Why are graphic cards not getting cheaper?!

[nitromullet]

8800gt the same as 980 ti D:

8800gt = 980. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

IMO the 8800 GT is more similar to the GTX 970, while the 8800 GTS 512 would be more like the GTX 980.

 

[boozzer]

IMO the 8800 GT is more similar to the GTX 970, while the 8800 GTS 512 would be more like the GTX 980.

I respect your opinion, but I still think I am 100% right

 

[nitromullet]

I respect your opinion, but I still think I am 100% right

:thumbsup: fair enough.

 

[Morbus]

That misses the OP's point entirely because he is looking at it from a time-frame point of view since he acquired the 760; what's a viable upgrade path that warranty spending $ on for a legitimate upgrade in the context of historical price/performance inflection points. In all of these areas the 960 is a failure.

GTX760 came out June 25, 2013. Sure, you can get a GTX960 2GB for $160-170 but with 2GB it's a DOA on arrival. In terms of generational price/performance or performance increase, 960 is the worst x60 series card in the last 5 generations. Most 960 4GB models sell for $190-220 which is absurd because R9 290 is at least 50% faster.

I can understand the OP's frustration as there is no upgrade path without going to an R9 290/290X/390/970 at minimum. 960 isn't an upgrade but a waste of $ and is more suitable for a GTX460/560 user. Even a GTX660 user would be getting a very bad upgrade when considering that 660 is a 3-year-old card but 960 is only 44% faster or an average increase of just 13% per annum! That's horrible.

---------

OP, there are a variety of reasons for what's happening. Most of them are addressed here. The main ones are (1) 28nm is holding back performance increases (2) the desktop discrete GPU market is shrinking in unit volume which means to achieve similar revenues/profits on a per unit basis, prices have to go up (3) supply vs. demand - if gamers keep buying overpriced cards, NV/AMD will keep selling them for minimal increases in performance because there is little reason for them to lower prices if the product is selling. However, if the consumers stop buying their overpriced products, NV/AMD's revenues and profits decline which forces them to raise prices to survive on shrinking volumes. In turn, it becomes a vicious cycle.

Until we get truly next generation PC gamers, the only solution is to extend your upgrade time-frame to get the appropriate increase in price/performance or performance you desire. Another way to maximize your price/performance is to wait until the early adopter hype for new cards dies down / towards the end of a generation. For example, in 10 months GTX780Ti dropped from $699 to $375-400 when $330 GTX970 came out. I would say your best bet is to coast on the GTX760 and get a GTX970 style $350 Pascal / AMD's Arctic Islands upgrade. Probably going to be a solid value.

Thank you very much for this very clear answer to my question.

It bodes ill for the future of bleeding-edge PC gaming though :\ Oh well, que será será... But it does mean that I'll have to shell out a considerable amount of money in the near future, if my recording needs grow as I expect them to.

We're all in the same boat though.

If its too much, get a console.

Let's not fight that fight

 

[Blitzvogel]

Personally I think never spending above $300 is a good policy.

 

[SPBHM]

IMO the 8800 GT is more similar to the GTX 970, while the 8800 GTS 512 would be more like the GTX 980.

the 970 is a lot more cutdown than the 8800GT was, and more expensive, and more of a midrange chip to begin with,

 

[StrangerGuy]

It's a perfect storm of sorts: Intel iGPUs getting better every generation and good enough for mass appeal games like DOTA2, fabbing cost per transistors are increasing and shrinks are getting much longer, overall PC demand declining, and nobody really cares about pushing bleeding edge graphics on the PC any longer because the diminishing returns is too great.

 

[mohit9206]

Yeah i truly believe we are being charged too much for graphics card these days.
This is how it should be
Fury X/980Ti - $400
390X/980 - $300
390/970 - $200
380/960 - $150
370/950 - $100
260x/750Ti - $80
250x/750 - $60
240/740 - $40

 

[Arachnotronic]

Yeah i truly believe we are being charged too much for graphics card these days.
This is how it should be
Fury X/980Ti - $400
390X/980 - $300
390/970 - $200
380/960 - $150
370/950 - $100
260x/750Ti - $80
250x/750 - $60
240/740 - $40

Yeah, I guess companies trying to actually make money on their products is a crime these days.

