Why Today's Graphics Card Market Sucks

[xDarc]

ATI is every bit the offender Nvidia is. ATI's offense at this time is much more subtle than Nvidia's- but it's not like I have mentioned it before. You've conveniently overlooked it. They're guilty of keeping prices on their underperforming and older cards artificially high, when cards that perform better are available now for the same price; and in some cases less.

It just really looks to me like ATI and Nvidia have stopped competing with prices... We'll see what happens when these price fixing lawsuits are all said and done. I think one or both of them will have to clean up their act- hopefully both.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: xDarc
ATI is every bit the offender Nvidia is. ATI's offense at this time is much more subtle than Nvidia's- but it's not like I have mentioned it before. You've conveniently overlooked it. They're guilty of keeping prices on their underperforming and older cards artificially high, when cards that perform better are available now for the same price; and in some cases less.

wow.. talk about 'twisting'...

on one hand, you're bitching because "today's cards" suck, but on the other hand, you're bitching because "today's cards" which "perform better", are no more expensive, or even less than "underperforming and older" cards.

 

[xDarc]

Who's doing the twisting... "Today's Graphics Card Market Sucks" ... and they are indeed more expensive than previous generations- most evidenced in the rising price ceiling for these cards and the rising prices of the cards from high-low end ranges.

I've said it plenty of times before- the low end 8600GT performs no better than cards made 2 or more generations ago; and yet it still makes it's debut at the same prices those older cards debuted at. Where's the sense in that? And an Ultra can cost between 800 and 1,000 dollars? Cards from the previous generation aren't dropping in price accordingly either... WTF is going on?

You're not the least bit concerned at artificially inflated prices?

 

[smthmlk]

I'm more concerned about your use of semicolons, personally....

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: xDarc
Who's doing the twisting... "Today's Graphics Card Market Sucks" ... and they are indeed more expensive than previous generations- most evidenced in the rising price ceiling for these cards and the rising prices of the cards from high-low end ranges.

I've said it plenty of times before- the low end 8600GT performs no better than cards made 2 or more generations ago; and yet it still makes it's debut at the same prices those older cards debuted at. Where's the sense in that? And an Ultra can cost between 800 and 1,000 dollars? Cards from the previous generation aren't dropping in price accordingly either... WTF is going on?

You're not the least bit concerned at artificially inflated prices?

Ah, now I know who you are. So when are you going to start collecting people for the class action suit?

 

[xDarc]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
Ah, now I know who you are. So when are you going to start collecting people for the class action suit?

Lol. ORLY? I'm just a guy who came to the position he's at after one night of looking at the facts out there, who doesn't mind arguing with a bunch of sensitive 8800 owners drawn to this thread like moths to a flame. Unexpected... Intersting... Not a dissapointment... But- this thread has generated better discussion on other areas of the web; leave it to an enthusiast hardware forum with a high percentage of elitist snobs to generate the most fuss.

 

[soybeast]

I'm with xDarc. I'll bring the rage, somebody else bring the pitchforks. DOWN WITH THE ESTABLISHMENT!

 

[n7]

Honestly, xDarc has a point.

Apparently, though, most of you are so enamoured with your green or red love to see thru your shaders.

Pricing has steadily increased on high end cards, as well as higher mid range.

Sure performance has gone up, but as we've seen w/ C2Ds from Intel, that doesn't mean pricing needs to go up; it can actually come down.

The other thing that's really annoying is that not only has pricing jumped a ton, but power consumption & heat output has gotten ridiculous, with no apparent end to the madness in sight.

When touching the side of my 8800 GTX's heatsink for more than a second or two at idle is cause for burns, that might be a good sign the manufacturers might wanna look at getting things a bit more efficient, rather than slapping on bigger & bigger heatsinks every generation.

Overall, i'm going to have to agree w/ the OP, the graphics card market is indeed sh!t right now.
My 8800 GTX is a great card, but it has issues (since nV + drivers = joke).
We have no real competition at the very high end, & pricing of course has stayed inflated.
I personally am not impressed w/ the GPU market these days either.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: xDarc

Originally posted by: CaiNaM

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

But you're not grasping the main point I think.

