NV20 : Isn't it expensive?

[JackBurton]

OK, if nVidia wants to be a bunch of funny guys, I'll keep my Voodoo5 5500 for my PC games and get me a PS2 AND XBox for that kind of money! I ain't paying $400+ for a damn video card! They can charge $2000 for one, but it will be all the same if it were $400 because I ain't buying it! This just pisses me off and I freakin' knew they were going to do this! Kill the competition and the prices will soar! :|

 

[Blackhawk2]

I remember an ATI guy saying something about 1 less competitor having no effect on prices...lol.

 

[JellyBaby]

nvidia is becoming like Intel. With Intel's CPU's, your best bet is to buy a notch or two down from the fastest processor available. That's the "best bang for the buck" zone. AMD forced Intel to greatly reduce the price premiums on its top processors and that made things much better for us.

Now nvidia's pricing their top-of-the-line cards so high, we might just have to accept the fact that we need to buy a notch down from the best.

dougjnn, your scenario could pan out but I fear the price reductions won't be very fast now that nvidia can afford to keep prices quite high.

 

[Cosmic_Horror]

if tehre isn't a card that can compete with the NV20 then it will be priced above other nvidia cards. Generally other cards should fall a bit and the NV20 will be the price of the previous fastest card, (basically thwe price of the fastest card should remain about the same and all other older cards should come down in price).

The truth is that there will be people out there that will pay $500+ for a top of the line video card.
i think i will hold on to my TNT(1) just a little while longer

 

[Stephen24]

Paying $300 for a video card is already WAY to much when you consider you can get a whole fing console for that price. If nVidia hikes the prices like they have been doing consistantly for the past 2 years then I will stop playing PC games and go back to consoles.

 

[JellyBaby]

<< If nVidia hikes the prices like they have been doing consistantly for the past 2 years then I will stop playing PC games and go back to consoles. >>

The only problem with this statement is that you can get a cheap card from nvidia. Right now that's an MX or 32 MB GTS. As long as nvidia sells an entire product line, they can get away with the new $500+ high-end card. I'll still rib 'em though.

 

[techg7]

$300 geforce2 gts pro card = bad plan?

im getting sick of my tnt2 ultra...

oh and by the way i remember paying a good deal of money for that tnt2 ultra when it came out, &quot;back in the day&quot;. its quite clear how the prices of cards decline, and how quickly. when a new generation of gpu's come out, you should see at least some decline in the price of the current cards, and cards like mine become obsolete.

should i buy now or wait? or should i not buy one at all?

 

[dougjnn]

What you should buy now is either a eVga GF2 w/TV out for 169 (check pricewatch), or a Radeon 64 meg Video In/Out for $158 at buy.com after 30 off 150 call in coupon, where you say you are a business of some sort.

I'm leaning towards the latter.

You see nv20 is coming out in 1-2 months. But you will be fixed up. And you can wait for the 9 months from now, or even a year, to upgrade to some version of that, when it has come down into the same price range. Games won' really use its features until the late fall anyway. The X-box effect.

 

[Cherrypez]

I won't spend more than $150 for a videocard ever again.

I got my Geforce2-GTS for $150.

If you wait a few months the NV20 will be under $150. About the time they come out with a NV20 ultra or whatever.

Who needs an Ultra or a NV20 when I already get over 100fps in Q3? I gotta draw the line somewhere.

 

[nippyjun]

I'm guessing that the first ones will come out at $450 but within a month as more and more companies make their own version of the card it will quickly be under $400. Meanwhile the Geforce 2 ultra will drop under $300.

 

[Ethernet]

NEVER buy a card as soon as it comes out and pay full price - thats just silly. Wait for the NV25/30 to come out, then buy an NV20, they will be cheap by then. The previous generation card will run the applications and games currently available just as well as the new cards, thats why you WAIT for the next product cycle.

I just now bought a GeForce DDR, and soon as the NV20 is out I'll pay $100 for my GF2 Ultra just like I did my GF DDR. If your paying more than $125 dollars for your video card - YOUR SILLY! My GF DDR runs Quake III high quality @ 90 FPS - whats to complain about?

 

[bigshooter]

[rant]Why is everyone bashing NVIDIA for having one high price vid card. First, even with 128megs DDR, I don't think that the NV20 will cost $700. Maybe $500-$550 like people are suggesting. That is for high end consumer. Then you will have steps down, 64 megs, maybe 32 megs, they might also have different processor grades like the Ultra has faster core than a regular gts. Then they might also come out with an NV20 MX, or maybe just lower prices on high end GTS cards and suggest them for the lower end for a while. Why do people bash NVIDIA for charging a lot for a high end product, as well as having lower priced lower featured products. You can get a Mustang GT for somewhere in the low $20's, but if you want to shell out the money you can get a Cobra R for $45,000-$50,000. Those prices may not be that accurate but it illustrates the point. You can get a GT which is pretty fast in it's own right, but if you want the absolute fastest of that particular line, you go and get the Cobra for twice as much money. [/rant]

 

[Rectalfier]

Holy Cow, Who actually needs one of these? Who even needs a Geforce2 Ultra? They must be charging outrageous prices because of the very few sales they will get up there. I really hope ATI or some other company out of the blue can come out with a competitive product, that would really slap them in the face.