 

[tential]

Yeah i truly believe we are being charged too much for graphics card these days.
This is how it should be
Fury X/980Ti - $400
390X/980 - $300
390/970 - $200
380/960 - $150
370/950 - $100
260x/750Ti - $80
250x/750 - $60
240/740 - $40

If the prices are tooo high don't buy. Clearly people feel the prices are reasonable if they keep buying. I don't, so I'm on ebay/used.

 

[Sabrewings]

Yeah i truly believe we are being charged too much for graphics card these days.
This is how it should be
Fury X/980Ti - $400
390X/980 - $300
390/970 - $200
380/960 - $150
370/950 - $100
260x/750Ti - $80
250x/750 - $60
240/740 - $40

Not if you expect them to keep putting money into the next architecture and node. It costs to continue this pace of development.

 

[boozzer]

If the prices are tooo high don't buy. Clearly people feel the prices are reasonable if they keep buying. I don't, so I'm on ebay/used.

I used to think it is because of lack of competition/buying choices. On this forum at least, certain posters are willing to pay 80% more for 10-15% more performance. D:

APU gaming! I am ready! skylake can do 720/1080p mix of low setting gaming. cannonlake doing medium? I can dream! I am 100% sure I will sell my current laptop once apu can do 1080p medium on most games.

The funniest part of all, people are defending the price increases. you would think they work for the companies.

 

[Sabrewings]

The funniest part of all, people are defending the price increases. you would think they work for the companies.

You would think that you have no clue the costs that go into developing such complex ASICs. Soon we'll have GPUs with upwards of 15 billion transistors, and you think they should be cheaper than they were 10 years ago? As I posted earlier in this thread, $650 today is $530 in 2005. The 6800 Ultra launched at $499 in 2004, which would be $630 today. Pretty damn close to the $650 980 Ti price point.

So, with a decreasing market volume and increasing R&D costs, they have raised prices only about $20 on their halo cards over 10 years. And people are whining that they're several hundred dollars over? Some people don't keep up with inflation much.

 

[boozzer]

You would think that you have no clue the costs that go into developing such complex ASICs. Soon we'll have GPUs with upwards of 15 billion transistors, and you think they should be cheaper than they were 10 years ago? As I posted earlier in this thread, $650 today is $530 in 2005. The 6800 Ultra launched at $499 in 2004, which would be $630 today. Pretty damn close to the $650 980 Ti price point.

So, with a decreasing market volume and increasing R&D costs, they have raised prices only about $20 on their halo cards over 10 years. And people are whining that they're several hundred dollars over? Some people don't keep up with inflation much.

hehe, you funny.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The funniest part of all, people are defending the price increases. you would think they work for the companies.

Its called realism.

 

[MajinCry]

Its called realism.

Surely if consumers wished for cheaper tech, and would not buy expensive tech, all the corporations would be forced to research and develop cheaper methods?

A good example for this would be LED tech.

 

[mohit9206]

Yeah, I guess companies trying to actually make money on their products is a crime these days.

Making money is one thing and ripping off customers is another. Companies like Intel are ripping buyers off by selling $300 cpu that are 5% faster than last year's model.

If the prices are tooo high don't buy. Clearly people feel the prices are reasonable if they keep buying. I don't, so I'm on ebay/used.

Haven't desktop GPU sales declined year on year? This means less people are buying because of high prices and waiting longer between upgrades.

 

[lehtv]

Making money is one thing and ripping off customers is another. Companies like Intel are ripping buyers off by selling $300 cpu that are 5% faster than last year's model.

