Info Found an old hardware price sheet from ?? (2001 ??) You won't believe it. The CPU prices especially !

Markfw

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So, first, looking here: https://www.inflationtool.com/us-dollar/2001-to-present-value

If something cost $100 then, it would be $147 today Now for the prices (I don't want to scan the image, in case thats not legal). These are from a local PC parts place that in its era was very inexpensive.

Video
ATI Radeon 7500 64 meg w/tv $147 or now $216
ASUS 8200 T5 Deluxe 64 meg $415 or $610 today

CDROM
ASUS 52x IDE $39 today $57.33

Motherboard

Abit KR7A raid socket A $186 or today... $372
ASUS P4T-E socket 478 $177 or today .... $354

CPU's
AMD K7 950 Tbird $70 or today, $103
AMD XP1900 $286 or today.... $420

Intel P4-2000 $527... or today $775 !!!!!

Memory
512 meg PC133 $69 or today...$101.

And you guys think the new AMD CPUs are expensive ?????

Hard drives
Maxtor 40 gig $91 or today ... $134

Monitor

19 inch CRT $334 today... $491
15 in LCD flat panel $450 ... today $662 !!

I estimated the year looking at the release date of the xp1900 Nov 2001.

Edit: found it, ad date 12/07/2001

If you want some other item let me know, but I don't have time to convert 200-300 prices.
 
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reb0rn

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Dec 31, 2009
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then unit sold was ~5% of they sell now, so yeah CPU and most in HW is overpriced, the reason most gamers are moving to consoles

and at same time I can say coca cola and 100gr chocolate then was cheaper then now, so you inflation do not compute

and I KNOW mine first PC was 1800 dem USED 486dx geeez but that do not mean they are cheap now
chines sound blaster clones where 100dem, 2x CDrom was 200+, first CDRW i think was 3000+ dem but who cares
 
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VirtualLarry

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And you guys think the new AMD CPUs are expensive ?????
This was discussed a few years back on here. Anyways, you're not also taking into account the Total Market Size for CPUs, in terms of Unit Sales Per Quarter / Year.

As the Market grows in terms of unit sales, the cost per CPU for the R&D expended on it, decreases as a percentage. Thus, their retail cost can also decrease, and still maintain similar gross margins.

It's the same reason that Nvidia card's prices are going up, the "total attach rate" (Total Unit Sales) of discrete GPUs is going down. (And the R&D still needs to be paid for.)

You're kind of right, though, adjusted for inflation, today's prices on CPUs are actually pretty fair. (thank God for competition.)
 
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Markfw

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This was discussed a few years back on here. Anyways, you're not also taking into account the Total Market Size for CPUs, in terms of Unit Sales Per Quarter / Year.

As the Market grows in terms of unit sales, the cost per CPU for the R&D expended on it, decreases as a percentage. Thus, their retail cost can also decrease, and still maintain similar gross margins.

It's the same reason that Nvidia card's prices are going up, the "total attach rate" (Total Unit Sales) of discrete GPUs is going down. (And the R&D still needs to be paid for.)

You're kind of right, though, adjusted for inflation, today's prices on CPUs are actually pretty fair. (thank God for competition.)
Don't faint when I say this, but I really hope Intel comes back into the picture before too long, to keep prices in check. I would like for AMD to get 40-50% market share to make real competition, but I doubt it will happen before Intel makes a comeback.
 

VirtualLarry

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Don't faint when I say this, but I really hope Intel comes back into the picture before too long, to keep prices in check.
That's one reason why I "threw Intel a bone", and bought an ASRock H470-ITX/ac mobo and a Pentium G6400 (2C/4T, 4.0Ghz). It also has 2.5Gbit ethernet AND 1GbE, and was only $110 on sale. Two top-mounted NVMe slots too, which is practically unheard of for an ITX board.
 

Markfw

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And this is my take... back then Intel was JUST a little ahead, but AMD was way cheaper. Then Athlon 64 came out, and it was all over for me, AMD. Then Conroe came out, and again it was all over, Intel... Then Ryzen came out and it was back to AMD... Am I bipolar ? No, I just go for whats best at the time. I wish some people would recognize that.
 

Markfw

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Years ago, or was it decades? I bought a 10 megabyte hard drive for my Apple ][e. It was a great deal at $1500.
Well, I was trying to give a reference.

In 1985 I bought a "Leading edge" PC, 4.77 mhz 8088 processor. It was $1500. It had 512k (notice kilobytes) ram, a floppy drive and a monochrome display card and 13 inch monochrome monitor.
So in the next couple of years I upgraded to a "hard drive" that was 5 meg. WOW And then a CGA display card and monitor. WOW . Then another few years and VGA ! That was about $1000 for the card and the monitor.
 

scannall

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Well, I was trying to give a reference.

In 1985 I bought a "Leading edge" PC, 4.77 mhz 8088 processor. It was $1500. It had 512k (notice kilobytes) ram, a floppy drive and a monochrome display card and 13 inch monochrome monitor.
So in the next couple of years I upgraded to a "hard drive" that was 5 meg. WOW And then a CGA display card and monitor. WOW . Then another few years and VGA ! That was about $1000 for the card and the monitor.
Hmm, 1985. RAM then was running $1000 a meg, so that was a decent deal. I was maintaining Cromemco CAD/CAM and CNC computers at the time, with the 8 inch floppies. Upgrading to hard drives was a huge difference.
 

