The original GTX Titan released in 2013 for $1,000. That was the best consumer card they had at the time. Adjusted for inflation, that car would be $1,270.08 today. Nvidia's top tier card today now costs $1,600 for Nvidia and probably $1,800 for board partners.
That means Nvidia has jacked the price up for their top-tier cards by over $300. And if you look at the xx80 series, the GTX 1080 released in 2016 for $600. Adjusted for inflation, that's $740.41. Now their xx80 series costs $900.
We are getting shafted.
Furthermore, if you allow me to expand on your point, we were already getting very "shafted" by the time the original TITAN came out. Why? Well, NVIDIA's 600-series (Kepler) was when it managed to effectively
double prices over a
single generation. It was a frankly astonishing thing to witness and was brought about largely due to AMD's then-lack-of-competitiveness. Surprising little was written by either the press, or consumers, at the time. How it happened? Prior to that, a card based on NVIDIA's largest GPU, i.e. GF110, used to cost 350-500 USD, see GTX 570 and GTX 580; and a card based on its mid-sized GPU, i.e. GF114, used to cost 200-250 USD, see GTX 560 and GTX 560 Ti.
So far so good. Then came time for the new generation (600-series), but AMD wasn't competitive (yet), and so NVIDIA pulled a "magic" trick -- it released the GTX 670 and GTX 680 at 400-500 USD, but these were
not based on its largest GPU, but rather on its mid-sized GPU, making them actual successors to the GTX 560 and GTX 560 Ti at
double the price. Consumers seemed unfazed because the new cards were fast, which, in my opinion, is a non-argument -- new GPUs have always been faster than previous generations; that's the point. NVIDIA deliberately held out on releasing a true successor to the GTX 570/580, a card based on its large GPU. Why wouldn't it? There was little to no competition. When the time finally came, 9 long months later, an incredible PR stunt was pulled -- the GTX TITAN (what a name!) was released at 1000 USD and marketed as some otherworldly achievement in parallel processing whereas, in fact, it was simply a GTX 580 successor. Consumers seemed in awe because the new card was fast, which, again, is a non-argument for the same reasons mentioned above. AMD briefly fought back with the R9 290, a 400-USD-card based on its large GPU, but subsequently mostly adopted similar pricing policies. It has been that way ever since.
And so, we used to be able to buy a card based on NVIDIA's largest GPU for 350 USD (450 USD, adjusted for inflation) whose equivalent now costs 1600 USD; make no mistake, while the RTX 4090 may be marketed as a xx
90 card, it really is like the 350-USD GTX 5
70 -- a card based on a cut-down version of NVIDIA's large GPU. Sure, complexity has increased, memory and process may be more expensive, but a 3.55-fold/1150 USD increase can only account for what a consumer might call corporate greed, and a board member -- a successfully executed business strategy.
We've been getting shafted for years and kinda loving it. The way to fight back is to refuse to upgrade. The problem is we've been doing precisely the opposite for over a decade now.
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