There's no meaningful way in which Intel can rip off a customer because there's no competition. A customer can either buy an Intel CPU, or not. These are the choices. If you got ripped off, that implies you could've spent less on essentially the same thing. But that's not possible because there's no one else offering what Intel is offering.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Making money is one thing and ripping off customers is another. Companies like Intel are ripping buyers off by selling $300 cpu that are 5% faster than last year's model.

More performance at the same price they were charging last year and you think that's ripping customers off ?

ROFL!

 

[boozzer]

More performance at the same price they were charging last year and you think that's ripping customers off ?

ROFL!

Hell, if we compare intel to nv, intel is a waaaaay better company for the consumer.

 

[2is]

We are still on 22nm production processes. GDDR5 is still the RAM being used.
Nothing has really changed that would drive significant price reductions since the card when it was made was on a fairly mature process, and new cards are on the same process.

Except you've described a phenomenon that SHOULD cause price decreases. Mature process means much better yields and the R&D has long been paid for. Same with GDDR5

 

[tential]

I used to think it is because of lack of competition/buying choices. On this forum at least, certain posters are willing to pay 80% more for 10-15% more performance. D:

APU gaming! I am ready! skylake can do 720/1080p mix of low setting gaming. cannonlake doing medium? I can dream! I am 100% sure I will sell my current laptop once apu can do 1080p medium on most games.

The funniest part of all, people are defending the price increases. you would think they work for the companies.

APUs have always been 1 step too slow. The second they can provide the level of experience you describe, many consumers who aren't the enthusiasts like we are will head that way. People are buying GTX 950s/960s because they have to, not because they want to. If they can get 1080p/medium level experience from their IGP, they'll be very very happy.

I really don't know what prompted intel to keep pushing their IGP performance like this, but it is interesting. I used to game on intel's IGP. I beat San Andreas like that. I never once complained about the graphics, I was too happy playing games on a PC without the need to think about getting a graphics card, building a pc, etc.

That's a lot of the market that doesn't care about GPUs at all so it'll be interesting to see what happens as IGPs continue to be an important part of both intel and amd's business.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I really don't know what prompted intel to keep pushing their IGP performance like this, but it is interesting. I used to game on intel's IGP. I beat San Andreas like that. I never once complained about the graphics, I was too happy playing games on a PC without the need to think about getting a graphics card, building a pc, etc.

They figured they could get paid more by doing so. Intel saw a solid boost in its PC processor average selling prices starting with Sandy Bridge as OEMs showed that they were willing to pay a little extra to buy Intel CPUs w/ better iGPUs in order to save on buying low-end discrete GPUs.

The low-end discrete GPU market is basically done for as can be seen in NVIDIA's financial results.

 

[DustinBrowder]

If the prices are tooo high don't buy. Clearly people feel the prices are reasonable if they keep buying. I don't, so I'm on ebay/used.

They are not buying, that is why we have RECORD LOW NUMBERS, record low numbers!!!!!

Only morons with no brains buy them or people who own 4+ years old hardware so they have no choice! Everyone who owns a Nvidia 600 series or AMD 7000 series doesn't need to upgrade, why should they? They have overpriced cards with only few that actually make sense like a 290 on sale, like a 280x on sale, etc...

If you can get a 290 for $240-250 its worth it, if you can get a 280x at $170 its worth it, but again you have to look at sales and stuff.

Otherwise you have to be a moron or a blind Nvidia worshiper to be buying their overpriced turds! Even religious zealots are not so zealous about eating up what their god(nvidia) serves them! To some people Nvidia is their god, they probably have shrines to which they pray before they go to bed!

 

[SPBHM]

Otherwise you have to be a moron or a blind Nvidia worshiper to be buying their overpriced turds! Even religious zealots are not so zealous about eating up what their god(nvidia) serves them! To some people Nvidia is their god, they probably have shrines to which they pray before they go to bed!

yes, let's blame Nvidia fans for the overpriced fury line and overpriced rebrands like the 390X.