Backstory:

I'm a working stiff. I make enough to cover my bills and save a fair amount every month. At the beginning of this year, I set out to put together a new PC by purchasing one component at a time; each at the right time. I've never taken this approach and it's worked out well. I've replaced everything except for the case, one hard drive, my old and familliar keyboard and mouse, and... the graphics card. (1900GT)

So what's new? A 2ms GTG LCD monitor, a 700W ~87% efficient modular power supply, a couple new SATA drives & DVD, an AW9D MAX mobo, an E6600 (@ 3.2Ghz that idles at ~28C w/ aftermarket cooling), a matched pair of 1 gig DDR2 800 sticks- (@ 900 4-4-4-12 w/ 2.1v) and I even bought an air cooled 5.25" to 3.25" conversion bay to move all my hard drives from where Im expecting a long graphics card to be, also added sommore case fans.

So here I am- all my old parts are long gone; passed off to friends or sitting in a PC "junk" drawer... except that same 1900GT is still sitting there where a newer, faster, better, harder card should be. Lately I've been wondering why that old card is still there; I've been tossing and turning for a couple weeks now on whether to grab an 8800 series card; and which one- etc. Last night the prudent consumer inside me rebelled and fueled a long night of searching the web, reading reviews, tech forum threads, and shopping for prices to settle the matter.

Why I Didn't Buy an Nvidia 8800 Series Card:

The most obvious thing to me at my hesitance to grab one of these were the prices. The 8800GTS 320MB from one of the more reputable manufactuers is hovering around $290. Pricing Info

This is the best bang for the buck the 8800 series has to offer- and for future proofing purposes; the deal may not be sweet enough. There are instances in benchmarking reviews of this card; where it gets beaten by less powerful or less expensive cards with more texture memory. Benchmark here: Benchmark and also here:Benchmark (Check Oblivion, FEAR, + Quake4.)

Benchmarks will vary from game to game; and with a multitude of settings- but if games already on the market are easily chewing up 320MB of texture memory; DX10 games will not be any gentler. Another review echoes this sentiment here: Conclusion @ Firing Squad

Beyond the 8800GTS 320MB in the 8800 series, the price increases much faster relative to the performance increase. 8800 Series Comparison The 8800 Ultra offers a vary narrow lead over an 8800GTX for an extra ~250 dollars or more, and only offers a 30% increase in performance over an 8800GTS 320MB for ~500 dollars more. Pricing Info

I'm also leery of some of the largest and power hungry cards to date. While the architecture of the G80 is real progress- they've chosen to stick with the 90nm fabrication process- this is the reason for the size, power consumption, and possibly the cost of these cards. Some excerpts from a review on the G80 that can be found in full here: Full Review

"The thing is, the G80 isn't manufactured on a next-generation chip fabrication process. After some bad past experiences (read: GeForce FX), Nvidia prefers not to tackle a new GPU design and a new fab process at the same time. There's too much risk involved. So they have instead asked TSMC to manufacture the G80 on its familiar 90nm process, with the result being the single largest chip I believe I've ever seen."

"Nvidia's isn't handing out exact die size measurements, but they claim to get about 80 chips gross per wafer. Notice that's a gross number. Any chip of this size has got to be incredibly expensive to manufacture, because the possibility of defects over such a large die area will be exponentially higher than with a GPU like the G71 or R580. That's going to make for some very expensive chips."

"The chip is still too large and consumes too much power at idle, but this architecture should be a sweetheart once it makes the transition to a 65nm fab process, which is where it really belongs."

Another concern is how "future proof" are these cards against their cost? There is already some evidence out there to suggest Nvidia is basically sitting on the next refresh of cards in the 8900 series that will be available on an 80nm process with faster GDDR4 memory for less money. Leaked Info

I don't know about you; but if I'm going to spend around 600 dollars on a graphics card- I'd be plenty pissed off if a new version makes not just a small step; but a leap ahead in peformance AND at a lower price in less than six months.

Lastly- in the news it seems like AMD and Nvidia are facing over 50 lawsuits that allege price fixing. There are snips and reposts of the news all over enthuiast hardware sites. News Repost

There's also a forum discussion on suspected price fixing that dates back a while here: Price Fixing? With so many lawsuits pending concerning price fixing it is very likely at least one of them will have some effect on the market in the consumer's favor.

