A graphics card is a computational component that is basically an engineering marvel. After all, an NVIDIA Pascal GPU has about 16 billion transistors! For comparison, an 18-core Intel processor (Xeon) has about 5 billion transistors.
But does this justify the price that manufacturers ask for? Especially NVIDIA that has been at the top of the market for a few years?
In fact, despite the fact that the graphics card market is extremely demanding for manufacturers, asking for huge amounts of investment… It is also true that prices have gone up sharply, especially after the crazy graphics cards of 2017, due to the increase in the value of Bitcoin virtual currency.
So, if the crypto mining madness is over, why are graphics cards or VGA still absurdly expensive?
In short … Because brands can!
AMD is now making a comeback to the market, especially in the world of processors. However, their graphics cards are still nothing special in the highest range, especially when we look at the RTX 2080 Super or RTX 2080 Ti that reign at will.
In short, forgetting the mid-range where AMD even recently launched the RX 5700s at an interesting price … NVIDIA can borrow as much money as it wants! because consumers who really want these cards have no problem paying what is ordered.
This raises another question… Why are Workstation graphics cards so much more expensive than cards launched in the traditional consumer market?
So, in the graphics modeling and video editing market, we find super powerful machines equipped with Ryzen Threadripper CPUs, and graphics cards like AMD FirePro or NVIDIA Quadro, where of course, FPS is not a concern for consumers.
Graphics cards that can reach € 2000/3000 quite easily! But why?
If you don’t know, ‘Gaming’ graphics cards are released with specifications very similar to these Quadro or FirePro. So, what’s the difference between having such different prices? Although there are some differences in these ‘gaming’ and ‘business’ ranges, the truth is that the big difference is the drivers used.
So, can I buy an RTX 2080 and use the Quadro card drivers? Nop!
The manufacturers have already thought about this, and therefore, these cards are limited in terms of software, in order to prevent compatibility with the drivers indicated for workstations.
Furthermore, what do you think about all this? Share your opinion with us in the comments below.
