OK, $500 bucks now for a videoa card

[Tiribulus]

I remember thinking when I bought my Voodoo3 3500 TV 3 years ago that $250 for a video card is outrageous!!! Even though that card was the fastest one out and had every multimedia feature known to man. Then the Asus v7700 GF2 @ $270 or something like that. The Geforce3 (Asus v8200) took the cake though forcing me to pay 400 bucks if I wanted the best card I could get. The Ti4600 (Abit) also 400 bucks. $400 more a Radeon 9700pro. Every time I think public obscenity laws are being broken with the prices of these parts, There they go again. We have now reached the 500 dollar mark for the 256 meg Radeon 9800 and GFFX 5900 ultra:cussing: Am I the only one who finds this insane??!! Does this mean in 3 or 4 more years we'll be asked for $1000 for a top end card. This may be the straw that breaks this camels back.:bs: I wont bother with anything but the best for my main machine and then the old card goes in my wife's machine and my wife's goes in my daughter's and my daughter's goes in the livingroom and they usually get sold from there. I may stop playing the performance game altogether as much as I hate to even think of such a thing, but there has to be a limit somewhere. As ridiculous as it was I would've continued paying 400, but 5 has gone over the line.
>>>>--Tiribulus--->:mad:

[Tweaked!]

You're not the only one that feels this way, I haven't bought a new vcard in quite a while. Due to several reasons, one being that my house needs more money than my computer, but I simply can't justify paying that much money out for something that will be obsolete in less than a year. H*ll, the last up to date card I bought was my Raddy 8500, which was quickly outdated by the geforce models.:(

And with the upcoming release of Doom3, and several other games that I'm looking forward to, I already know that if I want to participate in these games I'm going to have to find a way to upgrade the card.

[Tiribulus]

I'm just hoping alot of camels have their backs broken with this straw. I buy all my "toys" with side money made outside of my regular job so I would probably find a way to do it if I really wanted to. It's the principle of the thing though. I could feed a starving child in some third world country for a year for that much money and just may if prices continue to skyrocket like this. That's a 25% increase from one model to the next!!!! There just has to be a way for some sanity to be returned to this market:eek:
>>>--Tiribulus-->

[Tweaked!]

Yeah, especially when you look at the fact that you could buy a complete top end so-called proprietary computer for $1000.00 - $1500.00 and we're having to pay that much just for one component.:rolleyes:

[Tiribulus]

To be fair a store bought machine like the ones I build would be more like 3000 plus, but the point remains. How bout guys like Opp n Icee and a few others. Good gracious heavens the money those dudes must go through. Wish I had it!!!!!
>>>--Tiribulus-->:D

[Tweaked!]

Well true, You could never buy a system to match quite the types we build for ourselves here. But nevertheless, your standard consumer really doesn't know the difference, and we're basically the only ones that have to pay these high prices for these newer cards. I'd like to know what M. Dells price would be for those, I know there's no comparison, he's going to buy in much larger bulk quantity and he gets the good guy price, but I'd also be willing to bet he would get them for less than half of what we have to pay for them.

[Tiribulus]

I'm sure part of what's driving this is the ever increasing amounts of memory they come with which is the most expensive thing on the board. Still, if they plan on selling them to anyone but the Bill G. and Arabian oil honchos there has to be a ceiling somewhere.
>>>--Tiribulus-->

[wdd1040]

Tweaked, has Xtreme thought about starting a small store to only cater to the elite and sell ultra high end stuff cheap?

[Tweaked!]

I've not heard any talks about it. Maybe it's something we could cross the road with in the future, but we've still got a lot of other hurdles to overcome before then:cool:

[Smizack]

Originally posted by Tweaked!
Yeah, especially when you look at the fact that you could buy a complete top end so-called proprietary computer for $1000.00 - $1500.00 and we're having to pay that much just for one component.:rolleyes:

Yep, and it's killing me because I have to upgrade my vid card soon.

[Keeper]

These guy’s have obviously taken lessons from the tobacco industry. I remember when I said I would quit smoking when a pack hit a dollar, I didn’t quit till they hit two.

I have an overwhelming urge to upgrade, I think they know it. Its not like these top of the line cards make a mainstream computer.

