Why Do Graphics Cards Cost So Much?

Tamor writes "As an avid PC games player I'm locked into the perpetual hardware upgrade cycle like everyone else, but one thing really irks me. While other hardware has come down in price, graphics card pricing has spiralled beyond belief. Not only are graphics cards usually the single most expensive item in a gaming PC, they don't seem to be subject to the usual market forces. Instead of new generation cards forcing down the price of old cards, the old cards are simply phased out, and the likes of nVidia have a range wide enough to keep the high-end cards at the same prices for the forseeable future.

Why is this? Why does a top of the range graphics card cost so much more than an entire PS2 or X-Box system? Is it the lack of competition in the market following the demise of 3DFX or are there other forces at work. What do slashdotters thing about this pricing?"

Comments

Are you looking hard enough?

[Jerf]

Maybe you need to look outside of your local chain megastore.

I don't want to link to their website because there's no reason for them to sustain the bandwidth hit, but my local little chain store has a TNT2 32MB for $40, and that's still a lot of graphics card if you're not a FPS player. Heck, my little TNT2 8MB I got at that price a year ago is still respectable for most uses.

They have a pretty smooth progression from that up to top-of-the-line cards, such as a GeForce2 MX200 32MB for $60, a GeForce4 MX 64MB DDR for $120, and so on up to $350 TI4600 128MB. In all, there are 8 nVidia-based choices and 10 ATI choices ranging from $60-$400.

I don't think the problem you complain about exists for real.

not true...

[dotgod]

of new generation cards forcing down the price of old cards, the old cards are simply phased out

Wrong...check out PriceWatch. You can still get old stuff from some suppliers for a decent price. For example, there's a GF3 TI200 for 70 bucks and A GF2 TI for 50 bucks. Even the prices on some of the newer GF4's are reasonable.

Top of the Range

[greenhide]

I think it has to do with the perceived "users" of these cards.

Like the poster above pointed out, there are perfectly acceptable graphic cards out there for very reasonable prices.

However, when you want the "top of the line" card, you're making a different kind of statement. It's similar to those who purchase top of the line stereo equipment. I have a cheap bookshelf system I bought a K-Mart for around $150 bucks. It's a perfectly fine stereo system, I listen to it all the time. However, if I wanted a top of the line stereo system, I would have to pay at least five times as much, if not more. The price discrepancy is based on quality, on workmanship, but also...on status. Having a really souped up stereo system is also a statement. Part of your purchase price goes into that statement.

The same thing goes for graphics cards. Once you get beyond "normal" use and start wanting to have "the best of the best", expect to pay more, not just for the cost of the item itself, but for the additional "status" benefits that it allows you.

This status thing applies to every aspect of commercial life. Think t-shirts. Just how much better is a Versace t-shirt than the kind you can get at a chain department store?

For all I know, I may be totally wrong. Maybe the price is more because the components or manufacturing process is more expensive. But I think that if the cards were lower priced, some people wouldn't believe that they *were* top of the line.

Because people pay for them. : )

[nelsonal]

They cost significantly more to manufacture than the graphics subsystems in a console, for several reasons. First, due to lower sales figures. I have seen some market share data that suggested that high end cards (priced above 300 USD) have less than 1% of the market, but I don't know if that is revenue or units, if its units that is only about 1 million chips/year, its even less if dollars. One design will go into many consoles (Sony recently announced that sales of PS 2s reached 40 million) over a very long period of time, so you can spread your fixed costs over quite a few more chips. Also, consoles are used at very low resolutions so they are not at technically rigorus as PC cards. I think the XBox video system is similar in fill rates to a Gforce 4 MX, but has better AA. Even a three year old card will play new games pretty well at 640x480. The cards do have pretty rigorous AA especially the X-Box.
Finally, Sony and Microsoft are bigger buyers than you and I are, and they get lower prices for buying in volume.

Ask Slashdot == Crackhead Form

[bellings]

What do slashdotters thing about this pricing?

Frankly, I think that you are smoking waaaaay too much crack.

The price on the high end of the consumer market has slowly crept up in the last five years, from about $200 for the top-of-the-line 3dfx Voodoo when it came out, to about $300 for the top-of-the-line nVidia GForce 4 today.