 

[dougjnn]

Ethernet --

I'm with you. My thing is I won't may more than about $175 for a video card, rather than your $125, but it's the same idea.

I'm at about the same limit for the processor. It is really stupid to be at the bleeding edge of the performance curve. It is so much cheaper a couple of steps back. Vastly better price/performance.

In CPU's you can often overclock up to the the top level as well, when you buy intelligently a couple of steps back.

Bragging rights are very expensive.

 

[Ethernet]

<< Bragging rights are very expensive. >>



You said it man

 

[ahfung]

How much was a P3-1GHz last year?

Why no one ever bitches about the insane price of top of line CPU? Just the core (like Radeon or GeForce) alone it is as complex as a Coppermine/Athlon and isn't any cheaper to maunfuacture. And it comes with ultra fast DDR RAM on a big 128 bit PCB!

Remember, Intel is more evil.

 

[tboo]

I wonder what price the Radeon 2 will debut at?

 

[dougjnn]

My basic theory is replace the video card and the cpu each once a year and pay about $175 for each. Sell the old ones for about $100 (cause they aren't near crippled yet, just lower performance). So you're net out $150, call it $165 with shipping.

Replace the mobo every two years for about $150, and sell for about $75 (it's two years old remember). Memory on a two or three year time schedule.

Other stuff like drives should be on a three year schedule. Monitors and printers are really on a long schedule. There it makes sense to reach a bit. Because it won't become obsolete fast, just cheaper. So you can make it last long. I bought my reconditioned 20&quot; monitor 2.5 years ago. It's good for another 2.5 it seems to me.

I just bought a new case. I expect to keep it for at least 5 years. That's part of why I got a 400W power supply. Antec 1040b Professional. A long term beauty. Actually, I bet I keep this case 10 or more years. It may not stay my leading edge case, if the mobo form factor changes so that the out connects don't work any more (but it has a lot of flexibility there). But I bet I keep it as a server case even if that happens for years and years and years.

 

[Ethernet]

dougjnn we think so much alive it's scary hehe thats EXACTLY what I do. Sure right now I'm only riding around on an Athlon 800 but in a few months when the Tbird 1.3's and 1.5's hit the market then I'm upgrade to a 1.1 T-bird.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Me miss 3dfx. *runs into the bushes and cries*

 

[JimboG]

I never buy any piece of technology when its brand new anyways(Living off a college budget). I just recently bought a geforce 2 32 mb for a 127 shipped (staples deal a month ago). I plan to do the same with the NV20 in a couple years when its time for an upgrade.

-Jim

 

[dougjnn]

You should be able to get the nv20 for about that a year from now -- not a couple. Maybe $150. Betcha.

It'll be worth it by then because a lot of games will be written with dramatically more Toy Story like life like look written for it by then. X-Box mass market effect.

 

[Blackhawk2]

<<How much was a P3-1GHz last year?
Why no one ever bitches about the insane price of top of line CPU?...>>

Easy, Nvidia doesn't produce 5 to 8 speed grades of graphics chips, and its easier to overclock an Intel cpu than a Nvidia GPU.

When there is only one choice, who are you going to turn to? ATI? They only have one speed grade as well

 

[BenSkywalker]

&quot;Easy, Nvidia doesn't produce 5 to 8 speed grades of graphics chips&quot;

Well, if we look at board level differences(listed ~in order of gaming performance, not price)-

GeForce2 Ultra
GeForce2 Pro
Quadro2 Pro
GeForce2 GTS 64MB
GeForce2 GTS 32MB
Quadro
GeForceDDR 64MB
GeForceDDR 32MB
Quadro2 MX
GeForce2 MX 32MB
GeForce2 MX 16MB
GeForceSDR 16MB

Prices ranging from ~$80 to ~$800 right now. If they launch a 128MB NV20 for $700 or more it wouldn't suprprise me at all, Quadro3 anyone?? More then likely the board would sell at twice that amount, the boost in performance, the increased feature support and 128MB on board RAM add up to what should be a Wildcat/FireGL killer. Not every card is aimed at casual gamers

 

[ElFenix]

i figure board makers will stop making GF2Us since they use the same ram as the NV20. NV20 will be a higher margin product for the board makers, so why bother using expensive ram with the lower margin NV16 (GF2U)? i doubt that an &quot;MX&quot; version of the geforce3 will come out, people knew of the NV11 (MX) back when NV15 (GF2) came out. it was supposed to be a low power version of the NV10 for notebook use, but wasn't low power enough, so they retired the SDR geforce and gave us the geforce2 MX to capitalize on the latest product's name. there is no chip like that listed in nvidia's drivers, AFAIK.

as for NV20 pricing... the GF2U is $450+ or whatever, that being not much for the board, about $50 for the chip, and the rest for the RAM and markup by distriubutors and retailers. the NV20 uses the same ram and the chip will cost a lot more (its physically huge and nvidia is guinea-pigging the .15u fab). so its easy to see that a 64 meg card will cost more than a gf2u card would. double the ram could easily cost another $200 once distributors and retailers get their percentages. if $200 is the price of 64 megs, then $100 is the price for 32 and that still works out to $400 given that the above assumptions are correct. nvidia is going to get bitten in the ass for this kind of pushing, too bad it didn't happen last year or 3dfx might still be around.

ben - the 64 meg geforce ddr was slower than the 32 meg because it used SDRAM instead of SGRAM.