See current new cards on the market are NOT so much faster to justify the price.

an 8800GTS almost doubled the performance of the 7series and x1900.. for $400, so i hardly think that's a valid point.

Did you check the benchmarks? 8800 series cards have been beaten often by high end 7900 series cards; and in some cases- X1900/1950 series. What more do you need to understand that the 8800 is a step and not a leap?

Furthermore- my E6600 has got to be 8-10 times more powerful than my old P4 3GHz... but did it cost me 8-10 times more??? NO!!! That is not how it traditionally works. The graphics card market's pricing is FUBAR; and you folks are being taken for a ride.

Let's not forget about the 51 lawsuits against these graphics card "pimps" alleging price fixing...

P.S. If you feel there's nothing wrong with the current pricing scheme; than expect to pay 1200-1800 dollars for a card that will no doubt be twice as powerful as an 8800GTX this time next year.

When does the madness end?

The Core 2 Duo E6600 is not 8-10 times more powerful on average then a Pentium 4 3GHZ, if you were talking on a Core to Core basis, since a Core 2 Duo E4300 is about the equivalent of the Presler XE 965 give or take using very rough estimates. It might take something like high 5 GHZ to low 6 GHZ Dual Core Presler to match the E6600, which would be about close to 2x more powerful then a Pentium 4 3GHZ. So even accounting for it's Dual Core nature your looking at 4 times the total processing power of the Pentium 4 3GHZ. This is already being fairly liberal in favor of Core 2 Duo.

Your also aren't accounting for the fact that as you reach the bleeding edge price/performance falls downward very rapidly, on the CPU front, is the X6800 2 times more powerful then the E6600, yet it was 3 times the price despite the fact that it's not.

8800 GTS 640 was typically more powerful then the X1950 XTX which at the time went for 400 US or so, so it's price was justified in comparison to what was out.

You cannot expect the price/performance curve to remain static, this is not a Utopia.

There are few situations if any that the 8800 GTS 640 gets beaten by a X1950 XTX or 7900 GTX. You may have a point for the 8800 GTS 320, but that card was priced much more reasonably.

Prices aren't going to rise that much, 600 USD give or take has been the standard to hold for now, for top tier video card performance. You only breach 1000 USD for SLI.

To the person that a 8800 GTS 640 doubles the 7900 or X1900 Series performance, that is only true if your talking about comparing to a lower end X1900 or 7900, compared to the 7900 GTX and X1900 XTX, that just isn't the case. Even the 8800 GTX doesn't quite double the performance of the 7900 GTX or X1950 XTX it varies from 1.3-1.8x.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally Posted by: xDarc

Lack of Suitable Alternatives Or Intermediary Transitions:

So I've decided I'll pass on the 8800 series cards, I then set out to find a card that would provide a significant improvement over my 1900GT at a low price. To my dissapointment, it seems prices on older models aren't dropping as fast as you'd think. (Newegg Price Info)

An x1950 crossfire which gets outperformed in almost every benchmark by an 8800GTS 320MB; sometimes by far- still costs just as much; and in some cases more than the lower tier 8800 GTS 320MB cards. The higher end 7900 series of cards are still floating above 200 dollars- which is too much to pay for an intermediary card to transition from in the short term. Ideally I was looking at spending no more than $100-$150 for something that will kick the crap out of my 1900GT; and hold me over until a new series of cards arrive that offer real value.

