I think its based off selling the product... essentially it is the same product but but more overclocked (or improved slightly structurely). They will sell the normal card to people on a budget, whilst they still get a decent enough card to play the upto date games. They make the XT, XL, Pro etc for people willing to spend more money to squeeze the most out of their card. Each one differs in performance and therefor differs in price. So there is a high range card to suit a range of budgets/gamers.

Probably $600 since the X850XTPE was $550.

as soon as u got back, you got really annoying, really fucking fast. nub

Im not saying dont release updated, or upgraded cards that are close to the old version... sure open up those 2 pipelines and at 10hz to the ram, but instead of claling it the x800 SLPTRQ call it the x850, or x825 or some shit. We dont need the initials, it just makes it harder to diseminate what the fuck card has what feature as compaired to those that dont.

now now, children... the companies only charge as high as you monkeys are willing to pay. stop bending over like that and your ass will cease hurting.

That statement is false, if we stop buying than they will come up with a way that the new games you buy will ONLY work with the new cards because you need a code or some bull shit to run the game. Or something else similar to a royal rape.

cry: plzdie:

Then stop supporting those developers/games. They will quickly patch their games or lose stock and die: you have the power to end this. </stewie>

And what if the effects they use are unique to a certain tech and can't be patched back? The new cards are just progress, and without that we'd still be playing atari 2600's.

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.

Supply is inversely proportional to demand.

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.

They can recoup their development costs, employee wages and marketing campaigns very easily even selling these cards at HALF the current prices. You're just blinded by the shiny metal on the cards. biggrin:

fuck

Wrong, go check out how much ram costs for these cards, the high end ati card will come with 512mb of ram, thers still 6800 ultra with 512mb going for $700+