looked up every flagship GPU launch price since 1996
Posted by Mastbubbles@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 28 comments
was helping my cousin pick a card and got curious about how prices actually changed over the years so i went and looked up every major GPU launch since the voodoo
1996-2007 everything was $250-$600
2008-2017 still mostly $250-$700
2018 rtx 2080 $699 and everyone lost it
2020 rtx 3090 $1499
2022 rtx 4090 $1599
2025 rtx 5090 $1999
adjusted for inflation the voodoo was about $600 in today's money. the 5090 is still over 3x that (if I can somehow find it at it's original price)
the mid range got weird too. the 1060 was $249 in 2016 and was steam's most popular card for 5 years. the 4060 in 2023 was $299 but with 8gb and a 128 bit bus which felt like a downgrade
ended up telling my cousin to get a 5070 but man remember when $329 got you the best selling card of all time
what was your first GPU and what did you pay for it?
i actually made a comparison tool for this, here
Soigne87@reddit
Ati hd4870 for $300. About $455 in today's money. Great value. Next best value might be my current card, 7900xtx. Got it end of 2022, next gen is supposed to come out when, 2027-2028? And if ram prices don't go down, it seems likely even then, it will be the higher end of mid range and will be for another 2-4 years. Seems like it could easily last 10 years.
LancerFIN@reddit
I bought Sapphire HD4890 OC in the summer of 2009 for 240 euros. Aftermarket cooler with 2x 120mm fans was probably additional ~70 euros.
Overclocked with aftermarket cooler HD4890 was the fastest single GPU card on the market.
Soigne87@reddit
I got an aftermarket cooler for my 4870 with 2 x 120mm fans as well!
Mastbubbles@reddit (OP)
hd 4870 was insane value, first gddr5 card and it embarrassed the gtx 280 at half the price. 7900 xtx holding up well too especially since amd ditched the high end with rdna 4 so theres nothing replacing it anytime soon
-UserRemoved-@reddit
I'm not following, in your list you state that $600 was the cheapest it ever was from 1996-2007
My first actual GPU was a 9700Pro which I paid almost $500 for ($399 MSRP).
Mastbubbles@reddit (OP)
should have been clearer - $250-$600 was the range, not the floor. the 8800 GT in 2007 was $249 and the GTX 1060 was $249 in 2016. those were the $329 and under cards that dominated steam for years. the flagships were $500-600 but the best selling cards were always the mid range ones
9700 pro is legendary though, that card destroyed nvidia for like a full year
-UserRemoved-@reddit
Best selling anything is almost always midrange, Ferraris and Lambos are never breaking volume records.
AMD/ATI/Radeon had the edge on Nvidia for far far longer than a year..... It was probably more like a decade. Personally I wouldn't say Nvidia had a clear lead until ~2012-2013.
Ryan32501@reddit
Also AMD was competing against intel as well. They finally took the top spot from Intel a year or 2 ago, and they made a massive jump in GPU price/power consumption/performance these last 2 generations
Elitefuture@reddit
Realistically, the xx90 cards are the Titan replacements. Titan GPUs have existed well before the 3090 and have also costed a lot.
Inflation adjusted:
2013: GTX Titan $1400
2014(February): GTX Titan Black $1390
2014(March): GTX Titan Z $4,150
2015: GTX Titan X $1380
2016: NVidia Titan X $1660
2017(April): NVidia Titan Xp $1600
2017(December): Nvidia Titan V $4,000
2018: RTX Titan $3250
So it's not actually good to compare the top cards of every generation. You should look more at the xx80 cards of each.
theknyte@reddit
There was also a brief time when they had the "2x" cards, that were 2 PCBs already connected in SLI. Like the GTX 7950 GX2.
LimitNo1438@reddit
Or the 690, I ended up with two of them in 2016/17.. man... What a card.
LimitNo1438@reddit
690 didn't make the list 😋
CanisLupus92@reddit
Right, if we ever want to bitch about crappy naming schemes, just remember the titans oO.
Elitefuture@reddit
Lol I think the titan xp was a name that the crowd gave too. They wanted to name 3 GPUs the Titan X, the only way you could tell the difference was via the generation and year.
filisterr@reddit
The problem is that back then the gap between the titan and the second best wasn't that big.