What's available for about a 150 bucks? For my needs, nothing really. The 8600GT series cards are in that price range; but they are about on par with my x1900GT. Though I could not find a direct comparison- the 8500 and 8600GT were compared to a x1950 PRO- (which you can see here only trumps the x1900GT by a small margin: (Review)) and the x1950 PRO outperformed the 8600GT: (Review)

http://www.techpowerup.com/rev...phire/X1950_Pro_Dual/1
http://www.digital-daily.com/v...950pro_dual/index2.htm

An X1950PRO Dual is often close of the single 8800GTS, the X1950XT Crossfire is near and sometimes outperforms the 8800GTS by a small margin. Still a great feat of a single 8800GTS being able to outperform 2 videocards in Crossfire/SLI in many situations. Is rare to see an 8800GTS being twice as fast as a single 7900GTX or X1950XTX except in ultra high resolutions with lots of anti aliasing, the performance improvement in best case scenarios is about 60% which is nice, but sometimes performance gains are non existant. But that also means that in the future when we start to see DX10 games, it will not have enough fuel to power up the requirements of it. That's why I wouldn't bother to buy any GeForce 8 or Radeon HD series until something more trustable comes and then is when I do a complete system overhaul. For me the best jump in performance was from the FX to 6800 series or Radeon 9800 to X800, after that, rarely you can see a two fold increase in performance.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: n7
Honestly, xDarc has a point.

Apparently, though, most of you are so enamoured with your green or red love to see thru your shaders.

Pricing has steadily increased on high end cards, as well as higher mid range.

Sure performance has gone up, but as we've seen w/ C2Ds from Intel, that doesn't mean pricing needs to go up; it can actually come down.

The other thing that's really annoying is that not only has pricing jumped a ton, but power consumption & heat output has gotten ridiculous, with no apparent end to the madness in sight.

When touching the side of my 8800 GTX's heatsink for more than a second or two at idle is cause for burns, that might be a good sign the manufacturers might wanna look at getting things a bit more efficient, rather than slapping on bigger & bigger heatsinks every generation.

Overall, i'm going to have to agree w/ the OP, the graphics card market is indeed sh!t right now.
My 8800 GTX is a great card, but it has issues (since nV + drivers = joke).
We have no real competition at the very high end, & pricing of course has stayed inflated.
I personally am not impressed w/ the GPU market these days either.

There is a difference, Intel is out for blood with the Core 2 Duo's, they want to regain market share with profits as a secondary concern at the present time, hence the very aggressive pricing.

As well performance hasn't increased that much for CPU's in the past couple of years how fast is the Core 2 Duo compared to the original Northwood 3GHZ ? It's about 4 years newer for Core 2, and your maybe looking at 4 times the performance only if considering highly multithreaded scenarios. For most cases your hard pressed to be 2.5x faster if your not doing anything multithreaded. Your also looking at 2 full nodes from 0.13 micron to 65nm.

Compare that to the rate GPU's have advanced since that time, Radeon 9700 Pro to X1950 XTX, let's see if a 6800 GT is 2.5x the 9700 Pro, and a 7950 GT is 2x the 6800 GT, 15% more for 7900 GTX, 15% more over 7900 GTX for X1950 XTX, your looking at 6.6 times the performance, plus an incredible amount of additional functionality and programability in the transistor budget added. 0.15 micron to 90nm, which is only 1 and a half shrinks.

GPU's advance at a rate where process technology can't keep up, as evidenced by the ever increasing, die sizes, and power requirements.

This is also the case with CPU's now but it is slower, the die size increase is nowhere near as extreme.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: evolucion8
An X1950PRO Dual is often close of the single 8800GTS, the X1950XT Crossfire is near and sometimes outperforms the 8800GTS by a small margin. Still a great feat of a single 8800GTS being able to outperform 2 videocards in Crossfire/SLI in many situations. Is rare to see an 8800GTS being twice as fast as a single 7900GTX or X1950XTX except in ultra high resolutions with lots of anti aliasing, the performance improvement in best case scenarios is about 60% which is nice, but sometimes performance gains are non existant. But that also means that in the future when we start to see DX10 games, it will not have enough fuel to power up the requirements of it. That's why I wouldn't bother to buy any GeForce 8 or Radeon HD series until something more trustable comes and then is when I do a complete system overhaul. For me the best jump in performance was from the FX to 6800 series or Radeon 9800 to X800, after that, rarely you can see a two fold increase in performance.

DX9 to DX10 is a major jump in terms of functionality so there just isn't that much room for transistor to be spent on performance.

You also don't need to buy 8800's for their DX10 performance, they offer exemplary DX9 performance for today's games. DX10 is just nice to allow you to see DX10 effects if you do so desire.

