A year from now a desktop 6990 might be worth a quarter of what it's worth now.
Not really. Even the 5970 desktop dual GPU has retained 95% of it's original value since it's release in 2009, 2 years ago.
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Search eBay for Mobility 5870 or even 4870 and you'll see what I mean.
Those are sold by amateurs who think they're worth a lot & can scalp buyers,
or chinese manuf. with random stockpiles, you can't even upgrade GPUs on the vast majority of laptops
On most laptops (except very high end ones) they are soldered onto the motherboard so there is no way to switch them out
The MXM 3.0 slot is slowly being adopted by laptop manufacturers and will soon be the standard for the mobile video card market. Those "amateurs" don't think they are worth a lot. They are worth a lot. Mobile gpus still go by the old rule "half the power at twice the cost".
Oh, and it can probably game pretty well too.