Many GPU buyers are hard-pressed to find a listing at MSRP nowadays, meaning you’ll have to extend your budget beyond what was announced on stage if you want to build a new PC with a modern graphics card. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to track all pricing changes, especially as these, along with stock data, rapidly evolve. Thankfully, Gamers Nexus has compiled all available data as best it could and presented the trends in a video. Gamers Nexus EIC and host Stephen Burke also said that the figures shown would likely change due to the aforementioned reasons, but that the report can serve as a baseline for anyone in the market for a new GPU.
According to Gamers Nexus, out of the 420 total listings found on Newegg, Amazon, and Best Buy, 56 were listed at MSRP, but only 20 were actually in stock. Some retailers also reportedly confirmed that a few of the unavailable MSRP listings were not coming back at the same price, meaning less than 5% of all the graphics cards listed sit at the price given on stage. It also listed the MSRPs of all current-generation cards (except for the RTX 5050), compared them to the average available price, and found that GPUs were priced about 28% higher, or a $134 premium on MSRP.
The worst offenders are the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs, which, on average, are priced at more than 50% of the MSRP. This shows Nvidia’s monopoly of the high-end GPU market, highlighting the need for competition. Intel Arc B580 and B570 are also egregiously overpriced, with the average listing getting more than a 50% markup.
Burke noted that this was likely because one add-in board partner — Gunnir — has priced its listings so high that it’s skewing overall statistics. It’s only the RTX 5060 Ti (16GB) and all the other 8GB graphics cards that have their average selling price that is less than 20% higher than MSRP. In fact, out of the 20 GPU listings that were available at MSRP, only one — the RTX 5070 — had 16GB of VRAM.
If we’re going to go by the law of supply and demand, it seems that only a few people are buying 8GB GPUs, as seen by pricing data reflecting an average markup of just around 15%. On the other hand, mid-range GPUs — those priced between $400 and $800 — get an average markup of 25% (except for the RX 9070 XT).
Note that all these data come from the top three retailers on the market — Amazon, Newegg, and Best Buy — and that they only reflect U.S. pricing. Nevertheless, these statistics reveal that we can no longer rely on MSRP or launch pricing to determine the actual value that you will get from these GPUs in the long run.
GPU manufacturers would protest this insight, with AMD even telling the press, “It is inaccurate that $549/$599 MSRP is launch-only pricing. We expect cards to be available from multiple vendors at $549/$599 (excluding region-specific tariffs and/or taxes) based on the work we have done with our AIB partners, and more are coming. At the same time, the AIBs have different premium configurations at higher price points, and those will also continue.” However, all this information says otherwise.
In reality, we would not know who to blame for this ruckus. Is it the GPU manufacturers for pricing the silicon too high and not enforcing the availability of options at MSRP? Or is it the board partners who are taking advantage of the hype and pricing their products higher than expected? Or is it the buyer, who willingly parts with their money despite not getting good value for it? But there’s one thing for sure — if you’re in the market for a current-generation graphics card right now, prepare to pay through the nose.
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