By the time a "real" DX10 games comes out, of course the 8800 Series will be antiquated. How well does 9700 Pro play Oblivion (one of the first "real" DX9 games)?

 

[yuppiejr]

If the market is so bad right now and there aren't any compelling DX10 titles out right now - why not vote with your wallet and NOT BUY a new card until they come down in price? If something illegal is happening a-la price fixing, let it get sorted out in a court of law. As far as I can tell, Nvidia and ATI price their GPU parts to card makers based on price models that their research indicates the market will allow based on consumer's willingness to pay $xxx for a given product. If it doesn't sell, it gets discounted/rebated until it does, or if it moves like hotcakes, prices will and should remain fixed increase based on demand. These companies are not charities, they have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize profits. If anyone is to blame for the skyrocketing prices in video adapter land it's the consumers purchasing these products who ultimately decide with their dollars what is a fair price for a given product.

There are cases where ATI/Nvidia will NOT discount previous generation parts that occupy the same place (value/midmarket/premium) in their current line to prevent cannibalizing sales of their expensive new chip release. They are not obligated to provide you a discount on last year's model any more than you are required to buy it. There may be internal measures of a product line's overall success or failure based on sales of that product, meaning in some cases ATI is better off selling the new 2900 cards which have a significant R&D cost to make up for versus leftover parts in the profitable 19xx series that's proven successful in the marketplace already.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: coldpower27

Originally posted by: evolucion8
An X1950PRO Dual is often close of the single 8800GTS, the X1950XT Crossfire is near and sometimes outperforms the 8800GTS by a small margin. Still a great feat of a single 8800GTS being able to outperform 2 videocards in Crossfire/SLI in many situations. Is rare to see an 8800GTS being twice as fast as a single 7900GTX or X1950XTX except in ultra high resolutions with lots of anti aliasing, the performance improvement in best case scenarios is about 60% which is nice, but sometimes performance gains are non existant. But that also means that in the future when we start to see DX10 games, it will not have enough fuel to power up the requirements of it. That's why I wouldn't bother to buy any GeForce 8 or Radeon HD series until something more trustable comes and then is when I do a complete system overhaul. For me the best jump in performance was from the FX to 6800 series or Radeon 9800 to X800, after that, rarely you can see a two fold increase in performance.

DX9 to DX10 is a major jump in terms of functionality so there just isn't that much room for transistor to be spent on performance.

You also don't need to buy 8800's for their DX10 performance, they offer exemplary DX9 performance for today's games. DX10 is just nice to allow you to see DX10 effects if you do so desire.

By the time a "real" DX10 games comes out, of course the 8800 Series will be antiquated. How well does 9700 Pro play Oblivion (one of the first "real" DX9 games)?

Yeah, you're right!! Even though Far Cry and Half Life 2 are pure DX9 games which doesn't exploit DX9 completely, it runs without FSAA on the 9700PRO, but games that push DX9 to a nice extent like Oblivion, F.E.A.R. etc, barely plays on a 9700PRO on medium low quality.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: xDarc
Who's doing the twisting... "Today's Graphics Card Market Sucks" ... and they are indeed more expensive than previous generations- most evidenced in the rising price ceiling for these cards and the rising prices of the cards from high-low end ranges.

I've said it plenty of times before- the low end 8600GT performs no better than cards made 2 or more generations ago; and yet it still makes it's debut at the same prices those older cards debuted at. Where's the sense in that? And an Ultra can cost between 800 and 1,000 dollars? Cards from the previous generation aren't dropping in price accordingly either... WTF is going on?

You're not the least bit concerned at artificially inflated prices?

Really? What are you talking about? The 8600 GT performs a little bit better then 7600 GT level which introduced at 199USD, which in itself is a improvement over 6800 GS level introduced at $249 and the 6800 GT level introduced at $399.

Cards from the previous generation high end cost alot of money to fabricate, so they only have so much more room to drop until Nvidia/ATI simply discontinue them.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: xDarc
Who's doing the twisting...

you are. first you say today's market sucks, then you state prices are as low or lower this year, than last year.

so i guess last year's sucks worse?

