As if the GPU market wasn’t enough of a nightmare lately, Nvidia might have just raised the prices of its best graphics cards. According to a new report, Nvidia is increasing the pricing of its RTX 50-series GPUs for its board partners and suppliers, which might affect how much they cost for consumers. Here’s what you need to know.
First of all, we’re not talking about a straight-up increase that, let’s say, raises the MSRP (recommended list price) of the RTX 5090 from $2,000 to $2,500 (don’t worry, that didn’t happen, although good luck buying an RTX 5090 for less than $3,000). This is a behind the scenes kind of price increase, and as such, we have no way to verify whether it’s true — so take it with a pinch of salt. The report comes from Digitimes and was later shared by XDA Developers, and Nvidia itself has yet to comment on the matter, so we have to be patient. Even if it’s true, we might never get an official confirmation.
Assuming it’s all true, though, I won’t lie to you — the GPU pricing situation could soon end up looking pretty grim, and it’s not like it was any good to begin with.
Digitimes claims that Nvidia is raising its prices, and while this affects the suppliers and add-in board partners (AIBs), Nvidia has reportedly allowed its partners to pass on the cost to the end users. This means that, instead of cutting into their own profit margins, those companies might instead opt for a price increase that affects the customers. Given the current state of the GPU market, that wouldn’t surprise me at all.
The report says that one major reason behind this decision lies in export controls. Nvidia’s top GPUs, meaning the RTX 4090 and the RTX 5090, cannot be exported to China, which drives up the global demand and ensures that those GPUs are practically never sold at MSRP. Digitimes says that this kind of demand doubled the channel price for these cards — and yet, they’re still selling and are often out of stock, so clearly that never stopped anyone. Tariffs also play a major part in this (rumored) decision.
Nvidia has shifted a lot of the RTX 50-series production to TSMC’s Arizona plant to try and combat the tariffs, but it’s impossible to fully escape their impact. By raising the prices, Nvidia could be able to offset some of the losses caused by external factors and maintain its profit margin.
So, how much are we talkin’? Digitimes says that the RTX 5090 saw a price increase of 10%, and server manufacturers will now have to pay up to 15% more than previously. It’s unclear whether every single RTX 50-series model was hit by this presumed price increase, but the RTX 5090 is certainly the most likely culprit here.
The GPU market has been in a state of turmoil over the last few months. While the RTX 40-series was mostly available at MSRP once the initial hype died down (bar the RTX 4090), the RTX 50-series is most certainly not. Even mainstream GPUs along the likes of the RTX 5060 Ti, or AMD’s RX 9070 XT for that matter, are consistently selling for more, with price hikes ranging from $100 to $300 for some models of the AMD card. Modest GPUs like the Intel Arc B580 are also pricier than they were at launch.
If Nvidia does go through with this rumored price increase, it’s hard to estimate just how much of it might be passed over to us — the customers. With the prices already high, we can hope that companies will lower their profit margin and GPUs won’t be much more expensive … although, I might be just fooling myself.