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How Much Do Video Cards Really Cost?
by Alec Matias, Apr 13, 2005 9:48am PDTThe Inquirer has run two articles the past two days that broke down the costs of video cards by looking at their individual components. First they started with nVidia and their 5750 card. When the card was retailing for $199, its bill of materials ran around $99.40. They followed this up with a look at ATI's X600PRO PCIe card.
ATI is getting $59.00 dollars for the chip. This card uses eight memory chips clocked and priced at $3.90 per piece. This makes the total cost of memory to $31.20 for a whole pack of 128MB of 128 bit memory. The PCB (printed circuit board) in this case costs $15 and makes a total bill of materials (BOM) for the card at $105.20.
Comments
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If you think they're making money hand over fist because raw parts cost half the MSRP you need a reality check.
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Actually, we should all band together, do away with economics, and go all Star Trek.
RUSH IN A NEW ERA OF HAPPINESS, PLEASE!
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R&D costs a lot, folks. If you don't like it, don't buy it. These companies spend a lot of money pricing their high end stock. The yields are not as high as they are after six months of fab process qualification. Once the yields are up and the early adopters (read: high margin) picked up their unit, they drop the price ... and if they're smart, they have an even newer and better one to take the top end spot.
This is no different than any other market. Do you really think that Explorer costs Ford $40k to make? Even with high union wages the company still makes about $10k per vehicle. It's what businesses do -- they make money.
Vote with your dollar.
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What I don't agree with is companies charging $400+ for a card when months later, it will suddenly drop $150 knowingly sucking those people in that will buy their product.
I hate to say it but I believe video cards are the reason why people are switching to consoles. You can have a complete console for the price you're paying on a card yet having to buy other components for a PC based system.
I feel as though that if it doesn't change, the PC will go the way of the dinosaur extremely fast because of prices on such hardware along with developers flocking to consoles because of a change in marketing strategies.
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Cost of Materials is a drop in the water...
Cost of Labour, Overhead, General Running and Manufacturing costs are where all the big costs are.
$100 of materials? sells for a $400 Card?
overall it probably cost them about $370-$380 per unit after factoring in everything.
No, we are not getting Profit owned... as some people might think by looking at this incomplete article.
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Other nations, like game consoles, have regulated prices which are very attractive to a large audience of consumers. But the R&D needs to be done somewhere, and the US always foots the bill for that through much higher / unregulared pricing.
Video card companies get their profits and R&D budget from PC enthusiasts so the masses can enjoy the new technology.
I'm not saying this is right/wrong just pointing out the relationship.
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For instance, why does it cost me another $100 to get 256mb of RAM instead of 128mb?
Seems like it should be possible to just glut us out with memory, right?
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Also what about the R&D costs of the cards?
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So people saying "Aaar, they're making a 50% profit, this is ruining gaming!", just like people saying: "Arr, they'll selling 100$ shoes that costs them 5$, injustice!" just don't understand how it all works..
You're mad because you paid 400$ for something that's worth 150$ now? That 250$ was the price for being the first to have it and, welp, guess what, this is America, everybody's free to make a bad deal...
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Ill read more when I get home, because this really interests me
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