A look into the history of Nvidia GPU prices
It’s no secret that Nvidia’s new RTX line of graphics cards are expensive. A lot more expensive than the previous generation, with prices for the top end “Ti” models now bursting through the $1,000 barrier.
With all the controversy surrounding the price hike, I decided to do some digging to see just how expensive they are compared to past cards. Combing through launch prices on Wikipedia and TechPowerUp’s GPU database, I came up with some interesting findings.
The High End
For our high end series of cards, I decided to look at the vanilla RTX 2080 and work my way back to the FX line, which launched a full 15 years ago, all the way back in 2003. I compared launch prices in US Dollars, then adjusted them for inflation using the online US Inflation Calculator.
The price for the 9800 GT might be an anomaly or bad data, but as you can see the overall trend has indeed been increasing. The FX 5800 originally retailed for about $400 in today’s money, with the RTX 2080 touching $800; a 200% increase. Taking the trend into account, this is actually exactly where we’d expect them to be.
Interestingly, we have the GTX 280, which would cost at launch $764 in today’s money. So sky high prices for this tier of card are certainly not unprecedented in Nvidia’s lineup.
The Higher End Titaniums
The “Titanium” class cards in Nvidia’s line up tend to be the top of consumer cards. Though some lines do have ones above that, they’re more akin to the modern GTX Titans, which I didn’t look at.
Some lines were skipped here either because there was no corresponding card in this class, or launch pricing data wasn’t readily available. Again though, we see an upward trend in prices over the past 15 years with the FX 5800 Ultra retailing for $547 in today’s money, up to the RTX 2080’s butt puckering price of $1,199.
It’s worth noting though that the GTX 690 also came with a relatively steep price of $1,099. So it seems it and the RTX are both anomalies. With the general trend, we’d expect these cards should be retailing for around $750 to $800 today.
The Mid Range
Looking at the mid-range cards, we can see that prices have, surprisingly, been pretty stable. Again the GTX 200 series is a bit of an anomaly. Perhaps it’s bad data, or perhaps Nvidia at the time considered it something more akin to the GTX 1070. Regardless, prices for your common mid-range gaming GPUs have not deviated all that much over time, with most sitting comfortably in the $200 to $300 price range.
Unfortunately, we don’t have pricing details for the RTX 2060 at the time of writing, but it would be a surprise if Nvidia does decide to price it significantly above this “sweet spot”. It could be a major coup for AMD if they do.
