The nVidia 680m is NOT overpriced!

I got to thinking about all of the bickering about price and how nVidia and then Alienware is gouging everyone and for what may be very little superiority above the Radeon 7970m.... well..... I did a few comparisons and here's what I've found: Nvidia isn't absurdly high, AMD is absurdly low!

For mobile graphics cards, you pay a premium over desktop cards for all the extra effort required to fit all of that **wow** into your laptop. Desktops have few design constraints for creating big, bad graphics wonders. Laptops, on the other hand, are the equivalent of 8th world wonders when you get something powerful like a 7970m or a 675m or a 680m in there all operating at way less wattage than a desktop equivalent. Keep this is mind as you read on.

Based upon the Dell Alienware website pricing, it costs $550 to upgrade to a 680m over a 660m (based card choice on m17x). It costs another $550 to add a second 680m. The 660 is worth more than $0 so the second 680m must be discounted a bit over the first. (later you'll see I think the 660m is worth $150---this putting the first 680m at $700--ouch, right?! Read on...)

The current price of a nVidia 670 desktop card is around $400-475, depending on what you buy. This is the card the 680m is based upon. While this isn't the fastest desktop card available, you ARE getting the fastest mobile graphics card available. So on top of the laptop vs desktop graphics card premium, you pay a bit more still for the latest and greatest just a you do with desktop graphics cards as you can see by looking a prices for the 680 desktop cards, currently $500-600, or $25-200 more than the 670 desktop card. Then there's the 690 desktop at $1000+! So that $700 680m should really be compared to a $550 average priced 680 desktop card. Now the $700 doesn't look quite as terrible, right? Just moderately terrible?

Now let's look at the Radeon 7970m. It costs $200 more than the base 660m in an m17x. It costs another $350 to add dual 7970m to an m18x. Again, the 660m is worth more than $0 so we could assume it is $150 based upon the 7970m pricing choices and that you get no discount for adding a second 7970m to your build.

The 7870 desktop card that the 7970m is based upon is $250-350. Again, the price differences being based upon what brand card you buy. Now, here's the interesting part: The 7970m is priced THE SAME as the 7870 desktop card it is based on. This is the big difference vs nVidia. So not only are you not paying the typical laptop vs desktop GPU premium, you're not even paying the fastest mobile GPU premium (well from AMD anyway)! Taking into fact that the fastest Radeon 7970 desktop cards are $440-600, or $90-350 more than the 7870 desktop, it is amazing that the fastest mobile card, the 7970m is selling for no premium at all! In fact, you could say it is heavily discounted as it should be selling for about what the 7970 desktop cards sell for or approximately $500 on average.

So.... while I am taking a lot of liberty with my deductions, and this is all my own pricing theory, and not based upon leaked AMD or nVidia pricing models, I think it is fair to say the following is true:

The nVidia 680m is priced at the upper range of what is acceptable for newly released, top of the line, mobile graphics cards. This assessment is based upon current desktop nVidia graphics card pricing and common sense that everything for a laptop is more expensive than a desktop.

The Radeon 7970m is priced very low for what would be acceptable for a newly released, top of the line, mobile graphics card. The assessment is based upon current desktop Radeon graphics card pricing and common sense that everything for a laptop **normally** is more expensive than a desktop.

Pricing per Alienware builds and Newegg averages:

Single 7970m $350 (7870 desktop performance equivalent $300) (7970 desktop marketing equivalent $525)

Dual 7970m $700 (7870 desktop performance equivalent $600) (7970 desktop marketing equivalent $1050)

Single 680m $700 (670 desktop performance equivalent $450) (680 desktop marketing equivalent $550)

Dual 680m $1250 (670 desktop performance equivalent $900) (680 desktop marketing equivalent $1100)

So the 680m pricing is about right, but at the max of what one might expect for factoring in premiums talked about above. The 7970m, on the other hand, is a steal and making the 680m comparatively look way overpriced.

Now after all of this analysis, am I sad I cancelled my CF 7970m m18x and order a 680m SLI m18x for $550 more? Nope. But I know I missed a 'bargain' from AMD. It's just all the driver tinkering I have been reading about skeered me!

Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think!

Rob

 

Hello,
Your deductions are very good. However, supply and demand also have a great affect on pricing. While the 680 is priced fairly based on most Nvidia products, it will remain high as long as there is sufficient demand and supply is good. It's all a delicate balance at the hands of marketing.

Gabe

 

This is like saying Apple products are not over priced, its just that pc's are extremely low...

 

The PC market is very cut-throat with slim margins that affects customer service drastically. Walk into an Apple store and see how things are different? If you have an issue (and under warranty), they'll usually just swap you a new one? That's where the money goes...

But if you start putting Apple-type products into cut-rate PC systems... Or Alienware into Dell, for that matter... what do you have left?

 

If there is a cheaper, similarly powerful GPU then that will set the price standard. Compared to that, the GTX 680m is absurdly overpriced. If NVidia needs to, they will lower their prices too.

 

I too think the pricing of the cards themselves is fair. I always expect higher prices for new Nvidia gpu's, that's a given. Nvidia know this, Dell know this so I am not shocked at all that they are in the upper echelons of gpu pricing. I'm not gonna re-tread ground already covered in another thread, but my point was not about the actual price of the cards but the vastly different pricing for each country. With the exception of import costs for the country of destination, I see no reason that pricing should not be proportional for, what is, exactly the same piece of hardware.

Leaving out price-gouging, the formula to work out fair pricing should be something like this - with currency conversion rates from usd > currency of destination country taken into account to reach (X):

((A + B) + C) = X

Where X is the end retail cost to the consumer in their own country. A & B is the retail price in the US made up of the cost to Dell to purchase said hardware (A) and (B) would be Dell's own profit mark-up. C is the cost to get that hardware to the country of destination (import fees for that particular country etc).

Let's say that 680m SLI (an example bashed to death by my good self already lol) costs $1100usd and that is made up of Dell's cost to purchase (say $850 for arguments sake) and also profit mark-up ($250, again, just for illustration) - there is no (C) because its the US and WYSIWYG. That would show as:

(($850 + $250) + $0 = $1100.

For the UK, that should read something like:

(($850 + $250) + 20% Customs/VAT of $220 = $1320 (converted to gbp) = around £840..........but it is not - it's £1020gbp.

I should point out that a single 680m does follow the above formula for buying in the UK....ok, we dont know what the cost/profit figures of (A + B) are exactly, but going off the US retail price, you can say that A + B = $550. If you continue to apply the same formula, the cost for the UK works out to be proportional at a cost of £430gbp....why not SLI?

Where does that extra difference come from? - that's my issue....not the initial pricing, just the disproportionality from country to country - even after additional import/VAT charges have added its still another 20% more expensive on top of that.....go figure?

 

This is like me saying my genitals aren't small, it's just everyone else is huge.

Hey, I think I'll go with that from now on.

 

It's well explained, however I think this is where a problem is:

The 7970m is not the equivalent of a 7870 if one is to consider the equivalent of a 680m is the 670. You're either one step too low on the AMD or one step too high on Nv with mobile vs desktop.

The 670 is beastly for just having 1 cluster disabled to a 680 and a 7870 is a whole step down from a 7970. The 7970m is not a whole step down from the 680m, they have shown and may continue to show trading blows.

If you're going to view the 680m as a 670 equivalent, we would need to view the 7970m as a 7950 equivalent. The OC ability and strength of a 7950 can just about touch a 7970 where as a 670 can similarly do to a 680. A 7950 and 670 can also trade some blows with more to Nv and that is likely how it will pan out in the multi testing of users.

7970m trading blows with 680m (actual games, not just benchmarks) with more favor to Nv since Kepler is geared more to the gaming.

My 2c.

 

Its so hard to justify springing for the 680m over the 7970m for me. I have never owned an AMD card, but the price different is so large here for such a small performance increase.

 

outside of gaming we ( ok me in particular and a few others ) whom need / use CAD apps and OpenCL apps where the 680m is substantially behind and in some applications slower than its predecessor by 1/3. let alone fp64 optimized applications.