"Today's Graphics Card Market Sucks" ... and they are indeed more expensive than previous generations- most evidenced in the rising price ceiling for these cards and the rising prices of the cards from high-low end ranges.

I've said it plenty of times before- the low end 8600GT performs no better than cards made 2 or more generations ago;

no better than the high end cards made in past generation. they are still an improvement over previous low range cards. you're not gonna find awesome performance for $100.

and yet it still makes it's debut at the same prices those older cards debuted at. Where's the sense in that?

better performance and better features than last year's $100 cards. not so hard to fathom.

And an Ultra can cost between 800 and 1,000 dollars?

again, not so different from the PE models, or the 7800GT 512. these "elite" cards historically have always been overpriced, offer minimal performance gains for exuberant prices. do i agree with you that they are priced ridiculously? sure, but again, the point here is it's not a NEW thing; it's happened in the past.

Cards from the previous generation aren't dropping in price accordingly either... WTF is going on?

this also has happened in the past. these aren't dictated by the manufacturers; the prices almost always remain at MSRP, however deep discounts generally occur as retailers clear inventory/shelf space for upcoming models. those models whose price initially drops tend to climb back up towards MSRP again as inventory depletes.

this is especially true at B&M stores, where in general the prices almost always remain at MSRP, save a sale price in a weekly ciruclar...

again, this is nothing new.

You're not the least bit concerned at artificially inflated prices?

not at all. there is always value to be found (the $315 i paid for my 640mb GTS is a MUCH better value than the almost $400 ea i paid for both a 6800GT and x800Pro 3 years ago), and i'm not stupid enough to pay $800 for a GTX ultra...

this crap is nothing new, and has always been like this in one area or another.. i remember paying over $300 for a Diamond Viper VLB... or $300 for the very first SoundBlaster cards.. $300 for a 40MB hard drive.

and it's not only PC related stuff... candy bars for $.89, $1.29 for a fkn 20oz. bottle of WATER, $3 - $4 for a gallon of gas, $6 bucks for a pack of smokes, $400 for an xbox, $600 for a ps3, automobiles averaging $20,000, $150,000 for an avg house in my area... not to talk about the cost of education to try and be able to afford some of this stuff... and on and on and on.

no, this is not a problem unique with TODAY'S gfx card market, but rather consumer goods in general. frankly there are far greater things to whine about which is why your rant comes off as a spoiled child bitching about something that's hardly a necessity. a GTX ultra priced @ $800 is hardly something that one needs.

whine about people not being able to afford housing, the rising cost of health care, halliburton basically being allowed to steal hundreds of millions from taxpayers, exxon making hundreds of billions of dollars, and then you can be expected to be taken seriously.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: xDarc

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
Ah, now I know who you are. So when are you going to start collecting people for the class action suit?

Lol. ORLY? I'm just a guy who came to the position he's at after one night of looking at the facts out there, who doesn't mind arguing with a bunch of sensitive 8800 owners drawn to this thread like moths to a flame. Unexpected... Intersting... Not a dissapointment... But- this thread has generated better discussion on other areas of the web; leave it to an enthusiast hardware forum with a high percentage of elitist snobs to generate the most fuss.

Maybe that is part of the problem here... You play enthusiast for one night and decide that you are an authority. Well, I'm an enthusiast (maybe elitist even) everyday.

You do have point that prices are rising overall, but then again that is true for most things. In regards to the 'facts' that you are basing your arguments one, you probably should be a bit more thorough before presenting info as factual...

Case in point:

And exactly how future proof are these cards? There is already some evidence out there to suggest Nvidia is basically sitting on the next refresh of cards in the 8900 series that will be available on an 80nm process with faster GDDR4 memory for less money. (Leaked Info)

You link to some article in June containing a speculation graph dating back to Feb that makes references to 'Taiwanese drinking buddies', and accept this data as fact or evidence. Don't believe everything you read. So far, none of that of that graph has proven to be true with respect to high end cards beyond the 8800GTX.

and...