But on the low end, the prices are as cheap as ever, while the performance on the low end is simply incredible. A GeForce4MX for $75 today is going to be faster than the best $250 card you could buy two years ago.

There are two reason why you can't walk into BestBuy and get an old TNT2 Ultra for $35. First, because just handling quality control and returns makes it not worth their time to sell you a card that cheap. Second, because despite the fact that the TNT2 was fair to decent two years ago, it is just butt-slow by comparison today. The only people buying boxed 3D cards are gamers, and they're just too smart to do something that stupid.

If you want to see how performance has improved in the last few years, check out this Tom's Hardware guide to VGA cards. And you're asking why someone wouldn't sell you one of the cards near the bottom of the chart? The question you should be asking is what kind of moron would be stupid enough to buy one of them?

nForce

[Apreche]

Graphics cards are expensive because they don't sell in large quantities. The supply of high-end video cards is low so price is high. The supply is low because demand is low. Very few people other than a few gamers per town has a geforce 4. Most people with dells and gateways have whatever old card comes in there. And a whole crapload of pre-built machines come with on-board video. And for the needs of the vast majority of people a TNT2 is more than they will ever need.

My current PC is a Pentium III 450mhz with a TNT2 32MB video card. I bought this machine when the TNT2 first came out. There have been 4 geforce cards since then. And the only games that don't run on my computer are the new UT and America's Army. Every other 3D game runs just fine on my machine.
I plan to buy a new PC soon. So I can encode movies faster and play Doom3. But I'm probably going to buy a motherboard that has the nforce2 chipset. Sure it's a crummy built in video card. But it's a geForce 4 built in. Even though the board probably wont be as fast as a KT400 with DDR400 and a video card in the AGP slot, it's a deal you can't beat. Motherboard, sound card, ethernet card, and video card for the price of just a motherboard. I probably wont use the built in sound card often, but all the operating systems I use fully support having 2 sound cards and using them simultanously, so I dont' see where I can go wrong.
To read more about the nforce2 chipset check out
Nvida or
anandtech

It wont make the fastest gaming machine, but it will still make a good enough one, for a low low price.

Look at what goes into it

[Raetsel]

First, the (GeForce 4 Ti | Radeon 9700 | Matrox Parhelia) chip is very complex. The Pentium 4 has about 55 million transistors on it. Compare that with (approximate numbers, of course):

• 63 Million -- (GeForce 4 Ti)
• 80 Million -- (Parhelia)
• 110 Million -- (Radeon 9700)

Damn hard chips to make, even if they're not running at GHz speeds.

Now, about that memory... It's at least DDR in most cases (like my GeForce 4 Ti 4200), and runs at much higher speeds than motherboard RAM. 300 MHz (actual!), or "600 MHz DDR" in some cases. That's special stuff -- and expensive.

You're putting 128 MB of that on an add-in card, as much memory for video as I had in my entire computer last year! (Damn...)

Now, about those prices. A mid-range P-4 (2.4 GHz, 133 MHz QDR FSB) runs about $190. Top-of-the-line DDR memory isn't that bad, figure $75 for that part.

190 + 75 = $ 265

No, I don't think modern video card prices are out of line. As (enthusiasts | gamers) we're on the cutting edge, and it costs to be there.

The scary part is that I'm very seriously considering an All-in-Wonder Radeon 9700 for the new computer I'm building my wife. I keep waiting to see what becomes of nVidia's NV30... but if I don't see anything by early December, I'm going with ATI.

God, I'm a nut. Oh well, it drives the economy.

Try being a Mac user

[dr00g911]

$299 up until 3 weeks ago. It's $229 now that the 9000 is out.

An ATI Radeon 8500 OEM card for wintel cost $99. Non-OEMs cost about $129.

The difference?

Zilch. Zero. Fuck all.

A sticker, a box, and just a few k on the flash rom.

Not to plead the case of the poor-trod-upon-mac-nazi, but...

nVidia Geforce 4 Ti dual-head for PC: $199

nVidia Geforce 4 Ti dual-head for the Mac: $399 (as of today)

I guess my point is that some of us have it worse than you might imagine.