News Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 boards on sale now

I think that it's easy to forget just how expensive graphics cards have been in the past, which is why people think that £700 for the best possible GPU is a lot of money. It's always been a lot of money to get the best possible hardware.

Back in 2007 when the 8800 Ultra was released, it was over £500 (as reviewed by Bit-Tech). With inflation factored in you get approximately £700 in today's money, so to get a 1080 for less than £600 is nothing short of spectacular. Jump on it like a frisky rabbit.

 

Only the 8800 Ultra was a volt modded 8800 GTX with a nicer cooler on. The 8800 GTX cost far less and was pretty much the same card.

However, you're ignoring pretty much every aspect of the 1080 and declaring it a bargain. Firstly the 8800 GTX core was massive. Production costs would have been far higher. Secondly the 1080 is nothing but a die shrunk Finfet Maxwell. The die is tiny, and costs much less to produce.

And to top it all off we will have full sized (or close to it) Pascal soon and Nvidia will want another £700 or more for that.

Please don't try to make sense of the current price of GPUs. Every one seems to think that these 1080 aftermarket cards are cheap somehow. Seems Nvidia's "Good cop bad cop" routine has worked perfectly.

 

Die size doesn't really correlate to production costs. So whilst I think it is expensive, I don't think the 1080 is overpriced per se.

 

Of course it does. You buy wafers. They are a set size and price. You then try to produce as many working cores as you can out of that wafer. However, many won't work or make the grade. The smaller they are the more you get out of a single wafer, and thus the success rate is higher (because there is more wafer to help with percentages).

So let's say you get 10 Titan X cores out of a wafer (made up figure just for comparison purpose) or 20 1080 cores out of the exact same wafer.

That means you get a lot more for your money. Thus, it should be cheaper than the last gen full fat card. Only it isn't, and as an extra slap in the face and twisted nipple it's actually more expensive than the last full fat card !

So as I say, please please don't try and make sense of the prices that are being charged for the 1080. If I wanted to see that I would rejoin the OCUK forum.

 

In a perfect mathematical model then yes, you're correct (assuming wafer price stays the same every single year). But there are so many more factors to take into account when talking about production costs.

 

It doesn't matter what the 8800 Ultra was... what matters is that it was the best out-of-box GPU available at the time and many people were happy to pay hundreds for it, much like the 1080 today.

The point I'm trying to make is that almost nothing has changed in terms of pricing, even though the numbers appear higher and some people feel a little bit cheated with pricing. Production costs are virtually irrelevant; if Nvidia could manufacture the 1080 at one pence per unit, they would still charge hundreds for it because of its relative performance. They know the market and they know what they can charge to maximise their profits.

Strangely, it appears that you are the one trying to make sense of graphics card costs by talking in terms of value for money; since when have Nvidia ever cared about value? LOL!

 

I for one need a new GPU... I went from GTX 680 (bought in 2012) to 970 this year. Going from DK2 to Vive with Elite Dangerous and PCARS... GTX 970 is too low end.

I won't buy founders edition though because the clocks are too low. Will wait for the higher clocks to come along and it will be Zotac for me due to warranty.

 

Comparing an "Ultra" derivative card with a "standard/non-ultra" card isn't realistic. Ultra/Ti/dog's-danglies(tm) cards are always considerably more expensive. If you want to use that generation as a comparison, it would be better to compare the 1080 to the plain 8800GTX, and the 8800 Ultra to the 1080 Ti (when it appears).

I don't think there's any real doubt that graphics card prices have generally increased over the years (especially at the high-end), and by more than can be explained by inflation. Heck, I remember paying about £250 for a 6800GT not long after they were released (~2003/2004 iirc), and the top-end "Ultra" (same architecture just higher clocks) was about £100 more (so about £350, roughly half that of the vanilla 1080!).

Don't you remember "those emails" between Nvidia and AMD?

 

How about comparing launch price 680s which were around £420 to £450 to the 1080 which is £529 to £619.

Not the biggest different for 3 times performance. And thats before inflation.

 

"3x the performance" is irrelevant. New generation cards are often "2-3x faster" than the previous generation.

Using your logic, high-end card prices could justifiably rise as each new generation is released. £850 for a 1180? £1k for a 1280? and so on... (and don't get me started on people using the previous generation's extortionately priced Titan card to justify the new gen's pricing. It's beyond belief!).

 

Why does everyone seem to think GPU manufacturers are morally obliged to sell their products at lower prices? The high end gaming cards are luxury items. Research costs are massive for this kind of thing.

 

Suggesting a card is overpriced is not the same as implying manufacturers have a moral obligation regarding their pricing.

So long as early adopters don't mind paying through the nose, who can blame manufacturers for taking their money?

 

It's quite funny watching this argument develop each and every time new cards are released as if this is a brand new situation, especially as so many seemingly intelligent people seem to miss the actual point of 'sales'.

For any manufacturing company it is a balance between 2 sides: development and manufacturing costs v profits.

If you don't charge enough then you can't pay the bills and cover your cost so you end up either being bought or go in to liquidation. If you charge too much then customers refuse to buy your product no matter how good it is. The real finesse for a company's profit margin is finely walking the line just before customers refuse to buy.

There are a multitude of factors to take in to account for both sides of the argument as well as a variety of tactics. For example, one company may be happy to sell a few, premium products for massive margins while another company won't compete on the premium side but instead for the value end and will then sell more products with a smaller profit margin and may make more money through quantity. However, even this then comes back to the fine line, as this second company will still try to find the maximum they can charge for their so-called 'inferior' product.

Anyway, getting back to the argument, another factor that hasn't been mentioned yet about costs is the fact that there are far fewer units being sold these days than in the past as PC sales in general are far lower and due to technical advances in hardware, most users are quite happy without a dedicated GPU...

regarding the issue of wafers and die size leading to cheaper GPUs, are you forgetting the development and manufacturing costs of the actual wafers themselves... especially with regards to recent reductions in process size as it's become harder and harder to reduce the size and wasn't it not so long ago that a node shrink was a complete failure and they had to go back to the drawing board and start again?

Anyway, I honestly hope that somewhere in all that waffle there was a point and maybe a little intelligence but I'll leave you all to read my comment and decide for yourselves.

 

What's funnier is hearing seemingly intelligent people try to justify the price hikes.

Nvidia must be laughing quite heartily. I would!

 

lol ill wait for the ti version, dont wanna get 980'd all over again lolol.

 

If you don't like the price don't buy it.

 

thermal throttling and fan over revving being reported widely now - roll up roll up for the GTX 1080 `Thermi` edition!

 

I just can't believe that people actually bought the FE when the aftermarket cards were launched on the same day. I guess hell froze over or something.

 

Are you referring to the founders edition price hike or just the general non founders edition price? I can't recall the the launch prices of individual cards from years ago.

 

Both. The cheapest OEM card I've seen is about £525 and even though it looks considerably cheaper than the other cards (bog-standard cooler, 1x 8 pin power connector) it's still over £100 dearer than the 980 was at launch.