Lack of Suitable Alternatives Or Intermediary Transitions:

So I've decided I'll pass on the 8800 series cards, I then set out to find a card that would provide a significant improvement over my 1900GT at a low price. To my dissapointment, it seems prices on older models aren't dropping as fast as you'd think. Pricing Info

An x1950 crossfire which gets outperformed in most benchmarks by an 8800GTS 320MB, still costs just as much and in some cases more than the lower tier 8800 GTS 320MB cards. The higher end 7900 series of cards are still floating above 200 dollars; that's too much to pay for an intermediary card to transition from in the short term. Ideally I was looking at spending no more than $100-$150 for something that will kick the ass out of my 1900GT and hold me over until a new series of cards arrive that offer real value.

What's available for about a 150 bucks? For my needs, nothing really. The 8600GT series cards are in that price range; but they are about on par with my x1900GT. Though I could not find a direct comparison- the 8500 and 8600GT were compared to a x1950 PRO- (which you can see here only trumps the x1900GT by a small margin: 1950Pro + x1900GT) and the x1950 PRO outperforms the 8600GT here: Benchmarks

In Conclusion:

While there are plenty of options- none of them truely feel like a smart upgrade path for their costs. There's the 8800GTS 320MB model that costs around 300 dollars that may end up struggling with new DX10 games. For around 100 dollars more, the 640MB model offers only the extra memory and no extra processing power. Beyond the 8800GTS 640MB model- the costs are ridiculous as you can easily buy an E6600 and motherboard of your choice for the same price or less. (When they almost undoubtedly cost more to produce) There is also extremely foreboding news on the horizon that casts very credible doubt on the long-term value of any card in the 8800 line-up.

Intermediary cards that offer a significant increase in performance over an x1900GT are still too pricey. If you have a card from less than 3 generations ago- it is simply not worth it to buy an intermediary card as most of the ones that offer real gains are still too close in price to the low end 8800GTS 320MB.

Still irritating- new 8600GT cards that can cost as much as when I purchased my x1900GT almost 2 years ago; can barely outperform it- and in some benchmarks; a x1900GT can probably still beat an 8600GT. There's no value to the consumer for new cards that offer 2 year old performance at the brand new price level.

I understand the nature of the market in the traditional sense... What's really wrong with today's graphics card market is this: Instead of seeing current generation cards replacing those of the last generation at the same price; there has been a trend of increasing price ceilings over the past few years.

What's worse is that not only are the best cards getting pricier- (Fetching 1,000 dollars or more in some instances) but every card in every new generation's series is getting to be a little costlier than it's equivalent in the last generation.

If there was a real industry-bound reason for this situation beyond ATI's and Nvidia's seeming lack of interest in competitive pricing- why is it only affecting the graphics card market? Why doesn't an E6300 cost 500 dollars? Etc.

I'm going to bring my DX10 thoughts to this, yes i'm banging a big drum about it but its my drum and i can beat it if i want

The next generation is going to need to be a pretty hefty speed bump due to the fact DX10 may actually start arriving by then. And with its arrival the Geforce 9 series will need to be able to provide acceptable dx10 performance across the range. If not then no mainstream DX10 for another 2 years (geforce 10 umm tasty). And so to deferentiate from its future mainstream siblings the geforce 9 top end will need to be an absolute power house to allow the mainstream to come in near the 8800 GTS (bit below probably) performance as this would appear to be the required ummphh for acceptable dx10. But that has the problem of culling 8 series sales which nvidia will not like, so maybe expect yet another price bump

Excellent! All the right questions with very well documented answers. It has been quite some time since such a significant post appeared in the forums.
You should do that professionally and get some money out of it, because you can really stir things and not provide obvious, marketing based opinions.

Bravo! I'm bookmarking your post for future reference...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation

It's 4% per year on average over the past 20 years, the increases we're seeing in the cards market are much higher. There may be parallels to situations like this in the computing market in 1980's- wonder if there are records/info on what the market for PC components was like back then. I've heard some pretty non-sensical stories from that period pertaining to the cost of home based PC equipment.

