Why graphics card are so expensive?

[blunty]

The guy I am talking to right now mentioned that he wants that a couple of times so I want to make a nice gesture by buying it but they are so expensive! Why?

[MrOracle]

Modern GPUs are bleeding edge technology - among the most advanced computer equipment that's available to normal citizens. And it turns out that they aren't just extremely useful for high-end graphics, but also for crypto mining (which isn't nearly as in demand since the implosion of crypto at the end of 2922, but had ran up the price of GPUs for the 5 years prior) and now for AI processing. And the explosion of AI has once again skyrocketed the demand of GPUs in an area outside graphics, just as crypto mining did 7 years ago.

High end GPUs would still be expensive even without AI demand, but with AI demand, they are about 30-50% higher due to limited supply, plus another 20% due to insane inflation due to the Biden administration's insane policies and the resulting printing of trillions of dollars.

[TheSpaceGnome]

The AI thing is also going to implode.

[Massageman]

So that you are "urged" to buy a whole new computer.

The strategy is to price the replacements parts so high, it just wouldn't make good economic sense to replace the GPU.

Similar thing- Neighbor ran into that with their fridge. A part of the fridge- which had absolutely nothing to do with it keeping food cool- blew out. Would have cost $600+ plus the (already sunk investment of the service call) of $185, so, just about $800 and still have the same old box. The store conveniently offers $85 of the 185 as a "discount: if you decide to buy a new one, which is what she did.

[HelpfulWoman]

its a lot of hardwear. and the prices sky rocketed when covid and lock downs made a lot of people upgrade for work/a new hobby.

[AlexEfron]

A couple of reasons actually:

1. Graphics Cards or Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), is more like a specialised processing Unit. It's like the CPU, but specialised for doing simpler tasks as bulk and in parallel. A CPU, is more general purpose computational unit, so it's better at ALU tasks, while being horribly slow in parallel processing of non-logic tasks. That's where GPU shines. One Graphics Card will have many processing units, while one CPU chip has much fewer processing units (example 8 core, 16 core etc.)

2. Monopoly. When it comes to GPU, the goto name is Nvidia. AMD is a decent competitor, but almost every other niche technology that I know of, relies heavily on the CUDA cores of Nvidia.

3. Last but not the least, demand and supply. With the wave of AI and games being graphics intensive, the demand for GPU has risen tenfold, and so has the prices.

[Purpleronnie]

It’s pure economics , demand vs supply. Demand from Crypto-mining surges. Issues with supplies of semiconductors & silicone , shipping and transportation and lack of scalable manufacturing sprinkled with a little supplier led restrictive supply just to keep prices high margin for them.

[andreasderjuengere]

Surprisingly, the graphic card that serves me best in my profession (that includes advanced 3D design) isn't one of the highest pricing.

It's often about consumerism, or about the penis-surrogate, I guess.

Anyhow... look at ''Nvidia'' to choose from... :D

[Guanfei]

Crypto mining, and lack of real competition.
Graphics cards are basically Nvidia, and a bit of AMD.
Price rose up due to the crypto mining bullshit, which Nvidia could have avoided but decided not to.
Why? Because they knew people would buy anyway, since they didn't have any other options.
And once the prices where high and people paid, Nvidia just considered it was now the regular prices and they won't go down anymore.

[Armourdillo]

The AI push is real and Nvidia is prioritizing creating company solutions rather than consumer cards at the moment. GPU's are our best tool for training the models with good time efficiency.
Consumer cards aare how also powerhouses, which adds to the costs.

Something to keep in mind in the coming years, ARM chips have proven to be amazingly efficient in time and power consumption, abandoning x86 will happen which will be a very interesting time in building PC'S

[nawtee_me]

It is not only the hardware in the graphics card but also the coding that goes in them. They are actually cheep to make but since they are a necessity they seek for out of proportion prices.
you don’t need a next gen graphics card since there hasn’t been a big change over the last few years to graphics cards. Prior to that though there was some big strides made in graphics processors. So don’t go back more than a few years.

[msc545]

They are very desirable still for Bitcoin mining and there is a shortage of them for that purpose. You can use any card for it, but generally speaking the ones that are specifically designed for it are a little better, but when the supply of those runs out then the ones that are not designed for it will do the job too.

All in all the prices of these things go up because the demand is very high. In all fairness they are also extremely complex and difficult to manufacture.

[snowboarder720]

They are widely used for crypto mining. Consumers were lining up for the latest released graphics card. It’s a serious deal!

[ChicoFromThe305]

From what I heard they have become somewhat hard to find because everyone is using them to mine for crypto

[ApplePie409]

I heard about that. I wish I was smart enough to do it. I heard about two kids that were getting rich from that. One of the kids was about 9 and his brother was 16.

[ChicoFromThe305]

You can always learn, with the internet nowadays, you can learn about anything, it's hard not to learn anything actually ha

[normalice]

Demand skyrocketed because graphics cards are pretty much mandatory for AI training.

[Astarlessnightsky]

Its a super complex piece of hardware. Also they are still on high demand due to bitcoin mining.

[Snakeyes7]

I assume that it is because the west foolishly relies on Taiwan to make their computer chips despite being under constant threat of mainland China.

The fact that there is a massive demand for them doesn't help either.

[jshm2]

It's mostly due to mining and the uncertainty over Taiwan.

[exitseven]

They have a lot of functionality. the better ones have their own processor and memory.

[TheSpaceGnome]

Because companies spend poorly and then jack up prices to compensate.

[sawno]

Because Nvidia has a virtual monopoly.

[bobby_bush_eater]

AMD is a very real competitor.

[Donald_Tate]

@bobby_bush_eater and both being born 6 years apart in the same city, Nividia CEO's grandfather is AMD CEO's great grandfather.

[sawno]

@bobby_bush_eater I'll believe it once they got their AI stuff together.

[jahaims]

Limited manufacturing

[legalboxers]

where are you looking?

[guyinterested]

Demand is high. Cryptocurrency miners use them.

[Anonymous]

Supply and demand