Is it more expensive to manufacture high end videocards?

Just out of curiousity...

Does a 8800 Ultra cost 500$+ more to make than a low end 8 series card? Or is the extra money just for R&D and what not?

Same with CPUs, is the Celeron manufacturing process significantly cheaper than the Core 2 Duo?

Not complaining or anything, just wondering.

 

Yes. One of the things with manufacturing, especially with things like CPU's, GPU's, etc. is that the more complex parts are more expensive.

It's not so much that each individual part costs more, but the failure rate are higher....... the more complex the video card, the more failures there will be....... so just hypothetically, let's say that for every 100 8800 Ultras made, only 20 actually pass the tests (i.e. all the pipelines work, whatever). So it makes the cost to manufacturer an 8800 Ultra much higher.

Oftentimes the lower end parts are actually the "failed" high-end parts............. this is one reason that sometimes people have been able to get lucky and find a lower end part that might have failed a test for some reason but be able to successfully flash it into a high end card.

 

What Zadillo has said is very correct. The yields that manufacturers can achieve is often a small percentage, and alot of cores simpy cannot be used. So, if for example, you take Zadillo's example of one hundred 8800 Ultra cores built, the remaining 80% could be used in other cards, such as the slightly lower clocked 8800 GTX or the 8800 GTS is not all the stream processors are active.

Manufactuers, can this way, recycle some of what would be wasted, and sell it to make a resonable profit. The same is true for processors. The Celeron M is simply a Core 2 Duo core, where the second core didn't function correctly. So, Intel simply disable that core, and sell the processor as a single core processors. It works for both the consumer, because they end up with a cheaper processor, and Intel, because they can shift and sell cores that would have otherwised ended up in the bin.

 

right, right, but you haven't mentioned that even technically high-end graphics parts are more expensive - they use the most expensive memory, they have the most complex multilayer circuit boards, the most complicated cooling systems, the bigger and more powerful power circuitry and of course you are paying extra for the best enthusiast hardware out there that doesn't have a large market share.

 

well if they didnt cost more then it wouldnt be reasonable for them to charge alot for them! if it cost the same to produce low-end and high-end cards then there wouldnt be much of a need for anything in between. Why would you buy a mid-range card if you can get the high-end for the same price? They don't just charge alot for high-end cuz it's the best version, this would not exactly be very smart. companies like nvidia want to make as much money and sell as many cards as possible and with competition being what it is, if high-end cards cost the same to make as their low-end then all ATI would need to do to win the race would simply be to sell their cards at a significantly lower price than nvidia. this would mean you could buy the ATI high-end dirt cheap while the nvidia equivalent costs a fortune, as long as their performance is similar, only an idiot fanboy would go for the nvidia and even he will hear a voice in his head saying he is stupid lol

with any type of product, manufacturing the higher, better quality and newer thing is often more expensive due to the higher failure rates and complexity of production. r&d also plays a part in this, they will have spent alot of money testing, producing and researching new technologies and they have to get their money back otherwise why bother spending money to make something that won't repay you?

I think one of the reasons Intel couldnt release their p4 4ghz+ CPUs was due to lack of commercially available samples and also the infamous heat issues. If they produce something that has a higher rate of failure and cost of materials and production then they have to consider the cost of the products that they produce which fail their quality tests.

so the combination of r&d, expensive components, probability of producing successful samples, more expensive and complicated production methods, etc... all play a huge part in its price. nvidia and ATI probably make more money from their low-end markets due to business and mainstream computer users being the bulk of the market.

However back in the early days of the celeron and p2, Intel took their more expensive p2 CPUs and downclocked them to slower p2 and celerons in order to compete with AMDs cheaper models. Today Sony prices their PS3 very low that they are said to be losing money cuz their production costs are higher. sometimes they will take a hit in profit in the short run to reach an objective in the long run.