All you are doing is competing with your customers - Eckhard Pfeiffer, to Intel
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NV 790i pricing leaves plenty of margin
ONE OF THE things that does not get out all that often is OEM pricing. With the recent launch of the NV 790i board, the high-end of the market went from $250 to $350. Where did that money go?
Well, OEMs tell us that the money basically went into NV's bottom line. The cost to the OEMs on the 790i chipset is $110, a huge premium over the older chipsets. For comparison Intel, a company that never prices low, charges $70 for its X48.
A good rule of thumb is that supplier cost ends up translating into about double the price they pay by the time you hand over your credit card. If mobo maker X adds a $5 heatsink to board Y, the price you pay for Y ends up being $10 more.
Given this, the $40+ price gouge for the 790i will end up ramping board prices by $80, or most of the $100 increase. If you look at the functional differences between the X48 and 790i, there is precious little to justify the more than 50 per cent price increase, especially in light of Intel using a smaller process.
In the end, it comes down to screwing the fanbois because they can. The problem is that if you do this when times are good, things get very ugly when times are bad, and the storm clouds are looking mighty threatening. µ
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If you want to use DDR3 RAM and SLi, what choice do you have really as to go for the 790i?
Each year in the last 10, I bought a new system worth of PC components. That's just for home. It invariably meant an AMD CPU and almost always a mobo with an nVidia chipset. In the long run, they annoyed me enough that last year I switched over to Intel and I don't see myself going back soon. The article describes part of the reasons why.
A problem is that PC components became driven by fashion where the colour of the PCB is more important than the board's value and quality. Unfortunately, to a large degree, the economics of selling mobos are now influenced by the ovine herds of clueless customers.
And then you get the new baby home only to find ,your now a beta tester and have to wait many cycles to even get close to what should of been straight off.Meanwhile back on the ranch they elude and preclude that the error you have is not been re-creatable in their labs, while your money further drains while speaking to some 3rd or 4th world zot reading a script ,lol rinse, repeat
Doesn't Intel have their own fabs? Higher production, which spreads out the cost of development over more chips? I'd love to know the development costs, per unit manufacturing costs and sales volume so we know what the profit is on each chip before we complain about a companie's prices. It's not unlike comparing the price of a Corvette to, say, a Viper. It's not like VIA or SiS is making chipsets of note.
If one hardware company can get away with charging an arm and a leg for a decent motherboard than so can the next guy. In the end we will end up with products priced similar to the GFX boards which kinda sucks, namely because the "high end" models tend to come out first and then the mid range ones hit next. Also what do you do to a chipset to separate performance tiers? I really enjoyed buying top of the line motherboards for a few bucks (30 or so) more than that a similarly equipped board and basing my PC around that. Besides they used to always have more goodies like additional RAID, etc.
This has essentially been happening for some time. Prices of the 'Premium' mainboards have been creeping ever higher over the last few years, and this started in earnest when mainboards became more of a 'consumer item' instead of a 'enthusiast geek's item'. Look at the RoG boards from Asus... more flashy and whizzy and lots more expensive, but lesser boards still get the job done. It's all about appealing to the ever-expanding market of PC parts-buyers as building your own PC becomes more and more mainstream.
It's exceedingly annoying looking at the prices of the latest and greatest boards as I simply cannot justify spending such a stupid amount of money for such little benefit over a cheaper board.
Screw the fanboys, burn a hole in their wallets...they will never appreciate an identical product unless they pay much more for it. 
Reverse psychology is a like the jedi mind trick, it works on feeble brains...

What's the point of being a hardware loyalist? an Nvidia fanboy? AMD? Intel?

If you know your stuff you should be able to determine what your hardware needs are, and those do not always go hand in hand with specific companies.

So let them waste their money & pay bucket loads, just proves the ones making the product know their target market.