Quote Originally Posted by zalbard View Post
A mid-range card sold for $550 would be taking the piss. Smells like price fixing.
With a small die like that and just 2GB of VRAM it can't possibly cost more than $200 to manufacture (probably WAY less).
This seems to be a common misconception from lots of people. CPUs and lots of other hardware cost very little to manufacture (imagine the SB-E chips are probably $50 a piece, if that). However, the reason they cost so much is because of R&D. It costs hundreds of millions in research for each chipset and years of work. I once spoke to a man who tried to start manufacturing his own CPU and by the time he got done he was in about $50 million and the chips were $10 each to make.