In 2003 when the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra came out, it was £390... 4 years on and the the 8800 Ultra costs £450... that's not exaclty a world away from 4% PA (in fact it's 5%)

In April 1997 an Orchid Righteous 3D was £280, adding 10 years of 4% inflation comes to £400, again, not a million miles from the current top of the range prices for graphics cards

I've also found another article where the Geforce 2 Ultra was £380 in 2001, 4% PA makes that £480, which is right on the money for current Ultra prices

the problem is that for most home computer components, we're used to performance going up while prices come down (e.g. in 1992, 520MB of disk space would have cost around £1000, by 1995 it was £179, and today it's less than £1 per GB)

Though thinking about it, the dollar is weak as shit at the moment, so that probably doesn't help the dollar price a whole lot.

It's 4% per year on average over the past 20 years, the increases we're seeing in the cards market are much higher. There may be parallels to situations like this in the computing market in 1980's- wonder if there are records/info on what the market for PC components was like back then. I've heard some pretty non-sensical stories from that period pertaining to the cost of home based PC equipment.

The 4% mark does not apply to all markets.

But seriously, the GFX card market is not much different. I'd wait for Cleeve's reply to this thread, but I would wager a bet that he would say there have always been pricepoints, and it almost always goes up about $50 a year or so higher than it was before. There's always been decent cards in the $100-$150 range, but that could not compare to the $500-$600 card of the same time period. The difference is, now we're seeing a lot of filler between the $150-$500 range that we did not have before. It used to be that you'd get a decent range of cards up to about $200, and then a small handful of cards until you hit $500. Now, that small handful has expanded to entire lines and tiers of technology, which results in the greater number of choices, as you mentioned in your original post.


It's really just a bull market created through a higher demand from more enthusiasts, and defined by inflation.

Nice write up and good assessment on the state of gpu's today.

For many of the same reasons I'm holding on to my 7900GT. Aside from those reasons, the complete lack of 100% DX10 games is the reason to hold off purchasing a DX10 card. Being able to view all the eye candy in Vista is certainly no reason to get a DX10 card either. Heck, for all we know, the 8800 GTX and/or Ultra might end up a mid/low range card by the time true DX10 games become available.

personally I thought that was a good read. Then again i dont have a 8800, so people with one will probably like to disagree.

Chunky no need for DX10 with Aero Glass (vista eye candy) i certainly noticed no difference. Even the windows flipping thing works on DX9 hw no problem, looks decent but still to find a use for it though .

I think his article was a great writeup for the $100-$150 range, but not for the overall state of the GFX card market.

As some of you know, I just recently built my new computer, upgrading from a 9800proSE (128MB) and a P4 3.2ghz prescott that I built 3 years ago. Obviously, my comp cost a fair amount more than most people would want to budget, but had I had a lower spending limit, I think I would have still gone w/the 8800GTS 320MB at a bare minimum because of the price/performance.

I am 100% aware that my 8800GTX will be owned by the end of the year, and that I probably won't be able to step-up to something better before that happens. Maybe it would have been smarter of me to get the 320GTS and upgrade to the GTX in 3 months, if nothing to save a little bit of money.

That being said, I've looked at the GFX market from two angles (big purchase/low return, medium purchase/medium return) and I've got to say that the market is quite nice. Sure, it could be better... sure, I would have liked to see some actual competition from ATI to drive prices down, but for what it is, we're seeing some great technology at some really decent prices.

The fact is, you simply cannot expect to "upgrade" from a couple years ago at the $100-$150 pricepoint. Everyone knows that the $100-$150 price point *IS* a couple years ago, therefore you cannot "upgrade" when you're limiting yourself to the price of what the high end card you bought a couple years ago is now worth! That's like saying you buy a car at $13,000, and then in 5 years, you cannot find a car that is better than what you have for $6,000.

This is all just very basic economics.

Its interesting to see the reports of the next wave of nividia graphics cards waiting in the wings of the final release of Ati's lower and mid-range 2000 series. It could explain the driver issues many users have that the focus is to get product out . Most big box retailers sell 1 premium card for every 3-4 mid-range cards and by extension 10-15 lower end ones. A quick tour of local outfits finds cards that are vintage of 3-4 years ago on the shelves. Many smaller stores are not in this position. I suspect that yes summer sales ie blowouts are comming and that the retailers will restock in the fall to take advantage of "back to school" and the holidays.
Recently a local big retailer (no rebate shopping) ran a special on the evga 8600gts superclocked at 199.99cdn versus msrp 279.99 . This was at the time of our .91 dollar. My buddy who works in the business said that often big box retailers get special deals , warranty reserve dumps and over-stock of slow moving product. Most retailers are stuck with no new product to sell and do not want to cut their own throats until they absolutely have too.
Enough said; the article leaked suggest that the 8600 moniker would have two models in gs and gt with 64 stream processors in lieu of the 32 that are present now. This with a cheaper 8900 gs (256bit interface) for 50.00us more. They are pricing to price points in increments of multiples of 50.00us. Based on this new information my 8600gts is going back to the puppy mill with the 30 day return policy.

