News GPUs Are Getting a Lot More Expensive Due to Tariffs

[King_V]

I believe the US is smart enough to...

Have you been paying attention to our news here in the past few years? The party most responsible for encouraging/pushing overseas production, thus providing for higher corporate profits, is the same one that instituted the tariffs.

"the US is smart enough to..." is not a phrase that currently works with reality. That will hopefully change soon.

 

[Flayed]

I'm glad I got a card recently. I won't worry about a new one for 4 years or so. Assuming humanity still exists then 😛

 

[Phaaze88]

Extra few billion transistors, extra RAM chips and added R&D does not come for cheap. There is a sane reason why modern non-trivial computing hardware cost more. Luckily prices will drop when next hardware generation will appear.

Please clarify, because I don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Krotow]

I talking about extra chips added, time and resources spent for card development etc. Electronics does not appear from thin air. Someone already paid to research and develop our computer hardware and software. Then it is only fair to pay them about their work and spent resources. Obviously I don't mean scalping and artificially inflated tariffs here.

 

[drivinfast247]

Have you been paying attention to our news here in the past few years? The party most responsible for encouraging/pushing overseas production, thus providing for higher corporate profits, is the same one that instituted the tariffs.

"the US is smart enough to..." is not a phrase that currently works with reality. That will hopefully change soon.

You poor, lost, little man! You have no idea what's coming!

 

[Phaaze88]

I talking about extra chips added, time and resources spent for card development etc. Electronics does not appear from thin air. Someone already paid to research and develop our computer hardware and software. Then it is only fair to pay them about their work and spent resources. Obviously I don't mean scalping and artificially inflated tariffs here.

Oh. That's what you were referring to.
🤔



Jensen: 1080Ti owners, now is finally the time to upgrade.
Me: You lying prick...

 

[Krotow]

Jensen: 1080Ti owners, now is finally the time to upgrade.
Me: You lying prick...

At least in our local craigslist I still see five 1080 Ti for 400€ and few 2080 Ti for 900€. At least something. New 3080 and 3090 still cost 1200€ and 1500€ here and obviously are out of stock.

 

[Giroro]

Extra few billion transistors, extra RAM chips and added R&D does not come for cheap. There is a sane reason why modern non-trivial computing hardware cost more. Luckily prices will drop when next hardware generation will appear.

If your logic is essentially "It's better, so it should cost more"... Then why would you expect prices to drop next generation instead of rising again? Wouldn't, logically, the better-er cards will cost even more-er?
Will the tiny oligopoly of big chip makers, most of whom have been found guilty of price-fixing at various points, suddenly have more competition or regulation to drive down prices? Probably not.
Will manufacturers move out of China? Definately not, because when you move equipment and IP into that country, they keep it permanently. That's why their government keeps the pricing down, because long-term they will seize the infrastructure and the design. So you're talking about rebuilding an entire industry's worth of manufacturing and supply chains from scratch.

 

[Why_Me]

(Nearl voice): "THANK YOU DONALD TRUMP! YOUR LEGACY IS INTACT!!"

(bonus points for anyone who catches the reference)

Ya the US should cave in with China so people can get cheaper video cards.

 

[Flayed]

It seems to be a thing these days people like, economic self-harm.

 

[Why_Me]

By themselves tariffs wouldn't so you're probably right. What has to happen now is governments incentivizing industry to establish factories. There are tried a true tools they've used to do that, including tax incentives and grants of various sorts. They expire, of course, but once established and producing the tariffs will help by preventing unfair competition from flooding the market with artificially 'cheap' products.

This ^^

 

[Why_Me]

Have you been paying attention to our news here in the past few years? The party most responsible for encouraging/pushing overseas production, thus providing for higher corporate profits, is the same one that instituted the tariffs.

"the US is smart enough to..." is not a phrase that currently works with reality. That will hopefully change soon.

Then explain to us why NAFTA was reworked in our favor and then you can explain to us why those tariffs were put on China in the first place. Most of us already know the answer.

 

[Flayed]

Then explain to us why NAFTA was reworked in our favor and then you can explain to us why those tariffs were put on China in the first place. Most of us already know the answer.

Was it because Trump wanted to look tough on TV?

 

[Why_Me]

Was it because Trump wanted to look tough on TV?

I guess you don't like the US getting fair trade deals.

 

[hotaru251]

I doubt they'll be much more expensive than they are now. People already refuse to pay scalper prices, upping retail to scalper prices isn't gonna make anyone buy them.

except ppl do pay those scalper price and enthusiasts do pay top $ for stuff (look at the 2080 ti msrp)

 

[Endymio]

The flaw in your argument is that tariffs will not bring jobs back.

A globally-applied tariff can, and will bring back jobs, if allowed to operate over a reasonable period of time. You can't expect a year of tariffs to respawn the entire US semiconductor industry.

