johncalvinyoung

Marvin said:

blastdoor said:

CheeseFreeze said:

$800 for a GPU upgrade is offensive. It's like Mr. Cook randomly pulls a lever and takes that value. As an upgrade price, $400 would be more reasonable.

Compared to what? How is $800 offensive but $400 just fine? Doesn't it depend on what you're getting for the money? 

Upgrading to the highest spec, especially in a laptop, is often very expensive and makes sense only for a small minority of users. If you don't see the value in the option, don't choose it. Otherwise, why should you be "offended" that this option (and it is an OPTION) is made available to people who might appreciate it? 

At first I figured it must be AMD setting the prices but other manufacturers are pricing this line of GPUs much lower. Here's a laptop with a faster RX 5600M laptop for $879, $1299 for 1TB SSD and 16GB RAM:

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-dell-g5-15-se-gaming-laptop/spd/g-series-15-5505-laptop/gn5505dyics
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-dell-g5-15-se-gaming-laptop/spd/g-series-15-5505-laptop/gn5505dymms

Apple's cheapest option for the 5600M is $3199. Given that manufacturers can sell an entire laptop with a faster version of that chip for $879 and still make a profit, Apple charging $800 just for the GPU upgrade seems a bit excessive.

They are using HBM memory instead of GDDR, which adds something to the cost but it shouldn't be all that much extra.

They might be pricing it to avoid it being a mainstream option if it runs hotter than the lower performance GPUs. If they priced it reasonably, more people would buy it and possibly complain about thermals. We'll see when the reviews come in if it runs hotter.

It's nice to have the option at least. I hope this doesn't mean they'll be skipping RDNA2 GPUs (September) until next year though. RDNA2 is supposed to come with a 50% performance-per-watt increase. If that turns out to be true, I'd rather have an entry model with RDNA2 in September.