[geRV]

Originally Posted by SoLiDUS

Proprietary/unique effects or not, the hardware sells for buttloads and costs little more than a few loafs of bread to make. Packaging, distribution and other related costs are low, so explain the incredibly high prices ? Stop buying their shit at 600$ and the cost will lower. Repeat until the prices reflect actual hardware quality and you're good to go. New technological requirements are nothing more than collaboration from the developers to help push hardware sales: stop buying the shit and the latter will take notice and add "compatibility" to their code. The room smells like feces but you're all wearing noseplugs.

And how much do you think the chips cost in terms of research and development? If a graphics core has to go through revisions each respin of the chip costs several million $ to do. This argument comes out everytime new graphics cards are available complaining about the price, buy it if you want to and can afford it, if you can't then opt for the mainstream version of the product which obviously won't cost as much as the high end counterpart. Its not as if nvidia and ati are forcing us to buy just the high end version of the card and nothing else, there are always cheaper alternatives.