Do graphics cards get cheaper over time?

[SuperPaperFan]

If I wait 2 years for a GeForce 9750, would the price be a lot lower? Would the other computer parts cost less too? How much do you think?

 

[MajinCry]

GeForce 9750? What? I think you have your cards mixed up. Maybe you meant an AMD Radeon HD 7750?

GPU prices decrease a bit from launch to a year or two afterwards. The price then stabilizes. After a couple more years (3-4 total) you may be able to find that graphics card for a more reasonable price.

The 5850 for example. At launch, it was £200. I don't know about the rather purgatory time from 2009 to 2011, but in late 2012-present day, the 5850 can be gotten for £60 on Ebay.
Web retailers, however, will charge anywhere from £100-£200 because it's older tech.

Graphic cards focus on a Price : Performance ratio, and it appears to be refreshed every four or five years from what I have researched.

CPUs that are above £70 in their prime time, usually fall to £70. The Core 2 Duo E6700 costs £70, the Phenom II x4 965 BE costs £70, the Pentium D costs £70 (These prices are obtained from my regular tech retail sites). So don't expect CPUs to come down in price that much. Especially on the intel side.
The Core 2 Quad Q6600 costs around £120-£130, despite it being significantly weaker than, say, the 965 BE.

tl;dr: Sometimes yes, usually no.

 

[SuperPaperFan]

Typo, I meant the 7950. I type too fast sometimes and mix numbers up. Also, your answer was interesting.

 

[bryonhowley]

Typo, I meant the 7950. I type too fast sometimes and mix numbers up. Also, your answer was interesting.

OK well that would be AMD then not Nvidia. GeForce is Nvidia. I would not see the price of the 7950 decrease any more before the 8xxx cards come out. By that time we might see another price cut. As demand goes down the price may go to. As long as there is a strong enough demand for the cards they are not going to lower the price anymore.

 

[ikaz]

The thing to remember is also normally newer games require more resources and power. So that 7950 that can play most games in ultra @1080p may be only able to play games two years from now 1080p with meduim graphic. The main reason why the old Amd 5 series (and I think the nvida 4 series) mid to high cards still offer good gaming is because most PC games were port using engines that were also used on the console market so they didn't push the graphic evelope.

However now that new consoles are comming out the major companies will be working on creating better graphics since they know they can port there games with out much changes requires (.i.e cost effective) so in the next 2 yrs or so I hope to be a bigger jump in graphics on the PC side which may mean a shorter life span on the usablity of a graphic card atleast for the short term.

 

[zdbc13]

Graphics card prices do go down over time. Usually they keep going down until the part is discontinued by the manufacturer. Then you may get lower prices on ebay or craigslist. But Ikaz is right, by then it won't play current games. So you have to keep buying newer and faster cards (also cpus) over time. That's the way it works in computers....

 

[meowmix44]

Yeah I bought my Gigabyte Windforce 3X GTX 670 OC for $447 and now its about $400