It’s no secret that GeForce users have had to pay higher premiums in order to reap the rewards of NVIDIA’s faster Ampere generation, but how much more money has the average person been willing to spend for a GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics card, exactly?
That figure has become a bit clearer courtesy of green team’s latest Investors Day presentation, which includes a slide indicating that GeForce gamers have had to tolerate spending hundreds of dollars more on average to upgrade to the Ampere architecture—$300, to be precise.
“Yay!” say NVIDIA’s investors. “Yikes!” say gamers, DIYers, and other general enthusiasts who have had to accept the fact that the good old days of being able to score a relatively fantastic graphics card for a similar amount is now completely over. Remember how the GeForce GTX 1070 launched at $379? NVIDIA definitely didn’t, as the GeForce RTX 3070 came right out of the gate at $499, a premium that only became worse following shortages and scalping.
Nvidia: Gamers Are Spending $300 More to Buy RTX 3000 Cards Over Prior GPUs (PCMag)
On Tuesday, Nvidia held an investors day, where it revealed an interesting tidbit about the current-generation RTX 3000 graphics cards. “Looking into the millions of desktop GeForce gamers who we know have upgraded their GPU to a 30-series, they are buying up,” Nvidia SVP Jeff Fisher said during the event.
Fisher made the statement while touting the growth Nvidia is experiencing in the gaming market. The higher spending is certainly good news for the company, but not so much for consumers looking to own a graphics card at an affordable price.
The starting prices for Nvidia’s products have also changed over the years. Back in 2016, the GeForce GTX 1070 originally launched for $379. Meanwhile, the current-gen RTX 3070 has a starting price at $499, although in reality many vendors are selling it for $700 or more.