in need of a video card and would like to have something that has reselling power - adda dx10 capability. It's a very odd transition year for computers since Microsoft has implemented a dx10 for Vista only.

If dx10 was capable of running in the xp 64 environment ( my current OS ) then this would be just a side note

At this point, I'll just wait for the release of the 8800 and buy the Nvidia 7900 or Ati x1950 when prices drop alot.

 

[poisonthewell]

What makes you think X number of people sending their customer service a message worded exactly as yours will do anything other than drive up their costs by having to hire more people to answer such silly emails? Good strategy.

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: Think
They replied:


A GPU architecture can cost up to 300 Million Dollars or more to develop. The scale at which GPU semiconductor transistors and density increasing is a cause of this. Newer GPUs have more pins and more memory which increases the complexity of the Printed Circuit Board also know as the card. More layers and more surface mount components equals higher cost. Factor in inflation and the cost of energy and there you have it.

NVIDIA may design the reference card for the highest end GPU for proof of concept to show that our chip works and this is how it works. The highest quality component$ and top notch de$ign is used. No corners are usually cut for the sake of performance. Card manufactures / vendors usually stick with that design in order to meet critical time to market but they can change it to make it cheaper but maybe that's not in their interest for the high end. Please note that NVIDIA only sells GPUs and doesn't make nor sell the end product which is the graphics card.

Bottom lines is top of the line products require big wallets. If you cant afford the top product I would suggest stepping down to a product to start off with that you can afford. NVIDIA offers top to bottom GPUs for all market segments. It will be hard to try and keep up with the industry as new high end GPUs are released every 6 to 8 months. This has been the tradition for about 10 years if you haven't noticed. An alternative could be a next Gen Game Console such as Play Station where the life cycle of such units can be as much as 7 years instead of 7 months.

Best regards,
NVIDIA

Actually, it was a good response except for the last part. Makes you feel like buying a Dell for $299 and use the rest for the sony?

Wow. A response that isn't canned.

 

[DasFox]

I thought Nvidia also made a standard reference card, that companies like Evga, PNY, etc purchased and just placed there own heatsink fans and tweaks to.

What most graphics card companies only buy the GPU, and then have these Nvidia cards built?

Hmm that's never been my understanding of this industry.

ALOHA