GTX 690 - The $1000 Beast

[Aeni]

Re: GTX 690 - The $1000 Beast

The introduction price I have seen on a few websites in the uk is £929 which is $1500!!!!! Why the hell we having to pay $500 more for it than you guys?

Isn't that a direct result of the VAT in the Eurozone? I heard that the VAT was the singlemost driver for software costs (i.e., why Adobe Creative Suites cost so much, that you may as well as purchase a roundtrip ticket to NYC, buy the software and still have some money to afford a nice steak dinner, see a Yankee game, a Knicks game and a Broadway musical before flying back home)

[Firewind]

Re: GTX 690 - The $1000 Beast

Honestly it doesn't really change much in the GPU status quo.

Do you want the BEST GPU out there and don't care about how much you will be spending? Buy the latest nVidia card.

Do you want to get the biggest bang for you buck or on a budget? Go for an ATi card because nvidia cards are ludicrously expensive.

Everything else is down to which name you are willing to pay more of your own money for. AKA fanboyism. As a PC gamer I learned to forget about any of my fanboy tendencies I had when the XBox 360 came out. While consoles do hold back PC development, at the same time, I'm still pretty damn grateful that PC gaming is still viable when the publishers have a much cheaper platform to develop on. Yes I stil have my own fanboy preferences but good god I'm always grateful for ANY stable PC release.

I also understand WHY developer prefer consoles. There are far fewer things running on a console that can mess things up, and you are developing with a specific hardware setup in mind. Now try to imagine developing a game that will work on the vast majority of PCs... That's not a bad thing because hey, we can get a stable version of a game out on something! While I personally dislike that, I can see why PC gaming is dead outside of games by indie devs (that will still get a console port anyway).

Actually one reason why PC gaming has always been big in the UK is because it has always been considered as a gaming platform. That very same reason is why the video game crash in the early 80's was purely an American thing. It's just a shame that our government has scared all of the UK based game developers to France, Germany, Canada and the US now due to the Government refuseing to give tax breaks to software companies until this year and even then it won't go into effect until 2013-14 at the very earliest.

The introduction price I have seen on a few websites in the uk is £929 which is $1500!!!!! Why the hell we having to pay $500 more for it than you guys?

I would express my opinion on that but for the sake of saving people from having to hear several hours of vulgarity I will refrain from publicly expressing my opinion.

[Malacite]

Re: GTX 690 - The $1000 Beast

Just another day in screwing over the EU.

Honestly I don't get it either.

[Aeni]

Re: GTX 690 - The $1000 Beast

VAT is 20% in UK and varies elsewhere in the Eurozone. According to some EU charter, the VAT cannot go below 15% for certain categories, which I assume Video Cards fall under. Mind you, this does not include local consumer taxes, import duties and any tariffs placed on certain products that are being imported from certain countries (also called a protectionism tax)

Edit:

There was an article somewhere written by an employee of Adobe (customer support) which attempted to explain why the retailers in EU would charge so high for their products compared with the US and Canada. And the high prices were so uniform throughout Europe, whether or not a country was in the EU. The employee laid out the amount of taxes, fees, duties, etc that was being levied every step of the way from the importer, to the distributor and down to the retailer, where everyone ... EVERYONE ... was getting taxed for taking a cut of the profits. So you can blame the fact that (a) you live in Europe or (b) your lifestyle choices require an exorbitant tax scheme to fund and thus you employee the VAT.

[Raydeus]

Re: GTX 690 - The $1000 Beast

And (c) you don't have a petrodollar scheme (scam) that allows you to simply print money to "pay" out your debts , allowing you to live far beyond your means and having a debt fueled exorbitant lifestyle. As the last time a major producer tried to switch to euros for oil trading they were blamed for a terrorist attack they didn't have anything to do with and were invaded by the Petrodollar army under the guise of a non-existent WMD threat.

[Aeni]

Re: GTX 690 - The $1000 Beast

And (c) you don't have a petrodollar scheme (scam) that allows you to simply print money to "pay" out your debts , allowing you to live far beyond your means and having a debt fueled exorbitant lifestyle. As the last time a major producer tried to switch to euros for oil trading they were blamed for a terrorist attack they didn't have anything to do with and were invaded by the Petrodollar army under the guise of a non-existent WMD threat.

You mean Japan?

Edit:

I know who you meant, but last I checked, Japan was the one country that has been able to run off printing press ink with their debt to income ratio as one of the highest, if not highest, of the developed nations. And don't forget, we fund your country buying all of the crappy narcotics you steal from the neighboring Latin and South American countries.

[Raydeus]

Re: GTX 690 - The $1000 Beast

If that's what the US of A interprets as funding it explains a lot about the current state of things. <_<

[Aeni]

Re: GTX 690 - The $1000 Beast

If that's what the US of A interprets as funding it explains a lot about the current state of things. <_<

You're welcome! Now that the slave masters of the Union are tired of the whining and complaining interlopers from down south and are passing and enacting these anti-immigration laws, they're eyeing the prison population and have found it more lucrative to pass new felony laws to put more and more of our poor folks away and increase their labor pool. They also conveniently moved the threshold of the poverty line without changing it officially to both shore up the labor pool and keep welfare costs down. Unfortuantely, the side effects is that there's also less funding for your narcotics, so you people down south need to find other economic opportunities. I suggest human trafficking.

[Raydeus]

Re: GTX 690 - The $1000 Beast

That sounds like a good idea, but I think we need to start with something simpler. Like killing NAFTA.

[Aeni]

Re: GTX 690 - The $1000 Beast

That sounds like a good idea, but I think we need to start with something simpler. Like killing NAFTA.

(1) My country is full of shit.
(2) My country is also full of shit-heads running it.
(3) Therefore, killing NAFTA is a pipe-dream.
(4) Solution: kidnap many wealthy American kids coming down for Spring Break and ransom for huge money. Not well-connected families, you don't want Big Brother to get involved. Just wealthy enough to make it worthwhile and not wealthy enough for Seal Team "I work for the rich folks" 6 to hunt you down.

---------- Post added at 12:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:06 PM ----------

ITT:

-Nvidia launching new product line aimed at wealthy kids
-Hard core pornography featuring hot Ukranian women oozing STDs out of every orifice