Something Fishy in the Computer industry

[Vector86]

I've been researching specs and prices for some new desktop components, and I'm what I'm seeing doesn't look quite right. For most of the computer industries lifespan the trend was to double processing power and offer it at half the price. In the past four years cpu performance hasn't done anything like double. Graphics cards aren't markedly faster either, the only real changes to them are new rendering technologies which, were they supported on the older models, would run just nearly as well. Yet in 2006 I'm looking to spend nearly $800 bucks for the same "jump" in performance that I got in 2004 for about $350. As far as I can tell, prices are increasing with minimal gains in the product. Does anyone else find this odd? If so, what does it mean for the future of computing?

[9mmCensor]

Odd? It seems normal to me.

All technology has a expoential learning curve. At the begining preformance gains are easy to achieve, after a while though, preformance gains are harder to come by, and thus more expensive.

[Vector86]

I see what you mean, It just seems like maybe they're trying to push this stuff out too fast and have outpaced themselves. Today's software doesn't really take full advantage of it.

[BGP Spook]

Yes, after a time the performance improvement as per investment becomes minimal. What I don't get is prices are barely falling when compared to performance by traditional standards.
A 6600 GT cost about $200 when it was first introduced almost two year ago, and that same video card now cost $130-$140.

A few year ago if I tried to sell a two year old mid/entry video card I don't think people would have taken me seriously. Doesn't that seem odd to you?

I know that performance hasn't improved a whole lot since mid 04' but still it should be less, by a fair amount($40?).

I think the video card market has adopted a business model similar to the car market. Where the appreciable differences between this years model and last years model are none existent (or nearly so). But we are in transition until the "used" market (old vid cards) catches up in terms of performance vs. price.

Am I ?

[Pyrotechnic]

I think it's just a lot of newer technology that hasn't caught on yet, take PCI-E for example. A USB 2.0 card for standard PCI can be had for $20 or less. A PCI-E USB 2.0 card is about $50-$60. Theres is absolutely no difference, USB 2.0 is USB 2.0. But just because it's new and isn't very common, it's expensive. Same with PCI-E video cards. AGP is cheaper because it's well established and it's been around for a long time.

[BGP Spook]

Originally Posted by Pyrotechnic

...AGP is cheaper because it's well established and it's been around for a long time.

Actually, I am not sure if that is strictly ture.
From my previous example of a 6600GT.
In PCI Express it costs $130 and in AGP it costs $140.
Reason for the $10 difference is the 6600 GT is a natively PCI Express card that had a converter chiped added.

This may be the exception, though.

Edit: Haven't priced motheroboards or other hardware.

[bigben2k]

Interesting.

The pricing dynamics usually don't change significantly. Maybe this is an effect of the electronics industry trying to recover from a slump?

[Vector86]

Originally Posted by bigben2k

Interesting.

The pricing dynamics usually don't change significantly. Maybe this is an effect of the electronics industry trying to recover from a slump?

I hope so, because if that's the case then these prices are only going to be like this in the short term. It's really preventing me from getting my upgrade on

[iroc409]

Originally Posted by Pyrotechnic

I think it's just a lot of newer technology that hasn't caught on yet, take PCI-E for example. A USB 2.0 card for standard PCI can be had for $20 or less. A PCI-E USB 2.0 card is about $50-$60. Theres is absolutely no difference, USB 2.0 is USB 2.0. But just because it's new and isn't very common, it's expensive. Same with PCI-E video cards. AGP is cheaper because it's well established and it's been around for a long time.

hrm... it's interesting, but is is new, of sorts.

granted, the usb technology itself is completely the same, but the bus it rides on is clearly not.

usb 2.0 is spec'd at 480mb/s. the standard pci bus we've all grown to love (or hate), simply cannot handle that kind of throughput, by a long margin.

by adding it to pci-e, it can actually has enough throughput to maybe hit that mark.

i guess the real answer, which yet i have not come across, is with the new pci/pci-e boards, is the pci-e bus being strangled by the pci bus, or is the pci bus merely along for the ride? _supposedly_ it's a pci-e bus with pci "emulators", if you will.

another interesting point, the way i understood it was that ati was acutally the ones who made actual pci-e cards, and nvidia was simply adding a converter chip on the cards to convert an agp card to pci-e. i have confirmed this with someone i consider highly reliable, but have no paper data to back it up.

it's like the other day i had a client that wanted a system, was building it for a customer of theirs. said the customer needed sata2, because they needed the speed for a server, for which sata1 would not suffice (of course, also wanted ddr2 533... lol).

sure, but the sata2 drives, considering the cost (if you're buying a 250g drive, it's just as cost-effective to buy sata2 as ide), but if you're buying 2x as much drive as you need just to put a sata2 drive on a strangled system, it's kindof a waste.

from what i can tell it's just beating your head against the wall... and all this cool stuff is just going to waste until we can get rid of that damned pci bus. it will probably remain somewhere just as isa, but just as long as it doesn't kill the throughput.

[maxSaleen]

While USB is on everyone's minds....

Most USB ports: are they pumped

1. Directly into the Northbridge?
2. Through the Southbridge and then into the Northbridge?
3. Through the PCI bus and then into the Northbridge?

The price point of the 6600GT has absolutely befuddled me. Still $140? That's crazy. It was a good card, but not that good.

Remember the Radeon 9800? Great card. After the first year, its price was cut in half as ATI went into a XT, PE, WTF, and FTW spiral. Ditto nVidia.

ATI and nVidia have so many damn prefixes and sufixes now that I've given up on keeping track of them. Back in the day, if you gave me the name of a video card, off of the top of my head I could tell you the GPU's code name, how many pixel pipes, vertex pipes, core clock, memory clock, and memory interface. Plenty of people could do the same. Can anyone do that now?

[Joe]

Umm the 6800 series of nV cards were native AGP, and had PCI-E love tag'd on them. The 6600 series, and all the 7x series are native PCI-E. just FYI

[iroc409]

Originally Posted by Joe

Umm the 6800 series of nV cards were native AGP, and had PCI-E love tag'd on them. The 6600 series, and all the 7x series are native PCI-E. just FYI

thanks!

[Vector86]

Glad to see this thread is still alive. I still can't afford upgrades, the price of things hasn't really changed since I started this thread.