Introduction
A lot of change has been taking place in the PC graphics market. The rivalry between ATI (now AMD) and NVIDIA over who produces the best graphics card has undoubtedly benefited the consumer in the long run. The problem is that the rivalry is also beginning to cause problems with the graphics card industry that go against most of the tenants of the rest of the computer industry.
Even the industry admits that the majority of their graphics cards sold fall into lower cost parts. In fact, some of their high end parts actually end up as loss leaders for the manufacturers. By having their name associated with the fastest and best translate into better sales of the lower parts. But this need to have the best is causing some less than stellar design decisions that are pushing the industry into some of the wrong directions.
Escalating Costs
For the most part, the computer industry has either kept prices fairly constant or they have decreased over the years. For example, a top of the line hard drive a few years ago cost roughly $400. Today a top of the line hard drive costs roughly the same, but comes with a much larger capacity. This same trend does not hold true for the graphics card business though.
Many years ago, a graphics card typically cost around $100 for a desktop computer system. The high end graphics cards would run a consumer around $300. This changed when ATI and NVIDIA really began to push for supremacy in the frame rates. Gradually, the top of the line graphics card prices edged up. First it was $400, then $500. Things stabilized for a while at the $600 price mark, but NVIDIA recently smashed that price level with the release of the GeForce 8800 Ultra at the unbelievable price of $800.
This price escalation of the high-end graphics cards is also pushing up the prices of the lower price segments as well. Budget graphics cards used to be ones that would cost up to $100. Now even the $200 price barrier is gradually being pushed up toward the $250 to $300 price range. The graphics cards companies concede that the majority of their sales comes in these budget categories and not the top of the line cards, so a price increase at the high end still benefits them in the segment that they sell more of.
Increasing Power Consumption
In the early days of the graphics card market, all of the graphics cards and processors were able to run inside of a computer card slot without the need of additional power from the power supply. This has changed rapidly over the past few years. Graphics processors began consuming more and more power. Today some models draw more power than the CPU of the computer system!
This need for additional power to drive the graphics cards have caused significant change in the PC technology. With the growth of the newer PCI-Express bus, new power standards were also created. With the possibility of 75W of power being supplied by the bus, it is now possible to have graphics cards that don't require external power again. Many graphics cards still draw more power than the bus supplies so power supply standards also created the new PCI-Express 6-pin power connectors.
With the PCI-Express standard being on the market for less than two years, these new power standards are already being surpassed. With the release of the ATI R600 graphics processor series, the power consumption has quickly outstripped the original PCI-Express standards. A new PCI-Express 2.0 power connector with 8-pins is now needed to properly power some cards that require up to 300W or more of power.
The worst part of this is that both ATI and NVIDIA have designs for multiple graphics cards to further increase the 3D acceleration. The problem is that using extra cards puts even more demands on the computer's power supply. It has grown to the point that desktop PCs can consume as much as a full kilowatt of power when everything is running at full capacity.
Ever Larger Designs
With the increasing need for power to run the graphics card, another issue has cropped up that the manufacturers and consumers must deal with. One of the key byproducts of electrical current running through the graphics card is heat. As the power levels increase, so does the heat the cards produce. This was previously dealt with by adding in heatsinks and fans that could cool the cards and still fit in a standard PC slot.
The problem is that high-end graphics cards have been unable to remove the heat with the types of cooling previously used. Now most top of the line cards use a dual card slot design. This design increase the size of the heatsink to cover the card and then a fan with ducts that pull air through the heatsink and out of the desktop case. They are quite effective at removing the heat, but it causes space problems inside of cases.
The end result though is a graphics card that fits in fewer computer systems. With the size of desktop computer cases getting smaller, the graphics systems are taking up more and more of the space inside of the system. This isn't a problem for full size cases, but more and more systems are sold as compact towers or even small form factor designs that simply don't have the space to fit these large high performance graphics cards.
Conclusions
The high-end graphics card market is out of control. With the costs, power and size of these getting bigger every year, the companies will be alienating more and more of their customers. The average consumer is not running a 30-inch widescreen monitor for their PC games or trying to render an animated movie from the likes of Pixar in real time. Sure, more and more people will be looking to get Direct X 10 compatible cards, but they need to be in the $100 to $200 range not those that they are currently releasing and marketing.
It is time for the designers to start thinking more about efficiency for their designs. More and more people are looking towards mobile computers which is reducing the number of desktops sold. The shortcuts they are taking for these desktop designs won't work for mobile computers. As a result, they need to look for designs that will be more efficient, use less space and cost less to implement.
