A weak dollar is one thing but the cost of living in Europe as a whole is ridiculous when compared to the US. Not too long ago, I lived in the UK - in a nice 4 room apt. In the states, that translated over to a 20 room house
The rent in the apt costed about the same as the Ultra. I'm in a much better financial position now but I still can't imagine blowing that much cash on a graphics card. Even right now, that stuff costs twice as much in the UK as the US which is just plain wrong :shadedshu
The card is relatively cheaper than its predecessors, but not by much & that's only one online store. I know that extra cash you're paying is going to all the tariffs being placed on Asian products but at some point you have to say its just excessive
We're are going totally off-topic.
The cost of living in Europe is ridiculous indeed, but I have to say that UK AFAIK is well above the average and we could say UK is not Euro Zone. BUT when it comes to hardware or electronics prices are not excesive taking into account the average salaries. Yes we have to exclude Portugal, Greece, Eastern Europe countries and yeah Spain, as they are below the average, while prices are the same (I am from Basque Country an "economically independent" region that is above EU average, though). So it's dificult in those countries to pay as much money, but not on others and not by the average. Last time I checked average yearly salary for the EU was 34.000 euros, while at the same time in US was $32.000, in Finland was 47.000 euros and Germany 42.000 BTW. Those salaries are mitigated by the cost of living as a whole, but that means they can buy less houses, eat less, drink less and drive less, BUT they can buy hardware easily, which was my point. Hardware is "cheap", living is expensive. The prices for an apartment in Spain is also ridiculous thanks to the housing bubble derived from the establishment of the euro and the rounding of prices. Happened the same on pretty much everything but things were getting better until the global crysis. Basically 1 euro = 166 pesetas (spanish currency before euro), but most bussineses did 1 euro = 100 peseta so you can see the difference. Important to note that the same didn't happen in the salaries, of course.
In the end things are not a lot better in Spain than in Portugal, in comparison to most countries in the EU, even though they are percentually (as to say) better. In my post I was talking about EU in general as prices are set for the entire EU with slight differences and are calculated with the average purchaser in mind. As I said in France hardware is the more expensive in the world! And that shop is particularly expensive, look at other prices. If previous generations of cards are going to be any indicator, that is, Nvidia didn't change their pricing policy this time around, 582 euros in that shop from France means the card would not cost more than $600 in US and 550 euros in Spain, probably even cheaper in Germany. With the possibility of one vendor selling the card well below that mark, as this is something that happens a lot in Europe and is probably related to the fact that 582 euros = 900 dollar. i.e. when I bought my card for 200 euros, the average was above 250 and the next cheaper card I could ind was 230...
EDIT:
Haha! I was watching TV and they have started talking about the
crisis and in the same moment they mentioned it I just realised I had written
crysis in this post. Just another fact of the ubiquitous presence of Crysis.
