Why Are Nvidia's GeForce RTX GPUs So Expensive?

[AndrewFreedman]

Nvidia’s RTX 2080 and 2070 GPUs are more expensive than many gamers expected. What gives?


Why Are Nvidia's GeForce RTX GPUs So Expensive? : Read more

 

[WildCard999]

Just gotta wait for those gaming benchmarks to see if the performance increase justifies the cost.

 

[Peter Martin]

It’s probably because they just can’t compete they basically lost all the consoles. all they have is aftermarket video and big in the auto industry

Look at Xbox One X graphics and solid 60 fps gameplay fir the powerhouse that is AMD

I’ve had far less problems with AMD products in my experience

In my opinion you are paying for the name and that’s it they are no better than their counterparts

 

[Berain]

So far all I have seen from this new line of cards and ray tracing is that I shouldn't bother with replacing my 1080ti because ray tracing is only currently supported on a handful of games and isn't worth the fps hit in its infant stage at that, even less so since it would be a waste of my 4k monitor since I likely won't currently be able to max out graphics on most games using ray tracing in 4k. I will definitely be waiting on this one.

 

[bruceghayes]

$150 is the top price I will pay for a card, I own a GTX 750 Ti, that games and works with 4K. I went to Utube to look at gaming card ideas and saw that one and bought it and I am very satisfied. With ID software back in gaming (Quake, Doom, and Wolfstein), $150 cards have all the power I need to play them.

 

[Gillerer]

Nvidia not giving any indication about performance for current titles (compared to Pascal) leads me to believe that they're at most only marginally better, and worse in terms of performance/price.

Another thought about Nvidia withholding performance numbers: Maybe with the new ray-tracing technology, they have something other than performance to tout in marketing materials without drawing too much attention to the lack of numbers? They can use this as a test case on whether people will pre-order completely blind - even at inflated prices - and if successful, will repeat this same thing for every future generation.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Pretty simple really. Nvidia are money gouging eejits! It also doesn't help there is no competition!

 

[kingsol767]

Many suspected the pricing would be high. At least until the 10 series inventory is consumed. Over compensation for mining. They are basically avoiding stepping on the price points of the remaining 10 series cards. There is no need for benchmarks. The cards are going to be a marginal step up from the 10 series. The big leap will not happen until ray tracing is main stream. The first driver update will probably unlock the cards full potential.

 

[bogdan_ea]

Blame AMD not Nvidia. When competition is lackluster and you are so good (Nvidia used 16nm tech miles better than AMD) you are entitled to demand some extra cash.
The one thing I don't understand is how so many games can afford such expensive video cards.

 

[why_wolf]

While I'm sure cost of parts increased some it definitely didn't increase enough to equal the price increase we are seeing. So most of the increase is just due to Nvidia's only competitor at the high end is last gen Nvidia cards. That and as they figured out with the founders cards there is a certain % of people will pay extra just to be first.

When AMD belatedly rolls out something that can compete Nvidia will just drop the price. So at least they drop their prices, unlike Intel which just stubbornly maintains pricing no matter what.

 

[WildCard999]

Nvidia not giving any indication about performance for current titles (compared to Pascal) leads me to believe that they're at most only marginally better, and worse in terms of performance/price.

Another thought about Nvidia withholding performance numbers: Maybe with the new ray-tracing technology, they have something other than performance to tout in marketing materials without drawing too much attention to the lack of numbers? They can use this as a test case on whether people will pre-order completely blind - even at inflated prices - and if successful, will repeat this same thing for every future generation.

Blame AMD not Nvidia. When competition is lackluster and you are so good (Nvidia used 16nm tech miles better than AMD) you are entitled to demand some extra cash.
The one thing I don't understand is how so many games can afford such expensive video cards.

Multiple jobs, selling a kidney, etc.

 

[Martell1977]

LMAO! The reference 2080ti is $200 more than the superior third party cards are expected to launch at...talk about an early adopter tax, ouch.

 

[Gillerer]

LMAO! The reference 2080ti is $200 more than the superior third party cards are expected to launch at...talk about an early adopter tax, ouch.

