Quote Originally Posted by ewitte
R&D is a big part of it. But even material costs, equipment and electricity is a lot higher than it was for cards just 5 years ago. I'd be willing to bet it costs more than 2-3 times to produce a card than it did around 2000. Maybe even as much as 5 times. Especially considering almost every raw material over just the last few years has skyrocketed in price due to inflation. Prices and the economies have suffered a lot since 911 where we were already having a tough time. Though somewhat lower now Gold, silver and even copper went up A LOT in just the last 2-3 years. To give you an idea it was costing more than 1c to produce pennies not to long ago. They only produce them because they know people would pay for top notch performance. If people were not buying at a profit they would not build it.
exactly, however the statement of Conroe's manufacturing cost is just for the materials, processing, and labor. Not the R&D, which soaks up almost the rest of the money