Still irritating- new 8600GT cards that can cost as much as when I purchased my x1900GT almost 2 years ago; can barely outperform it- and in some variations are still apparently outdone by it.

Nice way to sum up to really bring your point home with some really incorrect data... The X1k series was not even in existence two years ago. The first X1k series cards were paper launched in fall of 2005, and they only became widely available in December - these were the X18xx cards. ATI only launched the X19xx cards at the end of Jan 2006. Even later than that, the X1900GT was released in May 2006 (link). So, I'm guessing that you've had your card for closer to one year than two. Note also that the X1900GT debuted with an MSRP of $299. If you consider that it's only a little over a year from the X1900GT launch, you can get a much better video card for ~$300 now.

So, you can make reference to how these 'facts' have generated better discussion elsewhere, but that might just be because these people are less informed than we are.

 

[rise]

Originally posted by: coldpower27

Originally posted by: n7
Honestly, xDarc has a point.

Apparently, though, most of you are so enamoured with your green or red love to see thru your shaders.

Pricing has steadily increased on high end cards, as well as higher mid range.

Sure performance has gone up, but as we've seen w/ C2Ds from Intel, that doesn't mean pricing needs to go up; it can actually come down.

The other thing that's really annoying is that not only has pricing jumped a ton, but power consumption & heat output has gotten ridiculous, with no apparent end to the madness in sight.

When touching the side of my 8800 GTX's heatsink for more than a second or two at idle is cause for burns, that might be a good sign the manufacturers might wanna look at getting things a bit more efficient, rather than slapping on bigger & bigger heatsinks every generation.

Overall, i'm going to have to agree w/ the OP, the graphics card market is indeed sh!t right now.
My 8800 GTX is a great card, but it has issues (since nV + drivers = joke).
We have no real competition at the very high end, & pricing of course has stayed inflated.
I personally am not impressed w/ the GPU market these days either.

There is a difference, Intel is out for blood with the Core 2 Duo's, they want to regain market share with profits as a secondary concern at the present time, hence the very aggressive pricing.

As well performance hasn't increased that much for CPU's in the past couple of years how fast is the Core 2 Duo compared to the original Northwood 3GHZ ? It's about 4 years newer for Core 2, and your maybe looking at 4 times the performance only if considering highly multithreaded scenarios. For most cases your hard pressed to be 2.5x faster if your not doing anything multithreaded. Your also looking at 2 full nodes from 0.13 micron to 65nm.

Compare that to the rate GPU's have advanced since that time, Radeon 9700 Pro to X1950 XTX, let's see if a 6800 GT is 2.5x the 9700 Pro, and a 7950 GT is 2x the 6800 GT, 15% more for 7900 GTX, 15% more over 7900 GTX for X1950 XTX, your looking at 6.6 times the performance, plus an incredible amount of additional functionality and programability in the transistor budget added. 0.15 micron to 90nm, which is only 1 and a half shrinks.

GPU's advance at a rate where process technology can't keep up, as evidenced by the ever increasing, die sizes, and power requirements.

This is also the case with CPU's now but it is slower, the die size increase is nowhere near as extreme.

not to mention that amd/intel cpu don't carry the additional costs of assembly by board partners, memory costs, driver teams (lol, but yeah) etc. its not really a fair comparison.

 

[n7]

So let's summarize:

Majority of ATer are happy with paying $600+ for a video card & feel it's a great value :roll:

That right there summarizes why we have prices so high...apparently it's a good thing.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: n7
So let's summarize:

Majority of ATer are happy with paying $600+ for a video card & feel it's a great value :roll:

That right there summarizes why we have prices so high...apparently it's a good thing.

Most ATer's also don't buy 8800 GTX, if you own a card of that caliber your very fortunate indeed.

The High end as already explained doesn't have good price/performance ratios. There is always the issue of the best having a premium because of the fact that it is just that, never mind how much better it is over the 2nd tier item.

I don't think anyone is "happy" paying $600 for a video card, but your not forced to either.