Did you read the article?

That $200 difference is only present in Nvidia's suggested pricing, and in effect between the (overclocked) Founders Edition and a theoretical 3rd party base-clocked version.

In reality, all 3rd party versions available for pre-purchase so far are overclocked/high-end designs at $1149+ prices, resulting in at most $50 difference.

Also, since no one has tested it, we don't know how good the new reference design cooler is. Considering the quality of the earlier generations' reference cooler - despite being a blower - I wouldn't rule out it actually being pretty decent.

 

[logainofhades]

Greed and lack of competition. We saw it between Intel and AMD, until Ryzen launched. AMD needs a Ryzen style success on the GPU side now.

 

[hecksagon]

It’s probably because they just can’t compete they basically lost all the consoles. all they have is aftermarket video and big in the auto industry

Look at Xbox One X graphics and solid 60 fps gameplay fir the powerhouse that is AMD

I’ve had far less problems with AMD products in my experience

In my opinion you are paying for the name and that’s it they are no better than their counterparts

The PC market and the Console market are basically an even 25-25 split of the overall gaming market. Mobile eats up 50%. In that 25-25 split, consoles basically have no margin, and I am willing to bet Microsoft and Sony squeeze AMD's margin quite a bit. Dedicated graphics cards have significantly better margins, because they have tiered components to hit multiple price points. They also have enthusiasts that will buy high end no matter the cost. Nvidia dominates this market, with the high end basically uncontested by AMD.

Nvidia has a huge presence in AI learning, CAD, and supercomputers. All of these have tremendous margins. AMD hasn't really entered this market with the exception of some CAD workstations.

There is a reason that Nvidia can charge whatever they want, and it isn't because they are losing to AMD. Until recently AMD wasn't even profitable.

 

[Giroro]

Nvidia is wasting way too much of the die on the pointless AI and ray tracing features. Rumor has it that real-world gaming performance without those features is only about 10-15% better than previous gen, but there is a chance they were comparing 2080 to 1080ti.

Ray tracing and AI was never really intended for gamers in the first place, they are just left over since the RTX line is just Quadro silicon built for server farms that came out with faulty memory controllers. Nvidia is putting a lot into marketing what they have, but its all smoke and mirrors that will generally be worthless to gamers. The stock is probably very limited right now (unless they are having a lot of problems with Quadro yield), but mostly I think Nvidia is hoping to capitalize on a rush of crypto farm upgrades that probably won't happen.
So just don't buy it, there's generally not a compelling reason to upgrade yet, and prices will start falling pretty quickly.
Alternatively, there IS a big rush to upgrade crypto farms, at which point used 1070's and 1080s are going to be so cheap that it makes a lot more sense to upgrade to SLI over the RTX cards.

 

[therickmu25]

I'm sure the RTX cards are monsters when the full performance numbers come out. I'd hope they'd learned their lesson from touting 'PhysX' in those 500 series cards years back.

 

[Rexer]

Seen the presentation online. Awesome card. I might pick one up later but for now, I have to make my freesync stuff pay for itself.
It's nice to have all the high resolution and 3D detail. but I usually do multiplayer fps games online and the details are distracting. Too often they hide my opponent so I turn the settings down to 'high' or 'medium' across the board. I'm '65 so I can use all the help I can get.

 

[Krazie_Ivan]

such a shining, re-assuring, all-praise opinion from "Analyst Jon Peddie". interesting. someone cross-check people associated with him & Nvidia stock, cause no analytics should result in completely ignoring so many other factors. i'm not claiming anything, but it's suspect AF.

 

[jemfranco]

@PETER MARTIN Nvidia has the tegra X1 in every Nintendo Switch which is selling very well. I wouldnt say they lost all the consoles.

 

[Stukes]

"Simple cost of goods"?
No, it's not that at all. Do you really think that the inflated crypto prices we saw didn't give nvidias analysts a bunch of useful data regarding what prices the market will bear?
That, combined with excess inventory of the previous generation (which they don't want to cannibalize the sales of) and AMD not really providing much competition means that they can effectively charge what they want for the new stuff.