Doug S

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When I was a kid I remember talking my dad into buying two 16K cards for our Atari 800. Pretty sure they were $129.99 each, or almost a penny per byte! :eek:
 

Markfw

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Hmm, 1985. RAM then was running $1000 a meg, so that was a decent deal. I was maintaining Cromemco CAD/CAM and CNC computers at the time, with the 8 inch floppies. Upgrading to hard drives was a huge difference.
My first IT job was programming in 4051/4052 basic in 1981 (Tektronix) and we had 8 inch floppies that I think held 512k instead of the tape drive at 300k. The 10 meg hard drives were relegated to the CAD workstations, and I think they were like $10,000 for 10 meg.
 

WilliamM2

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If something cost $100 then, it would be $147 today Now for the prices (I don't want to scan the image, in case thats not legal). These are from a local PC parts place that in its era was very inexpensive.

Electronics get cheaper to produce over time, so inflation doesn't really apply.

An example would be a microwave oven. $3000 when first introduced in the 50's ($24000 in today's dollars), $500 when my parents got their first one in the 70's. Now you can get more powerful models for less that $100.

Or the transistor radio. In the 50's they were $50, equivalent to $475 today. There thousands of other examples.

I remember my first Walkman, I paid almost $300 in 1979. They were eventually less than $20.
 

arandomguy

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The AMD XP1900 was the flagship of that year from AMD. It was significantly cheaper and faster than the flagship of the preceding year, the entire line was cheaper and faster.

If this is a commentary on Zen 3 pricing then if the same strategy was applied back then it would've launched at over $1000 then dollars (comparing against the Thunderbird 1.1ghz in 2000).

It also launched after the rest of the line. The much better value CPUs were already available, as opposed to being held back in favour of higher margin parts. The cheapest and best value XP 1500 was only $130 at launch and was faster than the previous generation flagship. If we applied that structure to today it would be something like the bottom Zen 3 part being a 12c/24t that is faster than the 3950X at something like $400 relative to the 5950X.
 
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Thunder 57

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I remember a magazine where you could order parts in the early/mid 90's. Memory in particular was crazy expensive. Thousands of dollars for mere megabytes. Wish I still had one of those for posterity.
 

Pohemi

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I think it was 2002 when I was all over throwing Athlon XP Mobile chips (Barton core) into Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe boards and OCing the hell out of them. Yay for unlocked multis.
Then the first AMD64 chips came out, but initially the nForce3 chipsets were buggy and unstable. I think there were memory controller issues if I remember right.
Can't recall what I was paying for the Athlon XP M 2500 that I loved so much at the time, but I do know I shelled out $600 for the brand new BFG Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP card. I sure thought it somewhat ridiculous at the time, but looking at $1500 for the flagship GPUs these days is definitely worse.
 

Markfw

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May 16, 2002
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Well, I was trying to give a reference.

In 1985 I bought a "Leading edge" PC, 4.77 mhz 8088 processor. It was $1500. It had 512k (notice kilobytes) ram, a floppy drive and a monochrome display card and 13 inch monochrome monitor.
So in the next couple of years I upgraded to a "hard drive" that was 5 meg. WOW And then a CGA display card and monitor. WOW . Then another few years and VGA ! That was about $1000 for the card and the monitor.
I forgot to add... I added/replaced the CPU with a "vic 20" I think it was, that ran at 7.16 mhz. Anybody remember those ? It fit in the 8088 processor socket.

Edit: I just googled it. It was an NEC V20, and ran at 6,8 or 10 mhz. Not sure which mine was.
 
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beginner99

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And you guys think the new AMD CPUs are expensive ?????

I made the same point before in a smiliar thread. The highest priced consumer CPUs in 2001 were the exact same CPUs that went into servers. So the best CPUs available at that time. So comparing apples to apples we would have to take the >$3500 64-core threadripper into account at least partially as well.

Partially because we have hit dminishing returns and while in 2001 the average user profited of this best CPU, the average user has no real benefit of a 64-core CPU. eg. the market is completely different and making these direct comparison is difficult. Still if you want the best fo the best, you pay more today than in 2001.
 

Shmee

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I remember the first Athlon 64 X2 CPUs on socket 939. Pretty impressive at the time. As for somewhat older Intel builds, I am personally partial to picking up a Xeon pull these days as an upgrade for an existing X58, X79 or X99 build.
 

Pohemi

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"Our thoughts and deepest sympathies go out to the American Nation and all those who have suffered loss in the recent tragedies."

It caught my eye immediately, but took a second to register that it was a part of the archived page... jeebus that makes me feel old(er).
In some ways it still feels like it happened yesterday, and in others...a lifetime ago.
 
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killster1

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of course remember how much you could do on your computer back then? how loading a photo was like a slow process you got to see the top of the head, then the eyes then the shoulders then the..... now days computers are less useful since you can do almost everything on your phone / tablet, sorta like a digital camera, not so useful anymore unless you pay 600+$ and like to carry around a bulky item (not exactly pocketable)

I feel like cpu's are still overpriced. Opteron 165/ barton mobile chip in a desktop where great deals.
 
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