GPU prices aren’t actually that expensive – no, really
There I was, searching RTX 4080 Super Reviews, and I wonder what in the world has happened when a supposedly cheaper GPU refresh still costs $1,000. Then a simple thought struck me: the performance baselines of graphics cards are what they are today a lot of better than before.
I started thinking about my very first graphics card, the 2008 Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT, and how I prayed it would hit 60fps at 1080p on high settings. And today? Today I believe a new GPU should get me least 100 fps at 1440p on maximum settings. Right or what?
Well, maybe not justified. Maybe today we can make so much better technology at such low production costs that we all actually deserve a share of the profits that Moore’s Law offers us. Anyway, these thoughts sent me down a research rabbit hole, and I was a little surprised by what I discovered.
Call me a glutton when it comes to clickbait headlines, but this one is true: GPU prices are no more expensive than they used to be. Do not you believe me? I have the data to prove it.
GPUs from the 1990s to the present
The pre-40 series GPUs I compared were all popular high-end cards of their time. Here’s a quick summary:
- The Voodoo2 enabled 800×600 gaming and often ran in SLI.
- The 9700 Pro with R300 GPU marked the beginning of affordable 2000s-era gaming.
- The 8800 GTX oversaw the Xbox 360 (and Crysis) era of high-fidelity 1080p gaming.
- The R9 290 and GTX 980 oversaw the Xbox One era of gaming with even higher fidelity.
And the rest is history… or, well, more recent history.
I focused mainly on Nvidia cards because they bore the brunt of complaints about GPUs being too expensive. Likewise, I decided to leave out the recent 40 series Super cards, as the non-Super cards bore the brunt of these complaints.
| Header cell – Column 0 | Date of publication | Price upon release | Price (inflation adjusted) | Clock speed | Memory |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3dfx Voodoo2 | 1998 | $299 | $566 | 90MHz | 12 MB EDO |
| ATI 9700 Pro | 2002 | $399 | $684 | 325MHz | 128 MB DDR memory |
| Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX | 2006 | $599 | $916.38 | 576 MHz core / 1350 MHz shader | 768MB GDDR3 |
| AMD Radeon R9 290 | 2013 | $399 | $528.25 | 947MHz | 4GB GDDR5 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX980 | 2014 | $549 | $715.23 | 1216MHz | 4GB GDDR5 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 | 2016 | $599 | $769.73 | 1733MHz | 8GB GDDR5X |
| Nvidia GeForce RTX3080 | 2020 | $699 | $832.98 | 1710MHz | 10GB GDDR6X |
| Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 | 2022 | $1,199 | $1,263.58 | 2505MHz | 16GB GDDR6X |
| Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti | 2023 | $799 | $808.74 | 2610MHz | 12GB GDDR6X |
Graphics cards are cheaper than they used to be
The first thing to look at – and this is where many people start and end their analysis – is the GPU price. We can take into account the prices of all these GPUs at the time of release, and then price them taking inflation into account.
At first glance, this doesn’t look too good for today’s GPUs. But just compare the 8800 GTX from 2006 and the RTX 4070 Ti from 2023. If we factor in inflation, we can see that the 4070 Ti actually launched for less than the 8800 GTX – so much for the “expensive” 40 series!
When we look at performance, we see a clear improvement over time.
Framerates listed are for games that looked nice but weren’t Crysis-level demanding when each GPU launched.
We’re actually getting a better deal than we have at almost any point in the last 25 years.
For example, I used Battlefield 4 benchmark data for the GTX 980 (here) And Red Dead Redemption 2 benchmark data for the RTX 4080 (here). This way we get a more accurate picture of how these GPUs performed in their own time.
Where we really see the proof in the pudding, however, is when we look at the cost per frame for these GPUs when adjusting for inflation. If we ask, “How much did we spend on each frame for each of these GPUs, if we translate that to today’s prices?” we see how soft we have it today.
Instead of GPUs being expensive these days, when we look at the actual performance we get for our dollar, we see that we’re actually getting a better deal than we have at just about any point in the last 25 years..
And just to make it clear, we see an even clearer image for 1440p.
So far from being more expensive, GPUs seem pretty damned cheap compared to those of yesteryear. That is, provided we don’t conveniently ignore all the massive performance gains we’ve achieved with successive GPU generations.
These performance improvements cannot be underestimated and should not be ignored when looking at current GPU prices. Gone are the days when the holy grail was 60fps at 1080p. Now the holy grail is something like 100+ fps at 1440p. And we haven’t even talked about DLSS yet.
We should pay a little more for all that… But it turns out we don’t even pay that much for it.
Again, just compare the 8800 GTX to the 4070 Ti. For less money (taking inflation into account) than the 8800 GTX, today we get almost twice as much performance in demanding games as what the 8800 GTX achieved in the relatively demanding games of its time.
Why all the fuss?
Despite all of the above, there’s certainly something discouraging about high-end GPU prices hovering around (or even north of) $1,000. But that’s only because we view today’s high-end GPUs as equivalent to those of yesteryear, and we shouldn’t.
It makes much more sense to compare today’s mid-range cards to high-end cards from the 2000s and 2010s. It’s not like we can’t get cheaper cards these days that will give us the relative performance we used to have, or even better.
None of this even factors into the graphical improvements we’ve come to expect today. To compare Far Cry6 to the original Far cryand we can see how far we’ve come in terms of graphics fidelity.
And all this at a lower cost than ever before. This is why Moore’s Law arguments don’t work: we’re not comparing apples to apples here. Not only performance, but also graphical reliability has been improved exponentially.
I’m grateful for the current GPU prices
I started this by discussing my first graphics card, the 9600 GT. That GPU launched in 2008 for $179, which, in today’s terms, is $256.41. You can buy one RTX3060 for that, which nowadays delivers around 60 fps in many demanding titles (even at 1440p, in slightly less demanding games). In contrast, I remember the 9600 GT struggling to hit 60fps at 1080p on standard titles like Call of Duty 4.
Throw in another $60, and you can get one RTX3060Ti – my current GPU. Today I play games that look 10x better than the games I used to play on my 9600 GT, and I get much higher frame rates than ever before.
And what if we want more than that? Well, the options are there, with the best 1440p graphics cards like the RTX4070 Great or RX 7900 GR. We now see that these cards cost less than the very best graphics cards of the past.
And if even that isn’t enough for us, the best 4K graphics cards offer a new class of high-end cards that go far beyond anything we could have dreamed of a decade ago. And luckily, we don’t have to pay much more than we did back then to use one.