GeForce 7800 GTX 512 is overpriced

Yesterday, NVIDIA hard-launched the GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB to some very positive press. We were pretty impressed too, based on the £430 asking price that we were given prior to publishing our review.

However, we've been searching around many of the UK and US online retailers that we would expect to have stock, looking for one priced anywhere near the suggested £430/$649 retail price. We're yet to find one.

In fact, the cheapest GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB we have found is Gainward's Ultra/3550PCX 512MB on Komplett at £475.00. That card is clocked at 550/1700MHz - the same as the reference clock speeds. It's not in stock, either. Komplett are also listing the Point of View and XFX models with no stock expected on those until next week.

Overclockers have the BFGTech and Leadtek cards in stock for £528 and £511 respectively, while they're listing the XFX Extreme XXX Edition at £511 too. Both Ebuyer and Scan are also listing the XFX card at an equally worrying £517. Ebuyer are listing the card with stock overdue.

On the other side of the pond, Newegg are listing the XFX and BFGTech cards for $749 - $100 over MSRP. Again, they're not in stock. MWave have stock for the XFX part, but are asking $799 a piece! Monarch won't have stock until November 30th, but they'll be asking $699 for the BFGTech card, and they're wanting the same price for eVGA's, too.

We also checked TigerDirect, who are listing cards from BFGTech, eVGA and XFX at $699. However, those are said to 'ship within 21-30 days'. Finally, we headed over to ZipZoomFly, to find the same three cards at $749. They have stock of the eVGA and XFX parts, but no sign of BFGTech's just yet.

There is some stock available, but the stock that is available isn't priced anywhere near NVIDIA's SRP. In the UK, we're seeing prices closer to £430 plus VAT, rather than the indicated £430 including VAT. If you want to buy one today, you're going to be paying around £80 more than MSRP.

In the US, you're going to have to spend at least $100 more than the expected $649 retail price. I guess all that we can hope for is for the price to come down, and availability to improve. They usually follow each other in a pair, so we hope they meet up and make it happen sooner rather than later.

People still seem to be buying them, as many of the places we have listed had them in stock on launch day. However, until the price comes down, we recommend you look at the Radeon X1800XT 512MB and some of the faster clocked GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB cards. We've reviewed a few of them, and all of them are a good choice at the right price. We recommend you give our Radeon X1800XT 512MB review a good read before making your choice, too. Ultimately, none of the cards are a particularly bad choice, but it will depend on what is available at what price and also on the games that you play.

NVIDIA representatives were unavailable for comment at the time of publication.

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