Lets face it, they know we are hardware junkies, and sooner or later we will need another hardware fix. I am going to go through withdrawals while I wait for the prices to drop.

[Attitudx]

I havent even started and am already wanting more. I look and think i dont really need that but I WANT it. Price matches name and anymore price is just outrageous, i am on a geforce2 32mg card it was a dumpster dive and the best i have had.

[Maelstorm]

This isn't the first card to sell for $500....When the GeForce 2 ULTRA came out, that's what it retailed for.

Although I agree with you, $500.00 for the 5900 ULTRA and the 9800P 256 MB is a bit.....steep. The 9800 PRO is fairly decently priced @ $400, considering there is little performance difference between the 256 MB and the 128 MB. Hopefully the 5900 will be able to be overclocked successfully to what the 5900 ULTRA runs at (with the exception of the 256 MB of memory) and beyond.

[Snoodge]

I wouldnt pay it... Im running a 9500 Non Pro... shows how much cash im willing to dish out... I was happy with my Geforce2 GTS until I saw people turning $150 cards into $350 cards... and at that point I couldnt resist any longer, I had to give it a shot... This one paid off big for me...

[antipop]

Originally posted by Tiribulus
To be fair a store bought machine like the ones I build would be more like 3000 plus, but the point remains. How bout guys like Opp n Icee and a few others. Good gracious heavens the money those dudes must go through. Wish I had it!!!!!
>>>--Tiribulus-->:D Someone explained here that he never keeps his part for more than a month, once the price start to fall he sells it a buy a new one. The price difference is never more than 40$ or so. Anyway i admit that vid card are really expensive but you can always find mid budget card that performs really well for every day use (i bought my ti4400 for 220$ at the beginning of the year) and i can play to most games with high res!
What i don't understand is why it is so expensive, i mean cpu and memory are relatively cheap (a 1700+ and some twinmos won't break your wallet)

[isp]

Originally posted by wdd1040
Tweaked, has Xtreme thought about starting a small store to only cater to the elite and sell ultra high end stuff cheap?

sounds like your describing www.xtwerkz.com

[wdd1040]

...

[antipop]

Originally posted by wdd1040
yeah, isp, in a way yes. but what I was really thinking would be a members only store were they sell at cost, cost being their prices+shipping+handling and pay for the person doing it and not leaving a large overhead to pay for growth. That would be the ideal shop

[gmb]

Tiribulus:

It's called marketing and they will suck every $ you let them to. And actually we let them do these things. Should I state - we even encourage them.
Remember the time the mod 9500NP->9700PRO was invented? Here, where I live (Europe/Poland) the prices were like 225$-240$ for the 9500 (NonPro) 128MB and like 475$-550$ for the 9700PRO (These prices are rather high comparing to prices in other countries at the same time, but it's due to economical factor. Anyway the proportions remain almost the same, I mean it could be 200$/380$ for example). So both cards were produced on the same PCB (reduce costs of manufacturing), the same processor was used, not sure about the ram chips, but on both cards they are BGA, and probably 9700Pro had much faster 2,2ns (?) but still those on the 9500 were heavy(?) underclocked. I mean the only main difference between the both cards was the pipelines and ram chips. The mod turned the 200$ card into 380$ card (if the pipelines weren't corrupted). That was the moment when I thought - Hey this is insane. They still make money on their 9500 series, right? And people buy these things. And they would still win selling 9700 series at the price of 9500 series... because technologically the costs of manufacturing both cards are almost the same .
This brings the conclusion that video cards are overpriced at least 2 times. We shouldn't see anything more than 250$ for a top end cards, right?
The other thing is optimization of the code in drivers/programs/games, but that's yet another story.

gmb

PS. Excuse me for my language. :P

[antipop]

gmb, you're seeing this through the eye of a oc'er, but regular joe will want the fastest card and ati (as well as any other manuf) will make him pay for it. It's the same thing with cpu, the 1700+ and the 2800+ are made from the same place with the same process and sometimes on the same wafer. But one cost twince the price of the other! A company will want to be present on every segment of the market, meaning low end, mid end and high end. At each time the price will be higher and perf also. But to cut cost and time, you don't want to design three time a vid card! You just design it once and then make several models