Graphics card ridiculously expensive?

Could you post a link to the laptop?

Edit: I looked around and it seems that there are way too many version of RTX 3070 for my head to compare easily. This site may help you: https://www.techspot.com/review/2206-geforce-rtx-3070-laptop-vs-desktop/

There was a graphics shortage for over a year. Seems to have gotten better the last few months.

Because there is chip shortage and bitcoin, so graphic cards are expensive like that. Cars are also effected by the chip shortage as even second hand car is almost same price as a new car as before.

You can't compare the RTX 3070 in a laptop with the desktop GPU 1:1 as a laptop card with the same name offers much less performance. To complicate things further: there is not one laptop RTX 3080/70/60 but depending on the power level the laptop manufacturer bakes in via firmware on the GPU e.g. a low powered 3070 may be weaker than a high powered 3060.

But in principle you're right I bought a gaming laptop with a 3060 for the same reason: the hardware is significantly weaker as their desktop counterparts but still powerful enough to play every game you throw at it and the whole computer costs not much more than a desktop GPU alone. Plus modern gaming laptops have 144 Hz IPS panels or better and a monitor for a desktop pc with similar specs costs a few hundred additional bucks extra.

As Ethereum which is mined with GPUs dropped in value we see now the first desktop cards sold at or close to MSRP since two years.

also, desktop GPU != laptop GPU

Preferred GPU brand?

I used AMD for many, many years and a few years back I switched to Nvidia. Overall I've had a much better experience with Nvidia than AMD for both hardware and software.

I'm an Nvidia guy right now, but looking for AMD to make a comeback...I'd like to see them driving down prices some more. They've certainly helped with their huge performance comeback in CPUs -- I'd love for this to happen with GPUs too.

The new AMD GPUs look really promising. I just bought a new GPU (3090ti - yep, I actually got one of those monsters), so I won't be switching for the foreseeable future...but I build a lot of custom PCs for friends, and if AMD has a good offering, I'd certainly look at it for other PCs that I build.

Laptop graphics cards are also never as powerful as a desktop card so remember you wont get the same performance from a laptop. Also i have been seeing GPU's at retail prices now the shortage and mining boom has dropped off.