Hey guys, Just pondering. I recall purchasing my first 3d Accelerator Card from Fry's. It was a Best Data arcadeFX add on card for $60 or so. The $20 Mail in Rebate never came tho. I recall the best 3D cards at that time were add ons, as the videos that were 2D/3D were not as good. I played Quake 1 with that card and I was wow'd. LOL. My next card was a 3DFX Voodoo3 AGP. I think i paid about $80 for a used one on ebay. My third card was a Visiontek Geforce 3. I paid $125 for used one on ebay. What a huge performance boost that was. LOL. Now finally, i bought an ATI 9800 Pro about 1.5 years ago, and paid $200 for a brand new one. At that time, i recall that there was only one card that was faster, and it was the 9800xt card. Now is it me, or are video cards becoming more and more expensive? Or am I just moving closer and closer to the top of the line at that given time? This hobby is getting to be too expensive for me. Seems like i just bought this 9800 pro, and its quickly becoming out dated. I could barely run doom 3 at playable frames, and i just ran the COD2 demo, and it is playable at 800x600 with dynamic lighting off. I fear that FEAR would not run at rates I can happily play with. I think i can barely get $100 for this card on ebay...maybe less. Sigh. expensive hobby.
Its probably not just video cards, i wouldnt be surprised if this trend was happening in every aspect of every market around the world. Im not exactly the best person in the world to hazard a guess as to why this is happening, but you most certainly are right, it is a very expensive habbit. Now that youve mentioned Fear, im gonna go play the demo again. CoD 2 aswell.
Well, you bought 2 of your cards on ebay used, so that really messes up the prices. Cards were $500 for a while in the geforce 2 and 3 days when Nvidia had no competition, but later dropped back down to $400 for the geforce4, then back up to 500 for fx, 6 and 7 are pretty much the same price since the 7800GTX is way below the MSRP. Before the geforce2 though, I think cards were much cheaper.
Lucky the guys with money for this expensive hobby.. for me I'll have to stick with my GF4 till it dies or runs like crap on most games, I'm glad I'm still able to play many games with it, newer GFX cards are very expensive and they release them way too soon.
Yeah, it is an expensive hobby. I splashed on out this GT a while back, and it has got to last me.. thing is, my proc is displaying some severe "dying' related symptoms.. SNDS? Who knows, I just hope it doesn't crap out on me.
wow, are you serious? $500 for Geforce 2. I guess i just never even consider those when i was poor in college. And all i needed was to something to play Starcraft, and HL1. Now im just waiting for Windows Vista to come out, and CPU prices for A64 3700 or even 4000+ prices to drop more. And either 7800GTX or X1600 to be in the $200 range.
hey godzilla u live in santa clara too! around here there are places called surplus stores where they sell electronics for dirt cheap. look in the newspaper for their ads. i got my mobo and case there and they have never failed me. what part of santa clara do u live in?
i know a Surplus Computers. They have some good prices, but others are not or just really old. Do you know any other good surplus stores? I live by Lawrence and El Camino Real.
well when the Geforce 4, mx440 64mb was one of best there was i only paid £80 new. few years ago now.
The MX440 was never one of the best, even when compared to the GeForce 3 Ti 200. It's actually not that expensive for me. I started out with a 5900 Ultra, sold that for at least $350, I want to say $400 but that doesn't sound right to me. I bought a 6800GT with that for $380. Sold my 6800 GT @ Ultra about a month ago for $322.50 shipped and just purchased a PNY 7800 GTX for $400 shipped. You just have to know how to sell stuff for the most money. I actually just sold my old motherboard, the guy I had originally sold it to never paid and I gave up on him Saturday. Bought it for $42 shipped and just sold it for $66.50 shipped. Sold some Corsair 3200LL RAM I had for $170 shipped and I bought it for around $120 or so. With that I bought some PC4000 RAM for $130 or so, both 2x512MB. I seem to make money off my upgrades, cept my latest GPU purchase. Might end up going back down to a 7800 GT since this 7800 GTX seems to be messed up. Maybe I'm just a good salesperson?