In any case, tariffs on a single nation -- in this case: China -- are not intended to bring jobs back. They're meant to get China to stop its rampant trade abuses and theft of IP and, (in the case of firms like Huawei) prevent national security threats.

 

[Endymio]

The party most responsible for encouraging/pushing overseas production, thus providing for higher corporate profits, is the same one that instituted the tariffs.

The primary reason manufacturing companies move to foreign production are

1. High tax rates
2. High cost of environmental regulations
3. Risk of excessive tort liability
4. High labor costs

There's only one party pushing to raise all four of those factors.

 

[thepersonwithaface45]

except ppl do pay those scalper price and enthusiasts do pay top $ for stuff (look at the 2080 ti msrp)

yeah rich people and impatient rich people. I don't know anyone struggling right now that bought a 3080 from a scalper because they couldn't wait for a microcenter restock on a thursday morning.

 

[Phaaze88]

The primary reason manufacturing companies move to foreign production are

1. High tax rates
2. High cost of environmental regulations
3. Risk of excessive tort liability
4. High labor costs

There's only one party pushing to raise all four of those factors.

In other words, it is, and has always been, about the bloody money to them.
Low cost, and high profit margins... it just doesn't get any better than that. How many companies will willingly give that up?

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

Right now, scalpers and production woes are responsible for 100% of the sick, idiotic prices we've all seen on the GPUs none of us can buy. As far as pricing goes, scalpers are 100% responsible, tariffs 0%, imo...😉 Let's all hope supply constraints will greatly ease very soon--they have to--otherwise AMD is going to have a lean first quarter!

Quoting the best comment in the thread... because it's true.

I said it once before, and I'll say it again...
I miss being able to buy a top tier gpu for ~700USD.
It all went to hell once Turing came out.

I paid $699 for my 1080 Ti in April 2017... and sold it for $400 in November 2020.

I guess I have the inflated market to thank.

 

[Gurg]

Looks like diy pc gaming is coming to an end, prices are already way too high.

Integrated graphics or console anyone?

Or pre-built @ Microcenter for a mere $3499:

Dell Alienware Aurora R11 Gaming Computer Intel Core i9 10900KF 3.7GHz Processor; NVIDIA RTX 3090 24GB GDDR6X; 32GB DDR4-3200 RAM; 1TB SSD

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

Or pre-built @ Microcenter for a mere $3499:

Dell Alienware Aurora R11 Gaming Computer Intel Core i9 10900KF 3.7GHz Processor; NVIDIA RTX 3090 24GB GDDR6X; 32GB DDR4-3200 RAM; 1TB SSD

Can't imagine using that kind of hardware and then going with a 1TB SSD... what are you going to do... put 3 games on it and call it good? 😆

 

[geof2001]

GPU's that cost more than my whole gaming rig are so complex they can't build them cheaper and we're going to blame it on Tariffs? Sorry I call complete <Mod Edit> here. They've seen scalpers selling these for the last 2 months and people still paying for it. Everyone one of these companies suddenly raising their prices an additional 30-40% and blaming it on Tariffs needs to be investigated for price fixing. I've been a PC gamer since the 80's and enough is enough. Plenty of low-res great story games out there that I can play on existing graphics cards for years to come. I'm done supporting these companies. Don't forget MSI just got caught selling through a subsidiary. Apologize all you want. For now my money is staying with me and I'll choose to support the developers working on games with real stories and heart over 4k/VR games who can't be bothered to optimize to run anything less than these bleeding edge money pits. This opinion is my own and will probably be highly unpopular with many and I'll be flagged as on old curmudgeon of a gamer. I've probably spent a few salaries worth of $$ on equipment over the years. This is just too far.

 

[Gurg]

I can't see US employees lining up for a factory job paying $3.15 per hour like they do in China

The price tag of building a fab, the cost of equipping it and power to run it are the major costs of semi-conductor facilities. Only 20-33% of fab workers are technical, engineering or managers and paid decent money. The majority of fab workers you see in bunny suits are low skilled, educated and paid workers that could be hired for a few bucks over minimum wage in higher unemployment areas of the US. Their job involves scanning the case containing wafers and moving it from one machine to the next one indicated by the scanning to be re-scanned, loaded and processed. The scanning indicates the routing. The majority of these low skilled jobs could be eliminated by technology but the cost to mechanically move the wafer cases would be higher than using low paid workers.

The trade-off for lower wage fab workers are steady work, constant wages, clean environment, low physical requirement versus discomfort from wearing bunny suit and demand for personal cleanliness.

 

[Gurg]

Can't imagine using that kind of hardware and then going with a 1TB SSD... what are you going to do... put 3 games on it and call it good? 😆

So your computer has more than a 1TB Nvme m.2 for your operating system and base drive? Buyers add their own storage capacity beyond that as needed.

As for the $3499 price tag, if I subtract the price differential of the 10900kf and 3090 over the CPU and GPU in my PC, the cost is identical to what I paid for my other components.