Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, states in an interview at CES 2025 that Nvidia has significantly reduced computer costs. In fact, graphics cards have evolved tremendously over the past years and decades. However, not only performance but also prices continue to rise.
What does Jensen Huang say? In an interview quoted by PCGamer, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, talks about the past and future of graphics cards.
In this conversation, the CEO of Nvidia claims that Nvidia, through its relentless pursuit of faster and more powerful graphics processors over the last 20 years, has “reduced the costs of data processing by a million times.”
This might seem strange to many gamers at first. Because if we look at the market and consider the prices of graphics cards, in 2024 the prices for graphics cards and computer components were higher than ever. Nvidia had already unsettled gamers with the high prices of the RTX 4000 series and the launch of the RX 5000 series is no different.
Graphics cards and hardware have developed significantly over the last 20 years
In comparison, graphics cards have made a huge leap forward, at least when comparing the performance of the components:
- The GeForce 6800 Ultra offered a performance of 6.4 Gflops in 2004 (April 14). That was a significant achievement at the time. ATi (now AMD) followed with its Radeon X800 XT PE.
- The modern RTX 4060, on the other hand, offers a performance of 15,100 GFLOPs (or 15.1 Tflops).
Back then, one paid a recommended retail price of 550 Euros for the GeForce 6800 Ultra in Germany, while today, one pays a recommended retail price of 329 Euros for an RTX 4060. You get much greater performance for less money. At least when comparing only the raw computing power of the two graphics cards.
While Jensen Huang does not provide any numbers or a formula for how he arrived at this – a “million-fold reduction” does seem a bit of an exaggeration.
Graphics card prices are also rising in 2025
The newly introduced graphics cards of the RX 5000 series are priced very high and are hardly cheaper than the previous generation:
- RTX 5090, $1,999
- RTX 5080, $999
- RTX 5070 Ti, $749
- RTX 5070, $549
Many gamers are anything but enthusiastic about this. Because the high prices discourage many from upgrading their systems.
Is there any good news? Yes, because generally speaking: when a new generation of graphics cards comes out, the prices of the old generation usually drop. Therefore, in the coming weeks and months, Nvidia graphics card prices could go down. Because retailers usually try to sell off remaining stock to make room for the new generation.
Recommendations for graphics cards: If you are looking for an upgrade for your gaming PC, check out our graphics card rankings. Here we present all the important graphics cards from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia that are currently worth buying: The best graphics cards for gaming for every budget