I remember watching the 9700 non-pro bounce around $200, the 9800 rpo was more like $300-$400 I think, and there was the XT as well ($500?). You can get a 6800 GT 256 MB for about $275 now, and that could last you for a year. A 6600 GT PCI-e was about $150 at release, and would have lasted you a year easy if you lay off the AA+AF. But I do remember buying a TNT2 Ultra for $150 or so, and that was before the release of the geforce so I guess it was the best around. Add a little for inflation and factor in that some time had passed since release, still was quite a bit cheaper than any ultra now. Though of course back then your choices were TNT or TNT Ultra, now there are about a zillion cards to choose from. So I think it may be partly more expensive, but also partly there is a much larger stratefication of products, which is necessary to have atronomical high-end prices for the top unit.
while i agree things are getting more expensive, i think you need to take a good look at your own comparison on the one hand you talk about getting a card long ago, but did you get it at the release? or was it just a good "mainstream" card at the time? today when you check for GFX prices most people check the top of the line and say "wow 500 bucks for a GFX card, i only payed 200 for my GF4" while today a 6800 might very well be the modern equivalent of the GF4 you once bought for 200 now im not saying prices havent risen, im just saying you got to compare apples with apples, aka high end card to high end card at launch time ive read some crazy stuff about 450 mhz p2 cpu's costing over 1000 bucks.... crazy isnt it?
wow u live really close to me godzilla. i live in campbell on hamilton. im not really sure about the surplus stores. the one i go 2 closed down a while back. just check the newspaper.
i bought my damn Built by ATi 9800Pro 128mb card to 349.99Can now the All-In-Wonder ATi 9800Pro 128mb is 129.99Can F**K!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i got my new X700Pro and im tired of it its kinda F**KING TIRING ME...... i WANT A FREAKING CARD LIKE THE BFG 7800GTX AND END THIS SH*T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DONT U GUYS THINK THIS??????? WE SHOULD PROTEST FOR THE PRICE TO DROP THIS IS SO OUTRAGEOUS!!!! lol
you shouldnt shout like that, some people might take offense, or get pissed off, if that person is a mod you might be in trouble but seriously, think over these two things: 1. if you dont want to spend that amount of money, then dont, i have found i dont need to be on the bleeding edge of technology, my current rig serves me well, and even though i was originally planning on upgrading to a amd 64 3400 or something, i wont do that anytime soon, im quite content with the performance, and this config will last me a good year i think untill i will start thinking of upgrading again 2. why the hell buy a x700pro over a 9800pro? it can hardly be called an improvement, certainly not worth the money, and i hope you didnt mean you got the AIW 9800pro in between the 9800pro and the x700 too? you really should calm down and start thinking of how to spend your money, the x700 was not a real upgrade, so thats money down the drain, which you could have put towards a better card...
The backspace key is in the top right of the alphanumeric area of your keyboard. The delete key is about and inch down/right of that. The capslock keys is about 1/4" to the left of your "A" key. Use them both well.
Well, I remember back in 2000 to 2001, you could get a good midrange card for $150 or less. The midrange segment has gone up in price the most with respect to the performance difference with the top-end. In 2002, when the Geforce 4 came out, a Ti4600 retailed for $400 and the Ti4200 for $200. While the Ti4200 was only half the price of the Ti4600, it's performance was only 20 percent slower at worst. Now today's mid range cards are more like half the speed of the top-end models, mainly because DirectX9 circuitry is so expensive to produce. So the engineers have to figure out a way to castrate the new top-end models and sell them as midrange (fewer transistors, fewer pipelines, 128-bit memory, etc.) And also, keep in mind, NVidia didn't have SLI back in 2002. Edit: btw, r0k0 reminded me of this picture here. Heh heh.
