6800 Ultra 512MB – an insult to the consumer?

GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB has been shipped out to stores worldwide and the only difference with other cards is that current 6800 Ultra-cards “only” has half as much memory, 512MB compared to 256MB. As we reported on earlier 256MB graphic memory is more than enough today, even when it comes to high end-cards. The really humouring thing is that not only the amount of memory is doubled but also the price, the pricetag is more or less twice as high.

 

According to Anandtech’s “price agent” the cheapest 512MB 6800 Ultra-card costs $999 dollar today, the very same card can be bought from the same store but with 256MB for $520 dollar. There is nothing that motivates such a difference in price when the difference in performance is practically none. Overall the launch of 512MB graphic cards seems a bit hasty and not really thought through. Whether this is a race ATI and NVIDIA has forced eachother into is uncertain, but it is pretty clear there is really no use for such cards today and quite a while into the future.

Source: Anandtech