 

[HannibalX]

I agree with the OP. I ended up going with the X1950 Pro just because it was the best performance per dollar - that and I needed a card in the short term. I was really hoping R600 was going to be a knockout and be able to buy a mid-range R600 that would be about 50% greater performance than my X1950 Pro. Thanks for nothing ATI. Since the launch the 8800 series of cards have actually gone UP slightly in price.

In my opinion DX10 is vaporware at preasent. People who paid big bucks for 8800s six months ago were out of their minds. Half a year later where are the DX10 titles? On top of that it turns out all that kick ass Crysis footage we all oogled over (prior to May2007 footage) was actually rendered in DX9 anyway - so Crysis is still going to be great even on DX9 cards!

 

[Modular]

Originally posted by: CaiNaMthis crap is nothing new, and has always been like this in one area or another.. i remember paying over $300 for a Diamond Viper VLB... or $300 for the very first SoundBlaster cards.. $300 for a 40MB hard drive.

and it's not only PC related stuff... candy bars for $.89, $1.29 for a fkn 20oz. bottle of WATER, $3 - $4 for a gallon of gas, $6 bucks for a pack of smokes, $400 for an xbox, $600 for a ps3, automobiles averaging $20,000, $150,000 for an avg house in my area... not to talk about the cost of education to try and be able to afford some of this stuff... and on and on and on.

no, this is not a problem unique with TODAY'S gfx card market, but rather consumer goods in general. frankly there are far greater things to whine about which is why your rant comes off as a spoiled child bitching about something that's hardly a necessity. a GTX ultra priced @ $800 is hardly something that one needs.

whine about people not being able to afford housing, the rising cost of health care, halliburton basically being allowed to steal hundreds of millions from taxpayers, exxon making hundreds of billions of dollars, and then you can be expected to be taken seriously.

0wn3d



Honestly, I agree that this isn't the best market time for GPU's strictly because the next gen is set to be released soon and the prices you see now will be even lower. At this point it is worth the wait. Several months ago, it was not.

 

[Matt2]

Originally posted by: Pale Rider
I agree with the OP. I ended up going with the X1950 Pro just because it was the best performance per dollar - that and I needed a card in the short term. I was really hoping R600 was going to be a knockout and be able to buy a mid-range R600 that would be about 50% greater performance than my X1950 Pro. Thanks for nothing ATI. Since the launch the 8800 series of cards have actually gone UP slightly in price.

In my opinion DX10 is vaporware at preasent. People who paid big bucks for 8800s six months ago were out of their minds. Half a year later where are the DX10 titles? On top of that it turns out all that kick ass Crysis footage we all oogled over (prior to May2007 footage) was actually rendered in DX9 anyway - so Crysis is still going to be great even on DX9 cards!

8800GTX is near twice as fast in DX9 as the fastest DX9 only card. I fail to see how they are out of their minds?

As many before me have mentioned, DX10 on G80 is just a perk.

 

[rise]

I ended up going with the X1950 Pro just because it was the best performance per dollar...

looks at signature :Q fx and raptor... since when did $/perf. matter to you??

 

[Matt2]

Originally posted by: xDarc
ATI is every bit the offender Nvidia is. ATI's offense at this time is much more subtle than Nvidia's- but it's not like I have mentioned it before. You've conveniently overlooked it. They're guilty of keeping prices on their underperforming and older cards artificially high, when cards that perform better are available now for the same price; and in some cases less.

It just really looks to me like ATI and Nvidia have stopped competing with prices... We'll see what happens when these price fixing lawsuits are all said and done. I think one or both of them will have to clean up their act- hopefully both.

What is so hard to understand about the fact that this is how it has always been?

When Nvidia or ATI bring out a new line of cards, they cease production on the previous generation. Do you honestly think that Nvidia is still producing 7-Series GPUs? Of course not.

When Nvidia or ATI bring out a new line of cards, places like Newegg and ZipZoomFly slash the prices on the previous generation cards in order to get rid of their inventory. When the supply dries up, the previous generation cards move back to the MSRP prices because there is a very low supply of the cards.