Pricing Reality Check!
- Thread starter swaaye
- Start date
Jimmers said:
lol, considering the "regular" version is like $15 less I don't know how professional it is. But I honestly find any complaints about price quite stupid. It's like people think they have the right to have certain things at a given price point. Just take a look at the $300 7800GT and the $100 6600DDR2. Anybody remember what you could get for $300 and $100 last year? Prices increasing my ass
Sometimes I think people would be happier if there was no X1800XT or 7800GTX then everybody would be saying how great it is that the "best" is only $300.
The voodoo2 was more than that when it came out.
http://it.asia1.com.sg/reviews/cards/car010_19990326.html
12MB version: $499.
http://it.asia1.com.sg/reviews/cards/car010_19990326.html
12MB version: $499.
Ok take a deep dreath and try to listen for a few seconds.
MARGINS are the highest ever for Nvidia, that means that they are increasing the prices relative to their costs. Feel free to cite irrelevant facts and figures that actually do not prove your point, (I mean heck you are comparing a paper magazine to online prices?)
They can charge whatever they want, you totally and completely are missing the point. If prices get to high they will kill the PC gaming market, that is why people are upset, I couldn't care less how much a 7800512MB GTX sli rig would cost b/c I will never buy it. It is simply the fear that they will kill their business, but cards like the 6800gs make it less of a worry.
MARGINS are the highest ever for Nvidia, that means that they are increasing the prices relative to their costs. Feel free to cite irrelevant facts and figures that actually do not prove your point, (I mean heck you are comparing a paper magazine to online prices?
) They can charge whatever they want, you totally and completely are missing the point. If prices get to high they will kill the PC gaming market, that is why people are upset, I couldn't care less how much a 7800512MB GTX sli rig would cost b/c I will never buy it. It is simply the fear that they will kill their business, but cards like the 6800gs make it less of a worry.
I'm sure NVIDIA is more concerned about killing their business than you are.
FYI: All the prices you see in the 1993 magazine need to be multiplied by 1.3 to get 2005 Dollars, adjusting for inflation.
Curtesy of the Inflation Calculator, which you can use to calculate the inflation between any two years starting at 1800 and ending 2005. NASA offers one in Java here
EDIT: changed the value from 1.314 to 1.3 because 1.314 is an absurd amount of precision for something like this, especially given how different calculators give slightly different results.
Curtesy of the Inflation Calculator, which you can use to calculate the inflation between any two years starting at 1800 and ending 2005. NASA offers one in Java here
EDIT: changed the value from 1.314 to 1.3 because 1.314 is an absurd amount of precision for something like this, especially given how different calculators give slightly different results.
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RussSchultz said:
Hrmm.. well it must not have stayed there for too long. I actually paid $99 for my 8MB card brand new from CompUSA (with a $50 rebate I think). I can't recall if the Riva128 was out by then or not, but it was still well before the Voodoo 3 series was released.
I also only paid $215 for my GTS... I haven't bought the others on the list, but even with the $400 Voodoo 2 the price has gone up 50% for the top of the line 3D cards (not counting CAD cards, which were always absurdly overpriced).
Sxotty said:
It's fairly amazing that they could be making more on the cards they are producing today considering all the increases in complexity. Not just the chips themselves, but the mechanical and thermal challenges, the power filtering circuitry, more outputs, etc.
Please do bring us some web info from 1993. And no, not from usenet!Sxotty said:(I mean heck you are comparing a paper magazine to online prices?
Too bad we don't have 3dfx anymore. Sure, the higher memory configs of the voodoo and voodoo 2 were way too expensive, but the Voodoo 3 at $100 gave 75% of the performance of their $200 card, while the competition's equivalent was going for $300.
But then they slipped up with the voodoo 5....the $300 asking price wasn't so bad, except it got beat by cheaper low end geforce 2's, in addition to nvidia's $400 card. (gosh, I remember when I thought the geforce 2 ultra was way too expensive)
But then they slipped up with the voodoo 5....the $300 asking price wasn't so bad, except it got beat by cheaper low end geforce 2's, in addition to nvidia's $400 card. (gosh, I remember when I thought the geforce 2 ultra was way too expensive)
\swaaye said:Please do bring us some web info from 1993. And no, not from usenet!
It is not that, but comparing apples and oranges to describe bannanas does little.
As Russ said Nvidia is "more concerned than I am "
Well hopefully they are, but then that all depends on where their sales are, afterall with the deployment of Vista everyone will need a GPU, and they have the PS3, and they have chipsets etc... But still I think they would not want to kill it off, at the same time one must admit that it would not be the first time a business made a short sighted decision to increase profits in the near term.
Jimmers said:
inflation
I think the shock comes from a large deflationary period in computers parts that started in 1997-98 and continued to about 2002-03. CPU, HD, Motherboard, Case, PSU, Ram all fell drastically over that period. But now the video cards and CPUs are starting to see a rise in selling price and we dont like it
MulciberXP
Regular
Sxotty said:Ok take a deep dreath and try to listen for a few seconds.
