Readers complain about $549, $649 graphics card prices

THE INQ ASKED for your valuable opinion on Nvidia and ATI's pricing policies, say Nvidia's decision to price a graphics card at $649.

This is what we've got so far. You can find our original story here.

We read many interesting comments but most people agree that Nvidia is pushing the limits with the price but some actually defend it - I guess those are the rich guys in Ferraris.

We would like to thank you for your mails and please keep them coming.

Most of the comments so far come from Europe and Australia while our friends are USA is snoozing at press time, but we want to know what they have to say about it.

We will certainly follow up on this.

Hi, I'm an avid reader of your site so I just said I'd drop an opinion on this. I think that while this is a huge amount of money for a graphics card, it could be a good upgrade option for people who just want one card, or who have a non-Sli board and want the most extreme hardware around. It cost's about 1100 Euro for 2 X 7800GTX's at the moment (at least in Ireland ), that will produce about 13,000 3DMarks. If gamers can get one 7800GTX 512Mb for about 650 Euro that should do about 10,000 then they could actually save some cash and also have no SLi - related issues to worry about. There are a lot of badly designed SLi boards out there, with the graphics cards leaving no room for PCI cards and a lot of single slot and SFF users who could benefit from this I think. Thanks,

If you have the money for a 7800 gtx 512 mb, why not?

Of course it's not worth it. Only morons with more money than senses will buy this card or the fanboys with nVidia stock that have a vested interest in drumming up sales by posting benchmarks on various forums and espousing its greatness. For the sane people, this is just another tactic by nVidia to cash in by moderately upping the core speed and adding faster ram on to the same old core we've had since July. Just watch, during the next gen. release of cards $650 will be the starting price and everyone will accept it.

I would rather wait for Playstation 3 and enjoy it for the next five years

Can a video card be worth $649? Yes and No. Because $649 can be worth a lot to some people and to Bill Gate's it's not worth his time to bend over and pick it up if he sees it on the street.
Is it worth the money? Depends on how much money you have. I don't have that much money, and $649 buys a lot of beer.

$649. Enough to buy the INQ'?

Hello, I am an Aussie and these prices are absolutley rediculous. A week ago i decided i was gunna go with a X1800XT 512mb... then nvidia dropped this bomb shell on me deciding to release a 512MB version of the 7800GTX.

When it was just the X1800XT 512Mb and the 7800GTX 256mb the X1800XT 512mb had a clear lead of 2000-3000 in 3d Mark 05 and i am still a bit lost because ATI "had/has" a pretty good lead of 2000-3000 marks. I know you guys say that the 7800GTX 512mb is going to kick the X1800 512mb out of the competiton. But dose the addition of another 256mb RAM and bumping up the clock and memory speedsactually give Nvidia a lead over the X1800XT 512mb.

Right now i have about $880 to spend on a new video card. (Yes this is alot but it will get me anything i want). Now, i have been told by many people over at http://www.tech-forums.net/ that ATIs video card drivers are way behind Nvidias?, I have had an ATI card sinice the release of the 9800Pro (what i have now) and i have never really had a problem with the drivers, but from what i have been told they are pretty sub standard compared to Nvidia. Nvidias drivers are meant to be really good, they are meant to have support for most new games straight out of the box allowing the user to run the game in question at the best possible framerates. But then Nvidia has the problem of the shimmering, because they tried to take the easy way out of AA (or was it AF?) I dont know if this has been fixed. Nvidias latest drivers have also added support for Dual Core CPUs, this is a bunous for me because i am going to get the AMD X2 3800+, i havent really seen any test run and if there is actually a differance but it is an added bonous at the moment becuase ATI dose not have the support for Dual cores in its drivers yet. (Maby this is something you guys could check up to see if there is actually a performance boost on Dual core proccessors with the addition of support for dual cores).

In Australia we currently do not many confirmed prices for either of the 512MB cards. Out of about 300+ shops only 3 have prices listed for the X1800XT 512mb they range from $800-855 and for Nvidias card there is not one confirmed price. I will not be buying my new card till sometime next month and at the moment i am still a little unsure of what card to get. Either card will play any game i throw at it for the next 1-2 years but what card will actually have the best price-performance ratio?

_Nvidia 7800GTX 512MB_ *Pros-* Support for games straight out of the box compared to ATI. Support for Dual Cores *Cons-* Price 110nm technology? _ ATI X1800XT 512MB_ * Pros- *SM3 done properly and No Shimmering Price 90nm technology? *Cons-* Drivers dont support games out of the box like Nvidia <<< Theres also a saying on tech-forums "Atis drivers are made by elementary students"

I doubt we will see any true benchmarks until both these cards are been sold but it's still a hard choice when you consider both these cards will run anything you throw at them.
Thanks.

