It’s becoming difficult to consider recommending Nvidia graphics cards for gaming as prices continue to climb into the stratosphere. After insane price hikes for the supposedly discontinued RTX 5090 and 5080, even mid-range RTX 50 series graphics cards now cost almost double their launch price.
The Blackwell generation of Nvidia graphics cards has been overpriced since its initial unveiling. The RTX 5090 debuted with an MSRP of $2,000, a 25% jump from the RTX 4090’s launch price from a few years ago. But it has very rarely sold at that price, spending most of 2025 around the $3,000 mark.
But by the end of 2026, prices have gone from crazy to completely unprecedented. The RTX 5090 now costs at least $7,000 if you can find it, and the RTX 5080 now regularly sells for over $2,500 and may well disappear in due time.
What are we supposed to do with prices like these?
Credit: ExtremeTech via Newegg
This lack of supply now affects cards lower in the pile. The RTX 5070 Ti now sells for over $1,400 at many retailers, despite an official MSRP of $749. The RTX 5070, with 12GB of VRAM, launched with “4090 performance for $549”, but now costs over $1,000.
Even “entry-level” cards like the 16GB RTX 5060 Ti cost $850. Just under double its MSRP of $429. The 8GB version thankfully costs a lot less, offering a slight glimpse of an affordable card in all of this. But even this GPU costs $550. It launched at $300.
The cheapest of the bunch is the RTX 5050. It’s currently priced at $440, up almost $200 from its launch price.
For now, AMD cards are easier to recommend, but that may not last very long either. AMD CEO Lisa Su said this week that AMD is a “data center-focused company.”
For now, you can buy AMD’s flagship RX 9070 XT for around $930. That’s a lot more than its $600 starting price, but it at least offers premium performance. The equivalent Nvidia card would be the 5070 Ti, a card for which you will have to pay $500 more.
The $750 RX 9070 is a reasonable buy, up $200 from its launch price. The RX 9070 GRE is around the same price, but with worse performance. The RX 9060 XT with 16GB isn’t far behind at over $700, double its launch price of $349.
Even 8GB cards cost around $500.
These widespread price increases may be driven by severe scalping as people try to preempt possible shortages. But whatever the origin of the demand, the supply does not follow. Without a large supply of mainstream cards, it’s hard to see how this will play out anytime soon, making the upgrade landscape for 2027 extremely bleak for players who don’t want to resort to streaming.
Normally, I’d suggest hanging on to Black Friday to save us, but I don’t think even its price-cutting methods will do much this year.
Gn tech