The 20xx cards are faster than the 10xx cards, but the 10xx cards are still selling and the market has shown it'll still buy at stupid high prices. Why would they compete with themselves?

 

[Martell1977]

LMAO! The reference 2080ti is $200 more than the superior third party cards are expected to launch at...talk about an early adopter tax, ouch.

Did you read the article?

That $200 difference is only present in Nvidia's suggested pricing, and in effect between the (overclocked) Founders Edition and a theoretical 3rd party base-clocked version.

In reality, all 3rd party versions available for pre-purchase so far are overclocked/high-end designs at $1149+ prices, resulting in at most $50 difference.

Also, since no one has tested it, we don't know how good the new reference design cooler is. Considering the quality of the earlier generations' reference cooler - despite being a blower - I wouldn't rule out it actually being pretty decent.

The $200 difference is the MSRP, and as for the "base clocked versions" when was the last time 3rd party cards for nVidia were at the base clock? How many generations back. Regardless, $50 extra for a reference card is even too much. Reference cards should be $50+ CHEAPER than their betters.

As for the reference being decent, the 10xx series reference design had throttling issues, not massive, but they were present. 3rd party cards have always been superior and sometimes extremely superior.

Truth is, the $200 difference is because they renamed the reference card to Founders Edition, so that people obsessed with being an early adopter can call it something other than reference. That's a lot to pay just to basically say "I have the reference card".

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

Going by die size alone meant they were always going to be more expensive than Pascal. A 1080ti was 471 mm². Gamersnexus' 2080ti teardown measured it at 775 mm².

https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/3356-die-size-nvidia-rtx-2080-ti-evga-xc2-ft-der8auer

That alone is a 65% increase, without factoring in reduced yields or the transition to GDDR6. You can certainly question how they decided to spend the extra real estate, but there's no avoiding the costs.

 

[jimmysmitty]

It’s probably because they just can’t compete they basically lost all the consoles. all they have is aftermarket video and big in the auto industry

Look at Xbox One X graphics and solid 60 fps gameplay fir the powerhouse that is AMD

I’ve had far less problems with AMD products in my experience

In my opinion you are paying for the name and that’s it they are no better than their counterparts

AMD makes far less money from console sales than nVidia does from AI and deep learning. Or even just CAD/workstations. A single XB1X is $500-$600. That includes everything minus the games of course. A single decent Quadro starts in the $1-2K range. Who makes more money? AMD from the $500-$600 which is taken to even less when Microsoft cuts their part out or nVidia?

Consoles were a good market for AMD to get but not a loss for nVidia. There is always more the be had in HPC which is where AMD really wants to go.

 

[Martell1977]

AMD makes far less money from console sales than nVidia does from AI and deep learning. Or even just CAD/workstations. A single XB1X is $500-$600. That includes everything minus the games of course. A single decent Quadro starts in the $1-2K range. Who makes more money? AMD from the $500-$600 which is taken to even less when Microsoft cuts their part out or nVidia?

Consoles were a good market for AMD to get but not a loss for nVidia. There is always more the be had in HPC which is where AMD really wants to go.

Except that AMD is a player in those markets as well. AMD makes Pro cards for all fields just like nVidia, it just AMD also has console revenue on top of that. Comparing the margins between the two is folly, they are totally different markets and nVidia does not have a monopoly in it. Which AMD doesn't have a monopoly in consoles either, just a 2 to 1 advantage. AMD = XBone, PS4 - nVidia = Nintendo Switch.

nVidia tried to play it off like they didn't care about losing XBone and PS4, but at the end of the day, those were sizable losses. Even if the margins are small, when you sell millions of chips, it adds up.

I also find the people saying AMD isn't competing in the GPU market is laughable. True, they didn't compete with the 1080ti, but they had an answer to every other card, even forcing nVidia to make another card to compete(1070ti). The only deficiency AMD had was somewhat higher power usage and no answer to the 1080ti. They won most segments in price/performance until the etherium boom.

Does AMD need to do better, surely, but they are competitive in the mainstream, where most cards are sold. I'm hoping Navi has something, but if delayed, could be very late to the game.