Would You Pay $600 for a Graphics Card?

Tom Mainelli, PC World

For years, Tom Mainelli drove a hail-damaged Mercury Monarch called "Old Blue" he bought for $800 as a teenager. Drop Tom a line.

Building or buying a top-of-the-line desktop computer has never been cheap. While prices for budget PCs seem to creep continuously lower (Dell advertises a $299 system, for crying out loud), they appear to be headed ever higher for top-performance models, with no upper limit in sight.

My first two cars cost less than $1200, total.

NVidia's move irritated some of my tech-savvy friends, a few of whom seem to think that access to the fastest gear on the planet is an inalienable geek right. One proclaimed, "They've priced it right out of the range of their enthusiast fans." Another stated simply, "Nobody will buy that." And a third mumbled something along the lines of "That's just not right."

I'm sorry, guys, but that's a bunch of garbage. First, we're not talking about a company gouging prices for penicillin--we're talking about a company selling a graphics card. Second, I don't think even true enthusiasts are crazy enough to run out and buy every new chip that NVidia--or Advanced Micro Devices, ATI Technologies, or Intel--launches. (I'll get back to this point in a minute.) Third, somebody must be buying these high-end parts: If nobody did, then the companies would stop pushing their price tags skyward with each successive product introduction.

In NVidia's case, pricing the 7800 GTX at $600 looks like a win-win to me. As PC World tests show, the chip offers scorching performance--noticeably better than the company's previous flagship product, the 6800 Ultra, which is still a viable high-end product. And if you start at $600, and street prices invariably fall (as they already have), people think they're getting a deal when they pay a mere $500 for the product.

Finally, the company's chief competitor, ATI, seems to be having some trouble with its next big chip (code-named R520). Why shouldn't NVidia enjoy being the uncontested top dog? I don't blame NVidia or its partners for charging the highest price they can get for the fastest graphics card on the block.

Does that mean I'm going to run out and buy it? Nope!

Big Money for Bragging Rights

NVidia is hardly the first tech company to float an outrageously high price to see who bites. Sure, the graphics folks have led the way, thanks largely to the fact that their most vocal supporters--serious gamers--often seem to be the most willing to pay for every additional frame per second they can get. But graphics vendors aren't the only ones making money off deep-pocketed computer users bound and determined to have the fastest machine around.

Just about everybody who makes a piece or part of a PC has jumped on the bandwagon. I can remember the audible gasps from colleagues a few years back when Intel announced that its first P4 Extreme Edition processor would sell for about $925, or even when AMD launched its competing FX-51 chip with a price of $730. Apparently somebody bought those CPUs, as both companies recently launched high-end dual-core chips with prices in the $1000 range.

Memory makers charge a premium for sticks of high-performance RAM that are supposed to speed up your PC. Hard-drive vendor Western Digital continues to sell its pricey Raptor drive, popular despite its measly 74GB capacity thanks to its blinding 10,000 rotations-per-minute performance (compared to 7200 rpm for the average desktop drive). Intel even once offered a chip set born of specially binned, high-speed parts: the 875P with "Performance Acceleration Technology."

Oh sure, you can shake your head in disapproval at NVidia and its partners. And you can tsk-tsk AMD, Intel, and all the boutique PC vendors who sell systems carrying their $1000 CPUs. But as long somebody is buying--and apparently somebody is--then they're going to keep selling them. I would, wouldn't you?

Rich Folks, Not Enthusiasts

So who is buying these high-dollar parts? I contend it's not the enthusiast system builders. It's probably not even the obsessive PC gamers. Personally, I think these customers are people with more money then brains. Or--to be more charitable--folks who have more cash than they have time for research.

Sure, enthusiasts love to read about the 7800 GTX. They want to know how it performs in benchmarks; how it compares to NVidia's other chips; and how it stacks up against ATI's best GPU. But it's likely that few expect to actually own one. They're reading about the 7800 GTX because they want to know what to expect from the more-affordably priced chips that NVidia will inevitably roll out based on the same technology (like the new GeForce 7800 GT announced this week).

Enthusiasts love performance, but they also love getting the most for their money--and paying $600 for a graphics card hardly counts as a savvy buy. I would guess that very few enthusiasts ran out and bought cards based on NVidia's 6800 Ultra chip. But I'll bet tons of them bought cards using NVidia's 6600 GT, which landed in that magic spot where price and performance come together: It was so good it won a World Class Award this year. I suspect that most true enthusiasts buy their processors the same way--a few notches below the over-priced top.

So the next time ATI, AMD, Intel, NVidia, or another tech company rolls out its next big thing, don't get mad at them for charging outrageous prices. Rage instead against your rich buddy who ran out and dropped $600 on a graphics card just so he could squeeze a few extra frames per second out of his year-old copy of Doom III.

Then buy yourself a nice $200 card and get back to enjoying your PC.