Personally I'd love to be able to pay $649 for a 512Mb GTX because that works out to roughly £370, which I'd be willing to spend because it's a card that should last me a year or so, especially once I get some water cooling on it and clock it up! The 256Mb GTXs currently start around £340 in the UK, I'd imagine that the rip-off Britain price for the 512Mb GTX will be something like £450 or more and that is an unacceptable price. Cheers,

I know Ati is saying a MSRP of $549 for the x1800xt, but ati has the MSRP set at $599. Ati sets the MSRP in the distribution channel, and that is $599. Straight from Techdata. Distributors dont set MSRP. http://img327.imageshack.us/img327/4928/techdataxt1dj.jpg So Is a MSRP of $649 too much for 7800GTX 512? If it kicks the x1800xt's ass maybe so. If thats if it is $649. Is a MSRP of $599 for the x1800xt to much considering the 7800 GTX 256 can be had for much less?

Maybe it's time to send out the word to boycott any video card that is priced over 500.00. That price is way to high as it is for what you get. Heck, there are more components and functions on a motherboard that costs only around 200.00 for a top of the line one. But you have to get people to stop and think, if they buy it the video card makers will continue to price it high. It comes down to stupid people cutting their own bank accounts now and well into the future for allowing themselfs to be ripped off.

I don't get it! Processors are getting cheaper, motherboards are, hard disks are, why not the graphic cards? Sixhundredfourtynine dollar… probably the same amount in euro's (yes, that's how friendly the guys are). I'm off to buy a new PC in a week or 3, and my entire PC will cost 800 euro, and already the bigger part is consumed by the, not even the fastest, 7800GT from Gainward… I'm certainly never going to buy another card that expensive (€340) for a while, let alone DOUBLE THAT! Regards,

Hello,
Well, anything beyond $400 or even $300 is an insame amount of money. So when you're about to buy a $549 piece of hardware, you _REALLY_ want the top of the edge and might be ready to spill $100 more. $649 is also cheaper than a dual 7800GT rig. So this can fill the performance/price gap between a 7800GTX and a SLI-7800GT.
Another approch is to say that this is not really about "purchasable" products. NVidia already owns the top marks with SLI (waiting for Crossfire score in dual X1800XT). Now, this is about owning the top marks in single card configuration. No one ever buys a SLI rig made from 7800GTX. So no one will buy a single 7800GTX512 or even 2! This is the Ultra/XTPE fight all over again, but this time with availibility (?).

You are totally right about top graphic cards prices, or better to say all graphic cards prices, which went really crazy in latest years... I remember I paid about 290$+VAT in Turkey for a first generation GeForce256... Which was really huge amount of money. But since then I never paid for a card that much... I bought a Radeon 9700 for 190$+VAT after a year it was released...
I appreciate “the inquirer” much. Thank you...

It isn't worth it anymore to invest in those expensive PC peripherals because the next-gen consoles have more or less the same power but at a much, much lower cost. I say 48 unified shader pipelines for the Xenos in the Xbox360, you can not find it in any PC graphics card today.
For 399 a next-gen Xbox360 I get:
- Wireless controller;
- 20Gig harddisk;
- Remote controller;
- DVD/media player;
- Next-gen games that are exlusively made for the console (Gears of War!!) that are just awesome;
- ...
My 2 cents.

Hi Fudo

I believe a product is worth whatever people are prepared to pay for it! If nVidia managed to produce a card so much better than the competition, it makes sense for them to price it as high as possible - to start with. (maybe they will sell 3x less units but make 6x more money?, Maybe the yields are so low at this high clock that they can only produce very few anyway?)

Look at the cost of an Athlon FX or Pentium Expensive Edition? $ 1000 for just one chip! The transistor count is comparable, but the useful life cycle of GPU chips is shorter and quantities much smaller. I think the GPU business still has room for even higher prices in the "enthusiast" segment. A dual 7800 GTX single card SLI for $ 1000?

Also, having the most expensive AND fastest card available in their product line is a great for the image of Nvidia. Teenagers dreaming about being able to afford this "Ferrari" is the best image-marketing money can buy! When they grow up and earn enough money, they will want to do it!

I am a flight sim (only) gamer. Many of us are working adults and can afford this sort of budget - $ 2000 for a new PC every other year is not much when u divide it by the flying time. Its less expensive and much safer than any other hobby - AND my wife knows im am home!

Keep up the good work, love reading your stuff -and sorry for Fudo-the-chip by the way, looks like ATI is in trouble this time!

