Man... why is hardware so expensive nowadays?

[iamtrout]

I remember the good old days (at most five years ago) when the best bang for the buck CPU was around $150 and the best bang for the buck video card was around $150. Now the best bang for the buck CPU (Opty 165) is a whopping $300 and the video card is from $200-$350.

Eesh. What is a person supposed to do? I used to be able to significantly upgrade my rig for $150. Now it's more like $300... (actually more like $700 since I'm still on 754, IDE HDDs, AGP, and DDR... sigh... wtf.

 

[InlineFour]

inflation

 

[Maximilian]

I agree, it sucks. Cpu's doubling is ok though, 2x the price for 2x the cores

 

[iamtrout]

Originally posted by: Soviet
I agree, it sucks. Cpu's doubling is ok though, 2x the price for 2x the cores

But, but, 2x slower cores. It's not like we have dual 3000+ cores in each dual core

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: iamtrout

Originally posted by: Soviet
I agree, it sucks. Cpu's doubling is ok though, 2x the price for 2x the cores

But, but, 2x slower cores. It's not like we have dual 3000+ cores in each dual core

Optron 170's have dual 3000+ cores, 175 - 3200+, 180 - 3700+

Not as bad as it seems.

 

[boran]

Yeh, the good old days when a second hand 286 with 1 MB mem and a full height 20 MB HD costed only 2000 ? (and I'm not taking inflation into account, which would probably make it at least 500 more)

 

[mazeroth]

The reason for the higher prices is the people that buy the super expensive stuff. Five years ago a top of the line video card ran $300. Now it runs over $600. Why? Because video card makers started slowly upping the price and people kept buying, and buying, and buying. If no one would buy an X1900XTX for $600 then slowly video card makers would charge less and less for the product. Same goes for CPUs and everything else.

Take it from a marketing manager

 

[iamtrout]

Originally posted by: mazeroth
The reason for the higher prices is the people that buy the super expensive stuff. Five years ago a top of the line video card ran $300. Now it runs over $600. Why? Because video card makers started slowly upping the price and people kept buying, and buying, and buying. If no one would buy an X1900XTX for $600 then slowly video card makers would charge less and less for the product. Same goes for CPUs and everything else.

Take it from a marketing manager

I agree. I remember a few years back when my friends and I scoffed at people who bought hardware that JUST came out, like a top of the line CPU for $600 when the next level down was $400 and the one below that was $200. Something like an extra $400 for only a 200MHz difference, or less.

We called those people retards.

*sigh*

Where is all the money coming from? Isn't a large builder base still high-schoolers and college students? Back then we could barely even afford the best bang for the buck rigs, now everything's like double the price and high schoolers and college people are still getting these rigs...

 

[JDrake]

The 4800 is actually really cheap now compared to not even a month ago :Q

 

[MX2]

I remember when two sticks of basic ram cost me over $200 and a 15 inch LCD was $450

 

[corkyg]

Actually, "the good old days" had overall hardware a helluva lot more expensive that it is today. Laptops especially are now about half of what they were just 4 years ago. Complete systems are also cheaper. Hard drives are cheaper. The things most have cited are super performance gamers toys - and the cost there is relative to the performance desired. Mazeroth speaks the truth!

I remember paying over $900 for a 2X CD burner back about 1994. I remember paying that much for a flatbed SCSI scanner.

No, I find today's prices a ganga deal for the most part.

 

[iamtrout]

Ok, I've edited my post to specify "the good old days." Apparently saying "when the best bang for the buck CPU was around $150 and the best bang for the buck video card was around $150" isn't specific enough and people feel the need to counter with "but 20MB hard drives and 2x burners were $900."

*smacks forehead*

 

[narutofan36]

lol, i cant imagine what the prices will be like in the next 5 years ... D_D

 

[bigpow]

It's relative, some would say Sempron is the best bang for the buck (??)

Don't just look at the $$$, look at what you're getting with it and you'll understand why some (incl. me) think that prices are indeed cheaper today

*paid $300 for my X2 3800+; this is way cheaper than my P2-300

 

[Cerb]

I disagree, except one point. My last major upgrade, should all of the parts not have failed, was around $400. So was the one before it.
K6-2/Voodoo2 -> Duron 800/GF2 GTS -> 1800+/GF4 Ti 4200 -> new 1800+*/FX 5900XT

That point is that you are not considering a wrothy upgrade, but the best value for that upgrade. Value is actually increasing now until about $300 on CPUs and video cards. The entry level for even gaming has been coming down; the point of diminshing returns is what has not, which is making you think everything is more .

Look at s754 Sempron 64, and the Geforce 6200, and now 7300. These parts can actually play games! Not well, maybe, but they can get the job done.

But, but, 2x slower cores. It's not like we have dual 3000+ cores in each dual core

Um, you're wrong, plain and simple. You've effectively got 2 3200+ cores (2GHz) in each 3800+.

Where is all the money coming from?

Two places: nowhere, and people who paid that much then.

I'm on a 1800+, overclocked (1.92GHz) and undrclocked (1.15Ghz), depending on my mood (I can undervolt fans further underclocked). Until I can afford a dual-core upgrade with a PCI-E video card, or my PC completely blows up, I'm staying with it, because I can't see enough value in anything less than a dual-core. Building a dual-core A64 rig and being able to play with a bit only confirmed my feelings.

You see a lot of people getting these parts here, but note that enthusiasts will be more likely to buy new things, and every now and then, someone wants a dream machine. I made one a few years back. Now, the same guy wants an upgrade fairly cheap. Most people like to splurge every now and then. When they're not, they aren't as likely to be into asking about the best parts they can get .

