Unless you long to witness the demise of accessible PC gaming, I wouldn’t check Amazon for any Nvidia graphics card right now. Just in the past month, prices on the company’s coveted GPUs have skyrocketed to obscene levels, and it may get worse as time goes on. If you’re looking for somebody to blame for the demise of your next dream PC, the buck might stop at Nvidia’s feet.
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5080 is selling for $500 or more over the base $1,000 launch price on sites like Newegg. The RTX 5090 pricing could best be described as a travesty. Some models are selling for close to $5,000. The card was supposed to settle at a $2,000 base price at launch. The ongoing RAM shortage, which has previously ballooned the price of consumer DRAM (dynamic random access memory) and PC storage units from SSDs to HDDs, has no sign of stopping any time soon.
AI data center projects created such a staggering demand for memory that the major semiconductor manufacturers have all refocused their businesses on supplying industry rather than consumer brands. Nvidia—the company that has gotten rich off selling the chip infrastructure for this buildout—last told us that while “memory supply is constrained,” it will “continue to ship all GeForce SKUs and is working closely with our suppliers to maximize memory availability.” That doesn’t mean much when the price of every GPU you actually wanted is going through the stratosphere.
GPU vendors are in a bad place
The graphics card vendors—also called AIB (add-in board) partners—are taking the brunt of these price hikes. The Korean arm of GPU vendor Zotac published a notice on Tuesday (read via machine translation) that says, “The current situation is so serious that it is worrisome for the future existence of graphic card manufacturers and distributors.” Zotac further claimed that the new price for the RTX 5060 was “staggering.” That’s in addition to the cost of Nvidia’s higher-end GPUs like the RTX 5090. It’s unclear if Zotac Korea was referring to the consumer price of these cards, the cost they pay to Nvidia, or both.
That notice comes just a week after YouTuber Der8auer (via PCGamer) claimed Nvidia had sunset the cashback program it had with AIB partners. This reportedly helped card makers recoup costs on sourcing for some GPU components. It had the added effect of maintaining a market of GPUs at lower prices. AIB partners who don’t have the market size to source their own memory and components to make these cards are being hurt the most, hence the panicked nature of Zotac’s notice.
Gizmodo reached out to Nvidia for comment, and we will update this post if we hear back.
On Amazon, Zotac only shows listings for 8GB graphics cards and none for the higher end. On Newegg, price listings for an RTX 5060 Ti with 16GB of GDDR7 memory are selling for $800. Those higher-end GPUs are making use of at least 16GB of VRAM, which has proved increasingly necessary for gaming at 1440p and 4K resolutions on higher graphics settings.
Nvidia’s mid-range cards are too expensive to consider
Earlier this month, fellow AIB partner Asus was caught in a windstorm of controversy after a respected tech YouTube channel, Hardware Unboxed, reported that the company had killed off production of its GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and other cards with 16GB of VRAM. Asus later tried to refute that news before panic set in. The company claimed it did not put its RTX 5070 Ti or its RTX 5060 Ti (the one with 16GB of VRAM) into “end-of-life.” It instead blamed stock fluctuations for the current pricing snafu.
Der8auer, citing unnamed industry sources, further added fuel to the idea that Nvidia had drastically cut RTX 5070 Ti supply. But if pricing continues on its upward trend, these cards may as well already be dead. An Asus TUF Gaming RTX 5060 Ti model went from its lowest price at $540 to $680 in the span of a month, according to Amazon price tracking site Camelcamelcamel. The 8GB VRAM model is sitting at a much more comfortable $410, $32 more than its lowest price last December. The situation for the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti is even worse. Stocks on these cards are so poor; anything with at least 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM is selling for close to or over $1,500, twice their original suggested retail price.
Judging by pricing alone, only the RTX 5080 and lower-end RTX 5060 models have managed to stand close to what they should cost. If the world’s wealthiest company’ intent is to keep selling mid-range graphics cards, then Nvidia would be doing whatever it was in their power to do to keep prices low. Judging by the current costs, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
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