I am sorry, but i have to disagree. What was the price and the performance of a 6600GT 3 years ago? Did the 7600GT almost double that performance at the same price point or not? Is the performance of the 8600GT (or GTS for that matter!) anywhere near double that of a 7600GT? What do you have to pay to get double the performance of the 7600GT? Maybe the price for a 8800GTS?
Where is Moore's law in all of this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

Sorry for all the questions but i still believe that asking questions is the first step to getting answers.
Inflation was never the answer to I.T. industry prices, Moore's law and competition was. Today's situation is rather unbalanced. With no real competition i wouldn't lower the prices of my products, i would just raise the marketing hype spending...

Just an opinion, not a flame war attempt

Edit: Syntax

Could have knocked that story down to your last four paragraphs, but what I feel is that the market has always been this way. There are always a few high dollar cards out there followed by mid range and low-end. That hasn't changed since I've been gaming. People have always tried to figure out the best bang for the buck and then there are people like me who always buy the best available. This hasn't changed either. So I don't see how the market is different now. As Prohzt said, the only thing that's really changed is inflation.

I feel the same way as you do. I wanted to upgrade my 7900gt but am going to hold out until the 8900 series finally comes along. In the meantime I bought a second used 7900gt to put in sli to hold me over until I get that new 8900.

Ok, you've written a good short article and I've no complaint about its competence. That said, I did buy a 8800GTS 640 last week to replace my old X1900 XTX Toxic. I had intended to keep the X1900 a while longer, but it bit the dust and I needed a new card now, not a few weeks or months from now.

Why the 640mb instead of the 320mb version, since on the face of it, the 320mb seems to provide more bang for the buck, etc? First off, by watching sales, I got it for only about $40 more than a 320mb version. That seemed like a good deal to me. Second, since no one really knows yet how the cards may perform once real DX10 games appear, the 640mb version may show an advantage when those games do come out. Yes, that's an unknown and it could be that the 640 version will show no more advantage than the 320 version. But to me, the $40 was worth the gamble. Third, since I bought a card from EVGA, I can use their step up program if a better card comes out within 90 days, so I won't loose money to depreciation if I decide to go that route.

Yes, I do think the offerings from the graphics card industry are poor at the moment. Through the years, I've noticed cycles of this phenomena. Its like the industry gets stuck, not knowing what to produce which will help both in games and with changing operating systems. The two biggest things that tick me off are the fact that Nvidia still hasn't solved its problems concerning Vista and DX10, while AMD's 2900 XT doesn't excell in much of anything. Its just there, which may be better than not being there, but not by much.

Price wise, I don't have too much objection to the costs of the new cards. Beyond raises due to mere inflation, it should be kept in mind that the newer cards have vastly increased numbers of transistors and other parts which cost more money. Also price I paid for the 8800 GTS 640mb was less then I paid for a 7800 GTX 256mb card a couple years ago, so I think I got a good deal with it. But that's my opinion only.

Overall, I think we are going to have to wait a few months for better cards to come out. First off, real DX10 games have to start arriving in sufficient numbers that comparisons can be made among the cards. For that matter, more people will have to start using Vista before the matter becomes relavent. Second, Microsoft will have to patch several of the problems within Vista itself before the video card industry can its patches/updates for present cards or new cards entirely that will make real differences on our machines.

Ok, I've given my 2 cents worth. Again, you did a good job describing the problem we all face at this time concerning video cards. I just don't know what the end answers are for the moment. I do wish things would settle down a bit in the industry as I too am trying to put together a new computer, but I find its not only a problem of trying to find a good video card, but also the wait for real changes concerning cpus, motherboards, and ram. So Ive got the project on hold until some of the dust settles.

Good read, but you seem to contradict yourself with these two parts...

First, you refer to an article