Graphics cards are really expensive, but one GPU tops all other models in price. What kind of graphics card costs as much as a small car?
Graphics cards have become expensive and some gamers fear that PC gaming could soon become a costly luxury good. After all, the RTX 4090 now costs over 1,800 euros.
But a graphics card that Dell is currently offering in its UK shop tops the price of an RTX 4090. It costs 13,800 British pounds, which is approximately 16,000 euros.
Graphics card still used in supercomputers today
What kind of graphics card is it? This expensive graphics card is a Quadro QV100 from Nvidia. It contains a Volta GV100 graphics processor and 32 GB of HBM2 VRAM with a 4096-bit wide memory bus. Nvidia launched the GPU in March 2018.
With the Quadro graphics cards, Nvidia primarily targeted professional users who needed to process large data sets. Even today, these Quadro cards are still used in large supercomputers.
Is the card worth it if it were cheaper? No, for a modern gamer, this graphics card would not be worth it. This is partly because the graphics card relies on a Volta graphics chip, and these are no longer supported by Nvidia’s DLSS. DLSS was long considered a miracle solution for significantly increasing FPS. However, many players now believe that developers no longer optimize for players because of DLSS.
In practice, it would still be faster than Nvidia’s former flagship, the GTX 1080 Ti, but it could no longer keep up with the modern graphics cards of the 3rd or 4th RTX generation.
The colleagues from PCGamer explain that the price of 13,800 British pounds is significantly above the manufacturer’s suggested retail price. After all, Nvidia only demanded “only” 9,000 US dollars for the graphics card at release. And that is still higher than the prices of the gaming models from back then:
- The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cost 819 euros at release in March 2018.
- For the regular GTX 1080, you paid “only” 635 euros, after Nvidia lowered the price following the release of the Ti version.
- For that money, you might get an RTX 4070 or an AMD RX 6900 XT with a bit of luck today.
But old graphics cards do not always have to become significantly more expensive. A gamer recently had great luck and got the graphics card of his dreams for only 300 euros, even though it used to cost more than 1,200 euros.
It can get even more expensive: A German company has now presented a gaming PC that costs a whopping 28,999 euros. For that money, you could already buy a small car or go on a luxurious holiday. You can read about everything that is included in this luxury gaming PC directly on MeinMMO:
German company presents gaming PC with Nvidia’s RTX 4090: It weighs 14 kg and costs as much as a car
