NVIDIA GeForce3 - Scam?

[Valkore]

Anybody else think ~$600 is just a bit TOO much to pay for a video card? Given that's all it is.. You still need the rest of your computer to be able to play games. And that's all it's for.. Games. Seems to be very pricey, considering you can get a decent ENTIRE system for ~$600, that will do everything you'll ever need, except play 3D games. Hmmm...

With NVidia buying out 3DFX, and little/no response from ATI in the graphics dept, NVidia is sure to price gouge the hell out of consumers looking to be the reigning 3DMarks champs out there (what a "goal" to strive for). The sad thing is, this card will probably sell very well, even at the grossly inflated price. Even though 99.9% of the games out there will run smoothly with full detail at 1024x768x32bpp on a competent system with a "regular" GF2 GTS.

Buy this card at this high a price, and you're screwing yourselves in the future. What's next? $700 GF3 Pro? $800 for a GF3 Ultra with VIVO? It's &$*@#(% sick. How can people justify wasting that much money, so they can see their Quake3 FPS bump up 20%..

Sure glad I got in on the $125 Geforce GTS 32MB deal last year.

-V

 

[Killrose]

How much was it not too long ago for two Voodoo 2's in SLI mode? A GeForce2 Ultra was at least $495.00 when it was first released, now look at both of those solutions. Yea, NV20 will have a premium price tag, and it will keep it longer now that 3dfx is out of the picture.
We can only hope (pray) that Ati continues on their current path, and that
Kyro, Matrox, ect. can maybe offer some other choices, but I'm affraid that as long as Nvidia has to battle at budget prices with the MX, that they are going to be looking at NV20 to shore up the company's bottom line ($$$$).

 

[BFG10K]

But remember that when it comes out the prices of nVidia's other boards will come down. Even the GF2 Ultra will likely drop down to a reasonable price.

 

[esung]

There's always someone having the pleasure to boasting his rig can do 150fps+ on Q3 or UT.. like all he cared is fps instead of the quality of the game, not just graphics. but there's quite a few people out there. and most of the online community are testing the performance of the card by frame rate.. instead of visual quality.

although nVidia have both, but it's still an overkill. maybe I'll wait for a new Matrox, or ATI.. or a MX version of Geforce 3

 

[Finality]

Still overpriced though.

The only thing I think that could cause this are

A) it needs a boat load of memory. The Herc card apparently has 128 Megs of 3.8ns DDR.
B) The GPU die size is immense thanks to increased complexity (16 pipelines? - who knows)
C) Its in short supply because all production is being used for Xbox, or there yields for 0.15 micron are lower than expected.

 

[Auric]

People keep bringing this up. Look, no one has a gun to their head being forced to buy anything. Variety is good. The real question is if a new product really has any benefit. I doubt this one will except for those few people that want to play current games at the maximum resolutions on huge monitors. The good part is it will probably raise the bar a bit as far as the software maker's target goes and of course lower the average price for the practical gamers' cards.

I'm sure many people would spend $1000 on a video card if it allowed playing games that approached realism however the software just does not exist and won't until the hardware gets powerful enough. It's the ol' catch 22 thang.

Even if a company could design and sell a viddy card that is 10x as powerful it prolly ain't gonna if it can do the same with something 1.5x as powerful and earn the same amount and/or gain market share. Besides, to repeat you won't see the benefit without the software which takes years to develop. It's a slow process.

The one thing you can be certain of right now is that any top o' the line product is priced disproportionately higher than its sister products. I have mentioned some of this stuff before... but I'm sure NVIDIA pays clever marketers, accountants and actuary types to ensure where their sweet spot is (volume x price) to maximize profits. If you want one and cannot afford it right now just wait. In a year it will be less than a quarter the price, of course by then it will be crap for bragging rights but that's the way it is. I really thing the only people who are bitter about the "high" price are those that resent the cost of bragging rights. Get over it. Pick up a nice $80-150 Radeon or Geforce 2 and be happy.

P.S. 3dfx was not bought out it went bankrupt. There's a big difference.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Well, prices are on the rise. Remember back into the TNT2 era, where previous generation cards can be found for $50-$70. Now, with the GeForce 2 out, the original GeForce 256 is still above $100. How much can the GeForce 2 drop? If it drops to the $100 range, then how much would a GeForce 256 be? Or an MX? Or a TNT2?