 

I concur! +rep.

 

i was putting together m18x with 680m SLI at dell.com and got very frustrated by how quickly its price becomes stratospheric just by adding a graphic option.

i was thinking to myself, i could get me a new car with this kinda money, then one thing led to another so i DID get me a new car... haha

that does tell little bit about the price of m18x with 680m SLI, i thought.

 

Honestly the only reason I could see for getting a 680 over a 7970 (unless you have money to burn) is if you want the 3d screen for the m17x and the most FPS possible.

 

Nope. AMD has 3D solutions as well! I tried it already playing Max Payne 3 in 3D.

 

You either quoted the wrong person or I am REALLY confused.

 

lol. What I meant was...

Nope. AMD has 3D solutions as well! I tried it already playing Max Payne 3 in 3D.

 

Also one thing just to keep in mind, is that when people say things are overpriced, that isn't nessesarily what they mean per se.

With any upgrade, say upgrading a screen from 1600x900 to 1080p (Keeping in mind that this is a pure example, and not inherently linked to anything)

If the upgrade costs $1000 dollars to do, people will say it is overpriced, even if the mechanism behind it actually costs that much. When you start seeing big numbers, it will seem "overpriced" to people regardless of whether or not it is actually worth the value or not.

So if it costs nvidia 500 dollars to make a graphics card, and they sell it for 500 (no margin on that, but work with me) then people will see that big number and say wow it is really expensive, not for me, etc.

But then if it only costs AMD 200 dollars to make a graphics card and they sell it for 300 dollars, then people see it as more reasonable.

Just wanted to give a perspective with performance numbers aside, because I'm sure some people just look at how much it costs and say that it is overpriced. Besides, if anything comes out of this it will be that nvidia drops the prices on their graphic cards in subsequent releases, which only benefits the consumer.

 

Coming out of the factory, the 7970m and 680m chips cost roughly the same to produce...this coming from the mouth of the production manager at tsmc

and i disagree with OP...the 680m is severely overpriced. If nvidia dropped their prices to even $100 over 7970m, we would not be having this discussion

 

Exactly! And that's about all that truly matters. In the end, competition begets more worthwhile developments/products begets better market begets happier consumers.

 

Hahaha, they aint gonna drop price on something the know they can charge a premium for and still have it sell....more is the pity!

 

Stevie, one can only hope lol

 

Too true, Bro. I'm thinking of waiting till the price drops just like 580m sli did....unless I can get a good deal on an upgrade/sell my 580m's. It's not affordability that's my problem, moreso the fact I won't be ripped off

 

I find myself wondering which is the lesser of two evils... To be ripped off by AMD through lack of appropriate driver support and releasing a buggy product to market, or spending more for the NVIDIA product and having something that actually works correctly. This is hypothetical right now, but it will be interesting to watch and see how it unfolds. The 7970M CF is like a Ferrari with a flat tire.

I agree that it's not overpriced relative to the return for the "investment" (poor word choice, but you get the point).

 

that's a tough decision. I know for some, the 7970m's xfire work well. I don't know if its only in the R2 that this is the case or there are some with R1's that have the xfire working relatively stably.

PS...flat tires will get fixed.

But it wouldn't be so tough a decision if they didn't charge the exorbitant premium on the 680's

as it stands now, dual cards regardless of which company you choose will leave a bad taste in your mouth

 

That's exactly why I selected "flat tires" for the analogy. I trust it will get fixed, eventually. And when it does it will be truly amazing. It's too late for the arrival of good drivers to be "fashionably late" for AMD, so they need to go overboard by releasing some truly amazing drivers to make up for their blunder without further delay.

But to answer the question, no, it's not just the R1 that has the problems. It does not consistently work correctly in the M18x R2 either and the symptoms are pretty much the same when it doesn't. I think (and, of course, I hope) that all the problems are limited to incompetent drivers.