MARGINS are the highest ever for Nvidia, that means that they are increasing the prices relative to their costs. Feel free to cite irrelevant facts and figures that actually do not prove your point, (I mean heck you are comparing a paper magazine to online prices?
They can charge whatever they want, you totally and completely are missing the point. If prices get to high they will kill the PC gaming market, that is why people are upset, I couldn't care less how much a 7800512MB GTX sli rig would cost b/c I will never buy it. It is simply the fear that they will kill their business, but cards like the 6800gs make it less of a worry.
And what do you know about Diamonds margins in 1993?
What do you know about Diamonds margins in 1993?MulciberXP said:
I don't know anything, but I said nothing about it, I said Nvidia who makes GPUs btw has been on record saying that they are making the best margins they have ever made. I didin't bring up anything about BFGs margins, or Visiontek, EVGA or anyone else.
Remember diamond made sound cards and other crap too so it would be like comparing creative labs which tells us about nothing.
I hope you know the answer to your question, otherwise it is probably not a good idea to ask it as a rhetorical question.
Sxotty said:
Uhh, we're comparing high end vid card prices from 1993 to today's high end cards. That seems EXACTLY right on the mark to me... The medium that the prices are displayed on doesn't matter.
I'm trying to basically say that we aren't being ripped off today. If anything, especially with inflation considered, we're getting bargains. There was a period during the 3D revolution of the late '90s and early '00s where prices were perhaps artifically low.
Swaaye, look man I won't pursue it if people are going to get upset (btw I am not saying you are), but listen the medium does matter b/c it took a long while for prices distributed on printed material and those available online to come anywhere near eachother. That is why it was actually far cheaper at one point to buy a system in pieces and put it together than to get the same from Dell, that is no longer the case though.swaaye said:
And as was said, prices fell from that point and only began rising recently. Arguing that we should be happy while being branded because we were previously thrown into a fire doesn't mean it is enjoyable. The truth is as I said I don't care about the prices of Video cards except for the unlikely event that the PC gaming market is killed, though actually it seems more plausible to me than others.
I think that CPUs are a point where we should be honestly getting more upset, b/c as was said CPUs don't have the most expensive ram bundled etc...The CPU price dip was pretty short though 99-03 maybe?
EDIT: In all honesty though the rapid drop on prices for the x1800xt gives me some hope at least that prices might follow more closely to the cost for manufacturers. Remember in a perfectly competitive market the price to produce the last card should equal the price it is sold for or some such bollocks
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There have been cheap CPU alternatives for a very long time. That's where AMD started. Remember the Am5x86, 486 clones, K5, and their cloned 386s, etc? CPUs are about back where they used to be. It's just that AMD is in a position now to charge more because they actually have some semblance of image in the public's eye.
I personally paid $600 for a PII 233 in 1997 or so, because it was THE CPU for 3D games at the time. Intel was forced to become competitive with the arrival of faster K6-2 chips, but especially when the Athlon arrived.
Now days I'm not sure what's up, but both Intel and AMD are pricing along with each other. It's almost like collusion. Somehow they've managed to boost the perceived value of their chips to the levels Intel used to charge when they were really the only game in town. I think it comes down to that they haven't dropped the prices of what was high-end very much, and have continued to increase their asking price for the latest stuff.
But there certainly still are perfectly acceptable choices out there, and they definitely get the job done relatively better than a K5 vs. a Pentium MMX.
I still don't agree with you on the medium of prices though. Back in '93 the Internet did not commercially matter. Unless you think Prodigy's or AOL's old-skool online stores had any great sales volume influence over the insanely more popular magazines of that era. This was when Computer Shopper was still 5lbs/issue. (Wish I still had some of those!) And today a print Newegg catalog isn't going to be significantly different than their website.
I personally paid $600 for a PII 233 in 1997 or so, because it was THE CPU for 3D games at the time. Intel was forced to become competitive with the arrival of faster K6-2 chips, but especially when the Athlon arrived.
Now days I'm not sure what's up, but both Intel and AMD are pricing along with each other. It's almost like collusion. Somehow they've managed to boost the perceived value of their chips to the levels Intel used to charge when they were really the only game in town. I think it comes down to that they haven't dropped the prices of what was high-end very much, and have continued to increase their asking price for the latest stuff.
But there certainly still are perfectly acceptable choices out there, and they definitely get the job done relatively better than a K5 vs. a Pentium MMX.
I still don't agree with you on the medium of prices though. Back in '93 the Internet did not commercially matter. Unless you think Prodigy's or AOL's old-skool online stores had any great sales volume influence over the insanely more popular magazines of that era. This was when Computer Shopper was still 5lbs/issue. (Wish I still had some of those!) And today a print Newegg catalog isn't going to be significantly different than their website.
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