Unless you’re desperate to see the demise of affordable PC gaming, I wouldn’t look at Amazon or any Nvidia graphics card right now. Just in the past month, prices on the company’s coveted GPUs have risen to obscene levels, and they may only get worse as time goes on. If you’re looking for someone to blame for the demise of your next dream PC, the bucket may be at Nvidia’s feet.
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5080 sells for $500 or more with a starting price of $1,000 on sites like Newegg. The RTX 5090 prices can best be described as deceptive. Some models sell for around $5,000. The card was supposed to pay a base amount of $2,000 upon introduction. The ongoing RAM shortage, which has previously ballooned the price of consumer DRAM (random access memory) and PC storage units from SSDs to HDDs, shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.
AI data center projects have created such a dramatic demand for memory that the major semiconductor manufacturers have all refocused their businesses on the supply chain rather than consumer products. Nvidia—a company rich in selling chip infrastructure for this architecture—finally told us that while “memory is stuck,” it “will continue to ship all GeForce SKUs and work closely with our suppliers to increase memory availability.” That’s not saying much when the price of every GPU you really wanted is going through the stratosphere.
GPU vendors are in a bad place
Graphics card vendors—also called AIB (add-in board) partners—are bearing the brunt of these price increases. The Korean arm of GPU vendor Zotac published a notice on Tuesday (machine readable) saying, “The current situation is so dire that it worries the future existence of graphics card manufacturers and distributors.” Zotac also said the new price of the RTX 5060 was “amazing.” That’s more than the cost of Nvidia’s top GPUs like the RTX 5090. It’s not clear if Zotac Korea was talking about the consumer price of these cards, the cost they pay to Nvidia, or both.
That announcement comes a week after YouTuber Der8auer (via PCGamer) said that Nvidia had canceled a refund plan with AIB partners. This has reportedly helped card makers recoup the cost of acquiring additional GPU components. It had the added effect of keeping the GPU market at low prices. AIB’s partners who don’t have the market size to source their own memory and components for these cards are severely hurt, hence the shock of Zotac’s announcement.
Gizmodo has reached out to Nvidia for comment, and we’ll update this post when we hear back.
On Amazon, Zotac only shows listings for 8GB graphics cards and none at the high end. On Newegg, the RTX 5060 Ti with 16GB of GDDR7 memory is listed for $800. Those high-end GPUs use at least 16GB of VRAM, which proved to be very necessary for gaming at 1440p and 4K resolutions at high graphics settings.
Nvidia’s mid-range cards are too expensive to consider
Earlier this month, AIB partner Asus was caught in a storm of controversy after the respected YouTube channel for tech, Hardware Unboxed, reported that the company had killed production of the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and other cards with 16GB of VRAM. Asus later tried to deny those stories before the panic started. The company said it didn’t put its RTX 5070 Ti or its RTX 5060 Ti (the one with 16GB of VRAM) to “end of life.” Instead blame the stock’s volatility for the current pricing snafu.
Der8auer, citing unnamed industry sources, added fuel to the theory that Nvidia had significantly cut RTX 5070 Ti offerings. But if prices continue their upward trajectory, these cards may be dead. The Asus TUF Gaming RTX 5060 Ti model went from an all-time low of $540 to $680 during the month, according to Amazon price tracking site Camelcamelcamel. The 8GB VRAM model sits at a very comfortable $410, $32 above its all-time low last December. The situation for the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti is even worse. The stocks on these cards are very poor; anything with at least 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM sells for around or above $1,500, double their original suggested retail price.
If we look at the prices alone, only the RTX 5080 models and the lower RTX 5060 models managed to stand close to what they should cost. If the goal of the world’s richest company is to continue selling mid-range graphics cards, then Nvidia will be doing anything in its power to keep prices low. Looking at current costs, it doesn’t seem to be the case.
