Devil's advocate: adjusted for inflation the 8800 ultra was a $1100 card, and that was far less technically complicated then a 4090 is. The 4090 occupies the space previously led by dual GPU cards, which commonly were $1000+, which nobody seemed to have an issue with back in the day. Sure, part of this is greed, but part of this is rapidly rising prices globally.
Nvidia's margins ARE rising, yes, up to 45% for 2023. But at the same time, how much of that is $45000 AI GPUs being sold to huge corporations skewing said margin?
Current and historical operating margin for NVIDIA (NVDA) over the last 10 years. The current operating profit margin for NVIDIA as of January 31, 2025 is <strong>54.34%</strong>.
www.macrotrends.net
Dont forget the ongoing trade wars with china, which are raising GPU prices further, among other things. The days of high end 102 class GPUs being $500 is long gone and buried, much like 8GB mid range GPUs.
As for EVGA, while nvidia does deserve some blame, so does EVGA. They mismanaged themselves into the ground and repeatedly bought into a generation heavily just before the next gen came out, which most would say was a very dumb move. I've yet to hear about these zotac rumors, but it's telling that none of these AIBs will make AMD cards, despite nvidia being so evil.
See, I dont see how $750 for a 7900xt is a bad value. That's the price it should have been from the start.
That's just AMD doing AMD things. They do NOT care about the lower class. Arguably nobody does when demand outstrips supply, but ever since ryzen took off AMD has totally forgotten about budget builders. Look at the price of their CPUs.