http://hackles.org/cgi-bin/archives.pl?request=71

It is a bit of a tough spot to talk about prices, as the market's been so disrupted/distorted for some time now.

Demand for graphics hardware is still dictated by games, and games follow consoles that remain in an affordable range. They're definitely catering to a new market segment with this new halo stuff. The ultra high end is paying dearly for scaling resolutions & refresh rates up a little bit early.

High end video cards for Nubus ERA 68K Macs were very expensive even without inflation (Rasterops 24STV was $1549 mailorder in august 1991 for example). Gaming cards didn't become a thing until 3dfx came around (and even then $300 was the top end), the expensive PC cards were all CAD cards and those were also expensive as hell.

Check InfoWorld and PC magazines on Google Books.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

Still, I wonder if we're paying more for GPUs now than we were a decade or two ago, even accounting for inflation. Anyone got any old PC parts ads/catalogues/etc.?

We are. Just look at AMD Radeon 4850/4870 vs GTX 260/280 and later GTX 275/285. GTX 280 was actually considered bad value (as was the GTX 480 later), but justified because it held the performance crown.
I think things are ridiculous right now and I urge people to vote with their wallets on this matter.

Can't really compare prices directly when value of money has decreased as time has passed.
R&D for making a new GPU has also gotten more expensive. If they spent 10 years trying to make raytracing to work, I am sure they want the money back that they spent on it.
I bet we will be paying $2000 for a graphics card in not too distant future.

Miners are/have been paying oeuvre thousands of dollars in GPUs alone for a couple years now... though that's not a single GPU.

The new NVIDIA RTX2080 Ti starts at $1,000...

The new NVIDIA RTX2080 Ti starts at $1,000...

Do you think this is oeuvrepriced ?

Well the youtuber jayztwocents uploaded a video about this and he figured that the naming changed, not necessarily the pricing - i.e. that the former equally expensive Titan X as the top of the line card is now the 2080Ti and the 1080Ti the RTX2080 or something like that.
I don't know, I guess we have to wait and see how they perform and how retail prices develop.

Would have to do a comparison with inflation but I do think they have gone up quite a bit pricewise over the last few years.

But having said that, I do recall paying about $150 for my first Riva 128 and about the same for my first TNT as well. I do know I paid right at $200 for my Creative labs version of the first Geforce 256 card (3D Blaster Annihilator). Since then I think I've paid about $250 - $350 for my graphics cards. I paid $325 for my current GTX 1070 SC and it included ME: Andromeda with it. Felt that was a decent deal making the actual vid card only cost about $270 there abouts.

But I certainly have NO interest in paying the current prices that these new 20xx series cards are currently at. Doesn't matter as my aging primary computer can't really use them anyway. I'm not using the full power of my GTX1070 as is in my old z68 chipset Intel mainboard.

I'm willing to wait and will likely now be getting video cards when they are a full generation behind instead of being current as I feel that would be the only way I could really afford them going forward.

I don't game enough to justify dropping more than $300 on a GPU. The most I've ever paid was $250 a couple times.

perkyagnostic wrote:

The new NVIDIA RTX2080 Ti starts at $1,000...

Well the youtuber jayztwocents uploaded a video about this and he figured that the naming changed, not necessarily the pricing

He is a complete and utter hypocrite and Nvidia shill. When AMD announced Vega 64 for $499 and it turned out the real MSRP was $599, he (rightfully so) called them out and said this: https://twitter.com/jayztwocents/status/899321447465623552
However, now that Nvidia is doing the exact same thing (the real prices are at least $100 over the announced "starting from" prices), he is quoting the fake prices and saying "you are looking at it wrong" and it's "technically cheaper than 10 series launch prices" while comparing completely different products (GTX 1080Ti vs. GTX 2080).

The way I'm looking at it, you're paying 60% more ($499 for GTX 1080 vs. $799 for GTX 2080) for at best a 40%-50% improvement (in games cherry picked by Nvidia). And then you have to consider that GTX 1080 is over two years old at this point (and yes, I realize the launch price was $599), which makes the whole situation even less impressive.

Raytracing probably is the way forward, but there is no doubt Nvidia is using the lack of competition to test how much consumers are willing to pay when they are "desperate" for performance improvements.

(As a disclaimer, I'm not interested in buying any of these cards. Finding an affordable Voodoo card would probably make me happier than buying a 2080Ti...)

Guess he isn't worth the...

(•_•) /
( •_•)>⌐■-■
/ (⌐■_■)

two cents.

oeuvre wrote:

Guess he isn't worth the... […]
Show full quote

Guess he isn't worth the...

(•_•) /
( •_•)>⌐■-■
/ (⌐■_■)

two cents.

🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

GPU prices are related to the die size, and these are generally getting bigger for the flagship cards. So yes it is similar to cars, where a particular model becomes larger and more expensive over time and then a new low-end model is introduced.

Gamers are falling for the marketing trap where the fastest card is considered high end, right behind that is mid range, and everything else must be a budget card. So the manufacturers are going wild with high end stuff, putting out 500sq.mm dies and 512-bit buses. A Radeon 4870 was 256sq.mm and 256-bit so if you want to compare prices between then and now you should be looking at an RX 580, not an RX Vega.

That being said, an IBM EGA card cost nearly $600.

Done chart, but it needs to be manually updated, so its kind of old....still many cards there. Ultra low prices are for mobile chips only per 10 000pcs. But you need to enable flash to view it....

http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/charts/price

Most expensive were profi cards in 90's and ofc highend non pc workstation cards for sgi and similar stuff. But finding prices is really hard and mostly impossible....

In 1994 the VLB Mach64 2MB VRAM price was 599USD. 4MB VRAM version was 899USD and 2MB VRAM upgrade module was 399USD.

If we accunt for inflation we get 2018 prices here:
https://www.saving.org/inflation/inflation.php

599USD equals $1,012.81
899USD equals $1,520.06
399USD equals $674.64

Voodoo5 5500 AGP price was 299USD in 2000. This equals $439.44 in 2018.

PS:
On the other hand I just bought my fastest VGA card till now... GTX 660 TI for 42€ boxed 🤣

bakemono wrote:

GPU prices are related to the die size, and these are generally getting bigger for the flagship cards. So yes it is similar to cars, where a particular model becomes larger and more expensive over time and then a new low-end model is introduced.

Gamers are falling for the marketing trap where the fastest card is considered high end, right behind that is mid range, and everything else must be a budget card. So the manufacturers are going wild with high end stuff, putting out 500sq.mm dies and 512-bit buses. A Radeon 4870 was 256sq.mm and 256-bit so if you want to compare prices between then and now you should be looking at an RX 580, not an RX Vega.

That being said, an IBM EGA card cost nearly $600.

Good point, but take a look at the transition from GTX 480/580 to GTX 680. The GTX 680 was a much smaller chip and they still charged 500$ for it. Same with GTX 980 and 1080.

I just let a buddy of mine do the high-end GPU buying, then buy his old stuff. He'll be selling me his "old" 1080Ti in a few weeks. Can't come soon enough...my poor GTX 970 is really struggling with newer games at 3440x1440.

Don't know about US$ prices, but did some research on that myself.

Looking into archives and price comparsion websites, picking some usual models of high end cards and how the prices developed.

At release nVidia cards are on average 163€ more than ATi/AMD cards, That shrinks down over the first year.
After said year cards are around 70% of the release price on average. (around 80% after 6 months and around 65% after 18 month)