| HoloDust said: @Blue Falcon - as usual, you never fail to deliver. Great post, thanks for that breakdown table. What I find interesting in it is that ATI's card that costs 199$ (7870 can be found for as low as 209.99$) is manufactured for 119$, and GPU part is just 50$. Considering that 2 other major parts are RAM and Thermal, and both will be shared between CPU and GPU in console, GPU that is close to 7870 really doesn't seem so far stretched. |
Thanks!
You are right that it's surprising that the GPU chips aren't actually $200+ parts. Most people don't factor in the supply-chaing --> retail middle-men costs along the way. Then they assume that a $500 GPU costs $350-400 to manufacture. In reality, once AMD/NV sell the parts to AIBs, then AIBs have to put these parts together, pay for their marketing/advertising, shipping costs, warranty costs, etc. and then the AIBs and retailers also tack on profits for selling these products. Then we end up with a GPU that sells for $350 on Newegg but really MS/Sony could buy it directly for ~$160.
Here is the breakdown for costs for older generations. When HD4890 sold for about $217 in retail, the components for it cost $121 (GPU chip was $55). When GTX285 was going for $350 MSRP, the total components were about half of that, or $163 (GPU chip cost $90). It's pretty clear from the chart I posted earlier and this even older gen chart that NV charges much more for their parts at similar performance levels (HD4870 Kit was $87 to buy and it had better performance than GTX260 that you'd have to purchase for $114). This explains why AMD was able to win all 3 designs in next gen consoles.
I haven't been able to find the latest generational cost for HD7000/GTX600 series but I'll link it if I do.
Based on these cost breakdowns, I am pretty disappointed if Xbox 720 will only end up with an HD7770Ghz GPU. I was honestly hoping for HD7850-7870 for both PS4/720. I suppose MS might focus more on differentiating features such as Kinect 2.0 or some other things we don't know about.
