So, I had another discussion about GPU prices, and I just wanted to add a summary of what I think GPU prices should look like, if they followed previous trends or CPU prices in recent years. The GPU market in particular has had a lot of inflation as companies like nvidia kinda shifted away from gaming toward AI and datacenters, driving up the price of GPUs for normies like us.
I guess for the sake of argument I'll set the standard for $100 near the bottom end of being a 1060/580 tier card. It was midrange 6-8 years ago so I'm basically being generous. I think it's reasonable to expect such hardware to be around $100 these days, not $160. With that said, let's discuss the actual product stack.
RX 6400- $65
GTX 1650- $80
RX 6500- $100
RTX 3050 6 GB- $120
RTX 3050- $150
Arc A580- $150
RX 6600- $175
Arc A750- $175
RTX 3060- $190
RX 6650 XT- $200
Arc 770- $200
RX 7600- $220
Arc A770 16 GB- $230
RTX 4060- $230
RX 7600 XT- $250
RX 6700 XT- $260
RTX 4060 ti 8 GB- $300
RX 6800- $320
RTX 4060 ti 16 GB- $330
RX 7700 XT- $350
RX 6800 XT- $375
RX 7800 XT- $400
RTX 4070- $400
RX 6900/6950 XT- $400
Now, to be fair, I it could be argued I lowballed things somewhat on the higher end of that. I basically went all in with price/performance roughly and to be fair, GPUs never scaled perfectly with price/performance. You always had the deals under $200 kinda suck and the deals above $300 kind of decline in value as one goes up to 70 cards, 80 cards, etc.
Still, this is a good outline of what could have been and what makes sense. Right now the sub $200 market is trash. You got the RX 6600 at $180-200 at times but then the RX6500 XT is only like half as good and is like $160. Same with the 1650. The 6400 is $130. It's insulting. You lose so much performance just trying to save $40-60, it's insane. And honestly those kinds of low end cards are really the kinds of cards you'd historically expect at or under $100. 50 cards always sold for $100-150ish so seeing the 3050s where they are make sense. Having the last gen and lower end 60 cards near $200 while the higher end and newer ones near $300 makes sense to me. 70 style cards around $400 does make sense.
I guess if I were gonna complete the stack and go up from here:
RTX 4070 super- $450
RX 7900 GRE- $450
RTX 4070 ti- $500
RTX 4070 ti super- $550
RX 7900 - $550
RTX 4080- $600
RX 7900 XTX- $600
RTX 4090- $700
This roughly follows pascal pricing from 2016-2017. In a sane world this is what GPUs would cost these days. We're not in a sane world. And I know a lot of PC hardware nerds like to make excuses and defend multi billion dollar corporations' decisions to the point of not just licking boot, but deepthroating the whole shoe, but the real cause of the inflated prices is a market failure. When one company has 88% of market share, and the other company barely competes and merely matches the other on value, then don't be surprised when the market gets as broken as it does. As for intel, well they're barely relevant given they have one generation of cards that are super twitchy and experimental and not really fit for most consumers. They might prove to be a good competitor if they ever get mature drivers but until then, were mostly stuck with nvidia and amd.
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