The Ever-Expensive Power

I upgraded from my Nvidia TNT2 to an Nvidia GeForce TI 4200 in 2002. I thought I was paying an exorbitant amount for a graphics card. As I was buying it, another dude walked in the computer shop and paid over $600 in cash to buy a high-end ATI card. I was stunned. My TNT card cost less than a $100 and the GeForce was around $250. But over $600 for a graphics card! Since then, the price of the top graphics card has inched even higher.

Today, Nvidia stated that they sold 1.5 million SLI motherboards. That is astonishing because these motherboards can accept two high-end graphics cards. In other words, the two graphics cards alone will cost the consumer at least $1600. According to Tom's Hardware, because of high demand the geeks likely pay around $2000 for their two puppies. On top of this, they need an awesome, and expensive, power supply to feed the two monsters.

$2000. That's more than the entire cost of the components in my tower.