* seems silly, at first, but this was when they were introducing the Barton, and a lot of the chips that would be higher-speed or mobiles were being sold as 1800+ to 2100+ speeds so the Barton would immediately have room, and I wanted more quiet (decent underclocking and undervolting) on the cheap.

 

[potato28]

Stop looking at moniture value and look at the value for performence. Is that what you wanted to say OP? Because if thats what you mean, then I agree full heartatly. Im not gonna pay $400 for the best bang for buck CPU. Not worth it...

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: iamtrout
I remember the good old days (at most five years ago) when the best bang for the buck CPU was around $150 and the best bang for the buck video card was around $150. Now the best bang for the buck CPU (Opty 165) is a whopping $300 and the video card is from $200-$350.

Eesh. What is a person supposed to do? I used to be able to significantly upgrade my rig for $150. Now it's more like $300... (actually more like $700 since I'm still on 754, IDE HDDs, AGP, and DDR... sigh... wtf.

The best bang for the buck is still cheap, it's just that it no longer offers 95% of the max performance.

BTW, video card and cpu prices always fluctuate, just when the market starts to stagnate and there's not quite enough competition then the prices soar. The original voodoo was like $400, then competition came, the TNT2 Ultra was $300, and then the Geforce 2 got back up to $400. Likewise, prior to the Athlon, a high end cpu was damn expensive, and now that the competition between Intel and AMD isn't quite so fierce (they both have their loyal market segments now) the prices are moving back up.

That, and the gpu and cpu companies are doing more to limit overclocking. It used to be you could take a $100 video card and overclock it to the performance of the $300 video card (voodoo 3 2000 overclocked to tnt 2 ultra performance), or an $80 cpu and overclock it to the performance of the $400 cpu (mobile barton overclocked to p4 3.2ghz performance). Now though, there's now way to make up for missing pipelines, limited memory buses, or dual cores though.

 

[bob4432]

todays prices are extremely cheap compared to years ago:

my first laser printer - hp 4 series - $1000
my first scanner - hp 4 seris (300dpi) - $500
16MB pc66 ram - $200
1.7GB hdd - $170
"cheap" 17" crt that could do 1600x1200 - $500
my first cd-rw - hp parallel port external - $500

and the people that were buying computer stuff before the pentiums like the '86s and such were paying a ton more.

today's prices are nice

 

[ponyo]

The highend prices are expensive because people will pay. But it's not all bad. CPU speeds haven't changed much over the last couple of years. Videocards have but that only matter if you play the latest games.

Most people are still perfectly happy with P4 and XP from years back.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: iamtrout

Originally posted by: mazeroth
The reason for the higher prices is the people that buy the super expensive stuff. Five years ago a top of the line video card ran $300. Now it runs over $600. Why? Because video card makers started slowly upping the price and people kept buying, and buying, and buying. If no one would buy an X1900XTX for $600 then slowly video card makers would charge less and less for the product. Same goes for CPUs and everything else.

Take it from a marketing manager

I agree. I remember a few years back when my friends and I scoffed at people who bought hardware that JUST came out, like a top of the line CPU for $600 when the next level down was $400 and the one below that was $200. Something like an extra $400 for only a 200MHz difference, or less.

We called those people retards.

*sigh*

Where is all the money coming from? Isn't a large builder base still high-schoolers and college students? Back then we could barely even afford the best bang for the buck rigs, now everything's like double the price and high schoolers and college people are still getting these rigs...

I think its just following the trends of the economy. It seems like a lot of people are buying things they don't really have the money for. Plus, just poor buying decisions. There's so many threads now of people saying they're putting together a system and they don't want to spend $100 on nice speakers or a good power supply (both things which you can usually keep longer than the other parts of the computer), but then they have an FX CPU or SLI GTXes or 4GB of high performance memory.

It is a kinda strange phenomenon I think. They've increased the prices of video cards significantly higher than just what would be added from inflation, and yet it seems like they're selling more of them than they were before.

Also, look at the Xbox 360. Seems all I heard was people griping about its price, and then what happens, they go and pay double the MSRP on eBay for one.

I do agree that prices in general these days are a lot better. It wasn't that long ago that I paid about $200 for a 2.4Ghz 533Mhz FSB Pentium 4 and just over $100 for 512MB of non-performance memory. Last summer I was able to get an Athlon 64 3000+ for $120 and 1GB of better brand memory is about $70.

When you couple in how easily it is to get near the top-end performance with just overclocking or a simple unlocking and spend about half if not less, I just don't understand why people keep buying the ultra-high end stuff. But hey, its actually beneficial to us in some ways, because if no one bought the high end stuff, something tells me they'd spend more time making sure there is a big difference between the lower end and higher end (and probably to the tune of locking the lower end stuff a lot more if not making them entirely different).

 

[ElFenix]

i thought the opteron 146 was the best bang for the buck processor?

the 165 is the best bang for the buck dual core (and overclocker darling), but dual core isn't particularly worthwhile at the moment (unless you're doing a whole lot of video conversion). i will admit i'm running an opteron 165 atm though.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Naustica
Most people are still perfectly happy with Northwood Celeron+845, sporting 128MB PC133 and XP from years back.

Fixed, unfortunately :evil:.

 

[Rubycon]

Top of line CPU's (Intel anyways) were always over a grand.

We have a contractor purchasing itanium servers and you don't even want to know what they cost.

If you want to complain about prices, try video cards. Without a doubt the fastest to become obsolete and most expensive. $650 for an X1900? Ouchie!

 

[Praxis1452]

Actually they dropped down the $480 =P

 

[sniperruff]

it's all relative. the best bang for the buck for me is a socket 754, and the 6800 vanilla/6600GT