Elitefuture@reddit
I think it was due to NVidia maintaining their performance crown and growing the difference. Back then, AMD was fairly neck and neck most of the time, even sometimes beating NVidia's best. But once AMD stopped competing for the crown, NVidia just grew the gap and made their 2nd best compete with AMD's best.
As time goes on with AMD not wanting to waste money on the best gpu(since people are less willing to buy it), the gap has grown. NVidia has tons of resources to just release a new GPU whenever they want and their profit margin is huge to price it however they want. Their AI datacenter market funded the next generation of GPUs. This isn't to say AMD is bad, I actually have an AMD GPU myself, it's just to say that it's really hard for AMD to compete with NVidia when they have huge margins and tons of r&d money.
MattBrey@reddit
Which meant the titans were shit deals, for something that costs so much, they realistically should have a big gap with the xx80
Mastbubbles@reddit (OP)
the titans were workstation cards though, nobody was buying a titan z to play battlefield. the xx90 series is different because nvidia marketed it directly to gamers as the "ultimate gaming gpu". thats the shift - not the price going up, but who they convinced to pay it
Elitefuture@reddit
Again, the xx90 cards are the titan replacements... The titan GPUs were the enthusiast tier card for the fastest gaming GPU that NVidia could make. The workstation GPUs were Quadro cards.
xx90 and titan are both enthusiast GPUs that were the absolute best for gaming that NVidia could make. Titan GPUs were given game drivers, not workstation drivers like Quadros.
The time when the 3090 came out was the same time titans stopped being made. They actually did it to stop confusing people who thought that titan GPUs were the same as quadros. So it was to stop being confusing the titan GPU as a workstation GPU instead of the highest end gaming gpu.
Mastbubbles@reddit (OP)
I got confused there for a bit, my bad.
You're right!
Tomorrow-Memory-8838@reddit
The truth is, it's because moore's law is dead.
Mastbubbles@reddit (OP)
moores law dying is part of it but nvidia is also just charging more because they can. they have no competition at the high end anymore - amd literally quit making flagship cards with rdna 4
dirtydragondan@reddit
Gaming since the 80s (console) and on PC since 90s, but didn't need/have or even have in existence for a long while.
1994 PC 486 DX2 66Mhz . NO GPU
1999 PC Pentium something. NO GPU
2003 PC Athlon something. GeForce FX 5600 (mainly used for S Video out!)
Then came GPUs with PCs built for HTPC + Gaming after some moves and changes in living (2008-2012 all laptop living).
Prices in $AUD
2013 GTX 650 (about $120) [≈ 165 now]
2015 GTX 750 Ti (about $220) [≈ 290 now]
2019 GTX 1660 Super ($390) [≈ 485 now]
2022 RTX 3060 Ti ($800. with covid + Si/chip cost issues) [≈ 900 now]
2025 RTX 5070 ($950)
Octaive@reddit
Yeah, things have gotten way more expensive, but the 5070 in your list is easily the most capable relatively speaking for its time, both for games and vs other cards.
A 5070 can go way, way faster in gaming with top end games than a GTX 770 could for its time, and that card was obviously more expensive than the 750Ti. It's surprising how much more we get vs prior generations for image quality and utility from these cards (for professional use as well). They also improve video quality, add HDR in, tons of filters, encoding, recording etc.
It's very hard to compare a 5070 to say a 770. The 5070 is still more expensive for its time, but it's also just better for its time in every conceivable way.
dirtydragondan@reddit
some good points . and also , ive basically climbed one notch up higher in the tier list of GPY at each generation / new purchasse - mostly for the extra grunt in media play/encoding more than the gaming!
30 yr ago iwas 100% gaming in DOOM run off DOS with no GPU and WOW the boost when i went from 4Mb to 8mb system RAM
scutarion@reddit
That seems to me like a hell of money printing by governments.
sloppy_joes35@reddit
Eh, 90s are for work and ppl who just want to blow money
Matt0706@reddit
3090, 4090, and 5090 are continuations of the Titan class cards. Your statement isn’t wrong but your comparisons are strange