It seems that there is a high incidence of CrossFire system malfunctions which are occurring with 7970M and the same is true of desktop 7970 CrossFire setups. I've been Googling for days and 7900 series seems to have problems in multi-GPU configurations regardless of the platform. The black screen crashes, BSOD issues and artifacts appear to be a hallmark. If you had a system with a single GPU, the 7970M is a nice upgrade because it is the fastest widely available mobile GPU at this point in time. Installing a single 7970M in an M18x would be a pointless waste of money and not really an upgrade from GTX 580M SLI because the performance is so similar, only with poor driver support for the 7970M, LOL.

What we cannot really understand without having more information available to us is how much of the financial overhead for NVIDIA GPUs is accounted for in terms of having decent driver support. If AMD is spending very little on R&D and driver support and NVIDIA is, that might have a significant impact on the cost.

 

Dunno 'bout you guys but I look at the previous "recent" history of AMD gpu's/drivers and they dont exactly inspire confidence. Having something work well on one platform and poorly on another smacks of incompetence. I am not saying team green don't drop the ball, its just that they don't seem to fumble it in their own end-zone quite as often.

Any money spent is still money spent, I prefer a fully working product regardless of wether I am paying £10 for a toaster or £1000 for gpu's. Just because AMD's product is half the price, its only a bargain if it actually works properly 100% of the time. I wouldnt want to be in the position of "having to wait" until AMD get their act together (if they ever do) nor do I want to shell out an exhorbitant amount for Nvidia.

I gues the middle ground will appear once the dust settles....maybe in a few months time. Early adoption is something I have never been fond of.....

 

This is the one issue that keeps me teetering between the 7970 and the 680. I have always been an Nvidia fanboy because of AMD/ATI's awful driver support, but the price leap is so damn big. I remember my first and ONLY ATI card had issues running Oblivion because anytime I went near an Oblivion gate the game would come to a crawl at around 1-5 frames per sec. They eventually fixed the issue on the driver side of things but I had to stay away from Oblivion gates for a good 2 weeks. I expect better than that when shelling out $400+ for a card.

 

Yes, but I the point I was trying to convey was that a lot of people won't consider what goes in to a product so much as looking at the actual price of something, more of a general statement using the examples of both graphic cards rather than actually discussing the cards.

 

It is hard to say what means that something is 'overpriced'. A pair of jeans from Zara costs 50-70 EUR. A pair of jeans from Levis* costs 100-120. I don't wear Zara and I do wear Levi's so I pay those 100 every time I buy a pair. (* Put your choice of brand there)

Is Levi's overpriced? These days any jeans are pretty much the same so there isn't really the question of quality per se involved.

In other words, there are two factors at play: your brand preference and your financial ability (since some drive Aston Martin and some drive Ford). Like nvidia and can pay for it? Go for 680M. Like it but can't afford it? Go for AMD. This why there are two companies offering differently priced range of cards.

Talking affording AMD GPUs: if getting those don't forget to come up with a fancy 'excuse story' about not getting nvidia after all, so you keep on looking good. There's already too many of those in here.

Seriously though, it is not a shame to be unwilling to pay 4-5k for a laptop since that is indeed crazy. It is silly, though, to lie or make excuses on an internet forum to impress a bunch of complete strangers.

 

I guess I am a jaded marketing person. The price is what the market will bear. I ordered 680m SLI, I like nvidia and over the long haul I suspect the extra 600 buck cdn will blend into the wood work

I have had both AMD and nVidia over time and been both delighted and frustrated. For now, the 680m seems to offer lots of headroom in SLI with a strong reputation

 

I have owned several sli/crossfire configurations I the past, and I can honestly say that I have never seen or experienced desirable results. Perhaps my patience has deminished over the years, but when I sit down to play a game, I just want the game to work. I don't want to do endless tweaking and setting changes in hopes that I'll hit the sweet spot for optimal game play. There is a reason that sli/crossfire configurations are becoming more scarce (speaking portably of course).
When it comes to choosing AMD or Nvidia, the biggest question I ask myself is, "Who supports their product better?". It doesn't do me any good to have a Ferrari with a flat tire and no perceivable ETA of a fix (credit to Fox). I would be much happier paying a little extra knowing that I was going to be better taken care of.

