The ATI Radeon HD 5970, aside being from the fastest graphics card in the world, is several things: hot enough to sear the skin off your fingers, for instance, and so huge that it’ll barely fit inside the average ATX case.

At £520 inc VAT for a stock version, it’s also one of the most expensive graphics cards available in the UK – and, when the same card costs $599 in the US, that seems like a tremendous rip-off.

We’ve asked ATI to clarify exactly how it arrived at this price – after all, a straight conversion of the American price would see the HD 5970 costing around £360 – but the firm’s replies have only consisted of the usual corporate excuses, with VAT, shipping costs and exchange rates all blamed for the 42% price hike.

So, how likely are these oft-used excuses?

Exchange rates and the volatile world economy, for instance, are often cited as major reasons for inflated prices – but I can’t see why. Firms like Adobe have claimed in the past that “we don’t take into account the currency” when pricing a product; instead, it’s easier (and more profitable) to set a price that reflects “the value that customers place on products” – so, the maximum amount that they’re willing to pay – and leave it at that. It seems that ATI plays by the same rules.

ATI’s other excuses don’t hold up to scrutiny, either. Shipping costs, for instance: why should a card manufactured in Asia cost so much more to distribute in Europe than the US? Inevitably some higher costs are involved when shipping to the more fragmented European market, but surely ATI benefits from economies of scale. After all, product manager David Baumann has reassured eager buyers that “most of the thousands of [HD 5000-series cards] shipped so far have gone to Europe”.

Mainland Europe, however, appears to have been hit even harder: buy the HD 5970 in Germany and you’ll pay around €619, which is 53% more than you’d pay in the US and 10% more than you’d pay here  in the UK.

ATI’s other major excuse was VAT – but with the 15% tax removed from the cost of the card it’d still cost £452, and that’s still far from the US figure. Prices are set to rise again at the end of the year, too, as VAT returns to its old rate of 17.5%.

According to a leading British PC firm, though, it’d be unfair to heap the blame exclusively onto ATI, even if its wholesale prices remain “excessive”. A spokesperson for the firm, which wishes to remain anonymous, speculated that some retailers are “making hay while the sun shines” by adding “as much as 40%” to wholesale prices – and confirming that, if he had any stock, “it simply wouldn’t be worth selling [the HD 5970] at the usual 5% margin”.

It seems that no single party is innocent, with every step in the supply chain getting their money’s worth from the most expensive graphics card around: ATI is selling the HD 5970 at an “excessive” price to its partners, he said, “who are selling it at an increased price” to distributors which are, in turn, “making a good 10%-15%” on their normal prices – and that’s before the retailers get hold of the card and add in their own margins.

Yet, ATI still has to accept the lion’s share of the blame. After all, an ATI spokesperson told us that “EMEA prices tend to be higher than US prices” and, if ripping off customers who happen to live outside America seems to be the done thing, there’s little incentive for ATI – or any of the other businesses involved – to call a halt to this practice. It’s just disheartening that the only people who suffer are some of ATI’s most important assets: its customers.