Nvidia's RTX 5090 vanishes from online retail in the US — third-party sellers now demand as much as $9,500 for Nvidia's fastest GPU
In less than a week, first-party inventory of the RTX 5090 has almost completely evaporated.
Nvidia's fastest gaming graphics card, the RTX 5090, has been on a tear of price increases over the past several weeks. However, over the past week, the available inventory has dwindled. Now, you can only find the RTX 5090 from third-party sellers at online retailers like Newegg and Amazon, commanding anywhere from $6,500 to $9,500 (or even higher) for Team Green's best GPU.
At Newegg, the cheapest RTX 5090 is the MSI Ventus 3X that's available from Slava Computers (a relatively new seller with 239 ratings and a 2.8 out of 5 rating at the time of writing) for $6,449. On Amazon, you can get the Asus TUF Gaming OC for $6,395 from Joes Tech Shop, a seller with an 81% positive rating. However, among the most recent reviews are a string of one-star reviews about orders never being fulfilled. The cost goes much higher, as well. The first result for "RTX 5090" on Newegg, for example, surfaces the MSI Ventus 3X OC for $8,699.
In June, the median price for an RTX 5090 was $4,299. At the beginning of September, we logged the lowest online price at $5,199 in our GPU price tracker. Now, in less than two weeks, the available stock has completely disappeared online, and the options available from third-party sellers have ballooned in price once again.
Naturally, we don't recommend buying from one of these third-party sellers. The RTX 5090 is selling at a vastly inflated price, but more importantly, we've seen no shortage of scams around high-ticket items like the RTX 5090. In January, 42 Amazon customers were duped into a scam involving a $999 RTX 5090, instead receiving a fanny pack in place of the GPU. Earlier this month, an online seller scammed two buyers with the RTX 5090, selling phantom graphics cards with the core and memory removed on the secondhand market for prices near MSRP.
The one exception to RTX 5090 inventory is Micro Center, which still has cards available around the average selling price. At a local Micro Center we checked, the cheapest in-stock option was $4,299. Micro Center has exclusively sold graphics cards in-person for several years, insulating it from online buyouts like what appears to be going on right now.
As usual, the reason why there's so much demand for the RTX 5090 is fairly obvious: AI. The RTX 5090 holds the GB202 GPU and 32GB of GDDR7 memory. For context, Nvidia's RTX Pro 5000 48GB comes with the same GPU with a third fewer shader units enabled, and lower memory bandwidth compared to the RTX 5090, and sells for between $7,000 and $9,000. In that context, the RTX 5090 starts to look attractive for building an AI server, even at $5,000 (or more) apiece.
At the same time, the RTX 5090 remains the fastest gaming graphics card on the market according to the testing in our GPU benchmark hierarchy. That's even more true now with Nvidia's launch of DLSS 5 Neural Rendering, which the RTX 5090 can fully capitalize on (though, thankfully, we've found playable performance on lower-end cards in our extensive DLSS 5 testing).
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We've reached out to Nvidia for comment on whether it has any plans to stabilize inventory. We'll update this story when we hear back.
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Jake Roach is the Senior CPU Analyst at Tom’s Hardware, writing reviews, news, and features about the latest consumer and workstation processors.
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Tanakoi Once again reality shows you can't circumvent the laws of economics. If a manufacturer doesn't raise prices to equalize demand with supply, the shelves will run bare, and black-market / grey-market scalpers will do it for them.Reply -
TheyStoppedit I have a 4080S. You can probably get one for $800. Why is the 5090 50% better performance than the 4080S, yet 700% higher price? The logic ain't logicing.Reply -
Tanakoi Reply
A $20M Rolls Royce Boattail is only 10% faster than my car, yet costs 200X as much. And you can add integrated graphics to a CPU for about $15, and get a substantial portion of the performance of your 4080. Whoever said the price-performance curve must be linear?TheyStoppedit said:I have a 4080S. You can probably get one for $800. Why is the 5090 50% better performance than the 4080S, yet 700% higher price? The logic ain't logicing. -
PEnns ReplyTheyStoppedit said:I have a 4080S. You can probably get one for $800. Why is the 5090 50% better performance than the 4080S, yet 700% higher price? The logic ain't logicing.
Not in the US.
The cheapest one of those babies demands $1500 or a kidney, whichever is more expensive. -
TheyStoppedit ReplyTanakoi said:A $20M Rolls Royce Boattail is only 10% faster than my car, yet costs 200X as much. And you can add integrated graphics to a CPU for about $15, and get a substantial portion of the performance of your 4080. Whoever said the price-performance curve must be linear?
That's a misanalogy. The Rolls Royce, you're paying for the status symbol, not the product. The price differential is status, which really is a special kind of stupid. But that's a conversation for another day. In the case of the 4080S/5090, you're paying for the product in both cases. I get that the price-performance curve isn't linear. But If it was 50% better performance for an 120% higher price, that would be different. 50% better performance for 700% higher price. The math logic aint logicing -
TheyStoppedit ReplyPEnns said:Not in the US.
The cheapest one of those babies demands $1500 or a kidney, whichever is more expensive.
I live in Canada. I can get a 4080S here probably for $1200 CAD, I converted to american dollars -
thently I was looking on Amazon a few min ago and there are 2 models of RTX 4090 for 1799. While less ram and slightly slower I am surprised either way.Reply -
Tanakoi Reply
I'd argue that most 5090 buyers are paying for status as well. In any case, the integrated graphic - 4080S comparison is certainly apt. I'll also note that, if you compare MSRPs, the 5090 is only 100% higher than the 4080s. Which reinforces my point: no amount of online grousing can circumvent the laws of economics. When there are more buyers than sellers, the price is going to rise. That logic is indeed ineluctable.TheyStoppedit said:That's a misanalogy. The Rolls Royce, you're paying for the status symbol, not the product. -
TheyStoppedit ReplyTanakoi said:I'd argue that most 5090 buyers are paying for status as well. In any case, the integrated graphic - 4080S comparison is certainly apt. I'll also note that, if you compare MSRPs, the 5090 is only 100% higher than the 4080s. Which reinforces my point: no amount of online grousing can circumvent the laws of economics. When there are more buyers than sellers, the price is going to rise. That logic is indeed ineluctable.
I don't disagree with your point about economics at all, but MSRP to MSRP comparisons are pointless because neither one is at MSRP. Obviously the prices are as high are they are because people are willing to pay that. What I just can't understand is why someone is willing to pay 700% more price for a 50% better performance. I guess if you have more money than god and rock solid fire inusrance on your house, go ahead, but I can't imagine that this is the masses of people buying a 5090. I also don't think most of them are purchased for status. None of this makes any sense -
Tanakoi Reply
Phrased that way, your question indeed makes sense, but the answer is simple. Most of the 5090 buyers are looking for AI usage, not video games, where the doubling of memory (and near tripling of memory bandwidth) is what counts the most.TheyStoppedit said:I don't disagree with your point about economics at all...What I just can't understand is why someone is willing to pay 700% more price for a 50% better performance.... I can't imagine that this is the masses of people buying a 5090. I also don't think most of them are purchased for status. None of this makes any sense