Gabe

 

Just a heads up, dell rep Frank_L said that the 680M is definitely a 4GB version, the Dell website saying it's only 2GB is just a typo

 

You realize you're setting me up for some emotional outburst of some kind come Tuesday when mine arrives!

 

This needs to be confirmed. This is a serious mistake, and not just a "typo" there, if that's really the case.

 

I agree. This needs to be formally acknowledged by Dell as to what people are buying. If its a mistake and its 4gb vRam, people need to KNOW about it. If its not, then people again need to be made aware that it is indeed a 2gb vRam card as the website suggests.

It wouldnt surprise me if the website was incorrect as the psu issue is also a mistake .....

 

If the card truly packs 4gb of memory its important to know. Combine that with the fact that its a 670 Ti instead of 660 Ti it justifies its price tag right there considering in the past the flagship mobile card was made from a lower tier desktop card, didn't have 4GB of memory, and wasn't on a brand new manufacturing process but the 680M remains to be at the same $800 price point. Nvidia's point of view is probably that their card is a bargain. And they'd be right.

 

I want this card so bad, I just wish it was cheaper. Oh Nvidia, what you do to me.

 

Fact of the matter is, the price difference between the 7970 and the 680 is TOO MUCH. Nvidia has to understand that it's main competition with the 680 is the 7970 and that they have to be competitive with their prices! Benchmarks are WAY too close to have that big of a difference in price. AMD has done an amazing job with their hardware and their price is AMAZING. I support AMD 100% and I am extremely happy with my purchase.
I wrote a thread about the 7970 for anyone who wants to read up on it.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/673687-if-youre-worried-about-buying-7970-a.html

 

What I dislike about the GPU prices are regional differences.

For example, Canada/US prices for Alienware systems are identical. Sometimes Canadian GPU upgrades are 10-30% more expensive. Sometimes they're an exact match. Sometimes US GPU's are more expensive.

Our dollars are equal, give or take 1%, and have been for a very long time, so I don't see the reason to mark it up on either side

 

TommydCat, would you be kind enough to run GPU-Z on your GTX 680M and see if the memory is 2 or 4GB?

Thanks in advance, I hope this will clear any doubts about the 2GB vs 4GB discussion.


Btw, when do you guys think the 680M will have a price drop? Like the 580M last year

 

But, of course!
Emotional outburst of some kind thrown in at no additional charge.

 

I PMed a Dell tech here in this forum and he just got back to me: 680Ms in m18xR2 come with 2GB of VRAM. There is no 'typo' on the website.

 

That's it then... The Dell reps are no smarter than my 5 year old pet rock. Now I know what kind of customer support I should be expecting if/when the time comes.

 

Hahaha, I think it's just the sales guys are not very well "edcucated" with these systems. It's been pointed out to Dell US by numerous guys on various conference calls....they need to have better knowledge...you cant expect them to "sell" something they have no idea about LOL

 

If you don't believe me, it IS 4GB

Spoiler

 

Exactly the problem there, which is why I love Sager resellers like XoticPC and PNB. They're reps are sufficiently knowledgeable and help you out with just about anything, with highly accurate information. They're not screen readers like this.

Well, an email is just as credible as a chat session with a Dell rep. We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

 

That quote "It is a mistake, usually lowest is 4GB" reeks of someone confusing VRAM for system RAM, as the answer to "usually lowest" is never 4GB for a GPU. Even for system RAM, it should be 6GB.

 

Can somebody with a 680M and 680M SLi post a GPU-Z window here?

Seems the debate of 2GB and 4GB continues :/

 

How silly... I think one of the Alienware Tech Support reps has already confirmed in a post the 2GB description is a typo. There used to be a typo that said their SSD drives were SATA 2.0 3GB/s, too. A GPU-Z screen shot would be good way to stop people from burning calories on this debate.

 

imo the mobile versions should cost LESS then desktop ones because they don't require anykind of cooling. the manufacturer just makes the pcb.
it doesn't even require acessories, manual, box and everything as well as paying a lot to the distribution channels.
the only reason why Dell and others charge so much for those cards is because the client doesn't have any alternative.
it's not like in desktops where you can go to a store and buy whatever card you want.