Best regards

Well, at the time of launch the Geforce 2 Ultra cost over €750 including taxes as well, so this is not all that new. I imagine that the market will judge what the value of such a card would be. I was actually expecting $700. Performance-wise the new card should turn out superior to a pair of 6800Ultra cards (same fill-rate, twice the memory and ~50% faster memory). If $300 is a fair price for a 6800Ultra today, then $650 is OK for the new card. It seems that some people are actually spending that much on their gaming rig. That said, I would never buy one of those; I stay below $200 for GPUs and upgrade once per year. $450 is a bit steep for me for cranking up the Anti-Aliasing a couple of notches..

Hi Fudo
I believe a product is worth whatever people are prepared to pay for it! If nVidia managed to produce a card so much better than the competition, it makes sense for them to price it as high as possible - to start with. (maybe they will sell 3x less units but make 6x more money?, Maybe the yields are so low at this high clock that they can only produce very few anyway?)
Look at the cost of an Athlon FX or Pentium Expensive Edition? $ 1000 for just one chip! The transistor count is comparable, but the useful life cycle of GPU chips is shorter and quantities much smaller. I think the GPU business still has room for even higher prices in the "enthusiast" segment. A dual 7800 GTX single card SLI for $ 1000?
Also, having the most expensive AND fastest card available in their product line is a great for the image of Nvidia. Teenagers dreaming about being able to afford this "Ferrari" is the best image-marketing money can buy! When they grow up and earn enough money, they will want to do it!
I am a flight sim (only) gamer. Many of us are working adults and can afford this sort of budget - $ 2000 for a new PC every other year is not much when u divide it by the flying time. Its less expensive and much safer than any other hobby - AND my wife knows im am home!
Keep up the good work, love reading your stuff -and sorry for Fudo-the-chip by the way, looks like ATI is in trouble this time!
Best regards

I was expecting this, those graphic chips are expensive but perfectly normal they are expensive , if you look at the amount of transistors, extreme architecture, and long develop time, you can't make things like this cheap. And as Nvidia said, they expect to build graphic chips with a bilion transistors in a couple of years, well, no way they can produce chips like this on a cheap way. About the price itself, people will buy it, there are guys out there with two 6800 ultra's in SLI , costing 800-900$ , there are guys out there with 7800GTX in SLI costing 1000-1100$ , and there will be guys out there buying 650$ cards. You may even see the oposit, a 650$ card hard to get because the demand is to high!! greetings

The pricing-up game is going on for a long time now, and the only solution I see is for the end users to boicot, just for a month or two, the sales of VGA card, both ATI and Nvidia. But then again, this will never happen, because this should had happen back in the days of the Radeon 8500 and GeForce 3Ti, when prices started to go up without justification. I know the boards must cover the money invested in new technology, but how can they explain the fact that in a year or so the price of anything is going down to half the one it entered market? Maybe that is the real market value, and the producers just want to gain more from the hype and trends that go around VGA cards. In the end the one who are in a lose-lose situation are the end users. It is also funny how a company can carge 50$ more for the same card (in the case of the 7800GTX 256, that are all manufactured by Nvidia agreated fabs) just for the fact that it has another sticker on its cooler and it says MSI instead of PNY. Probably, in the next 10 years or so, marchitecture will be the third state power, after the press. That is my opinion on this issue. (sorry for the occasionanl mispelling, I'm not an every day english speaker)

Considering the fact that these days the average new GPU has 300 million+ transistors, twice your average CPU, and years of development behind it, I think such high prices are reasonable. If they are not, then why aren't you complaining about the horrendous price of say, an Athlon X2 4600? I mean, it's about the same. Although admittedly, the highest end CPU prices are a bit high, but then again the same argument applies. These companies spend more and more on development, so it's only natural that prices increase, and don't forget to factor in inflation! In any case, for the same price as your high end TNT you can get a video card that's at least 20 times faster today. If that's not good progress, then I don't know what is.

Hi,
Love the inquirer!
That price really sucks.
I own a 7800GTX and I was trying to sell it in order to buy
the new 512MB version. Now, @ $649 I think I will keep my 256MB version for a bit longer. I really hope you guys made a mistake and that the #6 is really a #5 instead!

Pricing for graphic's card's has gotten way out of control, only those with money to burn can afford the top end card's anymore. Paying that kind of money for a card that will be out dated in a year just doesn't seem to make sense to me. One thing not being mentioned here is that for many "many" people it's not only the price of the card but we also have to upgrade our whole system to use one, sense they seemed fit to not put out a AGP version of it. Both myself and my Uncle build our own gaming system's and right now we both have 6800 GT's, but neither of us can upgrade our graphic's again with out building another system first. I only have a 2.8 gig system but he has a 3.4 gig system and would only need a new card to go with it. So for us, "and many other's" the price is allot more than $649.00, let's try $2000 instead. µ