$3,700 RTX 5090 GPUs have found new homes after sitting on US retailer's shelves

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Despite the egregious price tags, user reports claim all the ROG Astral LC GeForce RTX 5090s have been snapped up.

GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs
(Image credit: Reddit/pagusas)

March 30 marks the two-month anniversary of the RTX 50-series GPU launch, yet Nvidia still has not managed to mitigate its apparent supply-chain concerns that have hampered inventory and street prices since day one. A Reddit user shared an image from Micro Center Dallas, where we can see the elusive RTX 5090, one of the best graphics cards, in stock. The catch is that you'll need to pay close to $4,000 to get your hands on one, assuming they haven't sold out yet. Spoiler: The comment section suggests they have, and we've verified the status on Micro Center's website.

It has seemingly become the norm for AIBs to increase already absurd prices after launch for GPUs that aren't even in stock. The argument is that these increases reflect the laws of supply and demand. Lack of supply leads to high prices, reducing demand until the market stabilizes. Nvidia governs the supply end of the spectrum and how much wafer allocation goes to consumer-grade GB20X chips, which likely don't sell as well as Blackwell B200/B300 AI accelerators for data centers.

The liquid-cooled ROG Astral LC GeForce RTX 5090 we're looking at launched with a price tag of $3,099.99, which is already 50% over Nvidia's recommended MSRP. It's understandable since it's a premium model with liquid cooling and all the bells and whistles. AIBs are free to price their non-MSRP models as they like, which isn't inherently bad. To the side, we can also spot several high-end ROG Astral RTX 5080s, with no budget TUF Gaming or Prime models in sight. At the far right, a price tag sticker attached to the ROG Astral RTX 5090 on the third shelf reveals that Micro Center is selling these units for $3,700, 20% over Asus' launch MSRP.

Microcenter Dallas got tons of 5090 Astral Liquid’s in today from r/nvidia

This is lower than what the average RTX 5090 Founders Edition goes for on eBay. Customers are willing to pay up to $4,000 or higher for a GPU that was initially supposed to cost $2,000 and isn't even all that faster versus its last-generation counterpart, the RTX 4090, considering the previous gen-on-gen uplifts we've seen. If you're a professional, you might as well consider Nvidia's Blackwell workstation GPUs.

This problem also extends to previous-generation RTX 40 series cards, most of which are likely no longer in production. Per our detailed analysis, the RTX 5090 is the worst GPU in terms of the price-to-performance ratio, taking into account eBay prices.

With a limited number of wafers available each month, the economy favors Nvidia's server and workstation GPUs, which generate significantly more revenue for the firm. Like their approach with Ampere, analysts suggest Nvidia could adopt a dual-sourcing strategy, using Intel's 18A wafers for gaming GPUs while reserving all TSMC supply for its data center offerings.

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Hassam Nasir
Hassam Nasir
Contributing Writer

Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

24 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Hooda Thunkett
    Does Nvidia have a deal with the AIB makers and retailers that they get a share of the sales price? If they don't, it looks like they're leaving money on the table here.
    Reply
  • Notton
    Back when EVGA was still around, AIBs only had around 5~8% margin per card sold at MSRP.
    If sold at $4000, I assume AIBs would reach around 15~20% margin.
    Reply
  • Roland Of Gilead
    Hooda Thunkett said:
    Does Nvidia have a deal with the AIB makers and retailers that they get a share of the sales price? If they don't, it looks like they're leaving money on the table here.
    I was about to ask something similar myself. The question for me is, after the first batch that go out at a certain price for bulk purchasing, do nVidia then up the price for any subsequent batches after the shortage. I would imagine they would. Otherwise, as you said it's leaving money on the table.

    I wonder what kind of discount the likes of MSI/Asus etc get from nVidia, and does that discount level change when for example, supply chain issues as Nvidia have said.
    Reply
  • Heat_Fan89
    I would NEVER pay $2000 for a gaming GPU, forget $4000. All this will do is make gamers keep their hardware longer. I will either turn down my graphics settings and when that is no longer possible I will stick to consoles. Street prices on the 5090 make pre-builts look attractive once again.
    Reply
  • helper800
    Despite contrary belief, there are more people that want those hard to get expensive cards than there is stock. The only reason they sat for approximately 5 hours was because they were at a microcenter which is in person sales only. If they were stocked on any online retailer they would have been instantaneously out of stock.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    Hooda Thunkett said:
    Does Nvidia have a deal with the AIB makers and retailers that they get a share of the sales price? If they don't, it looks like they're leaving money on the table here.
    why would nvidia care about a cut of a mere 3700?

    Jensen himself stated yrs ago they are an AI company not a graphics company they just havent changed the name.

    The reason gaming GPU are so hard to get is due to likely 90% of their chips go to ai cards not the gaming cards (as they make massively more on each ai card so its better profit option for a limited number of chips)

    the AIB's just cutting out the scalper to directly scalp you themself as if you are gonna buy it...might as well make the $ not scalpers.

    Its entirely corpo greed.
    Reply
  • truerock
    A few weeks ago, I upgraded my graphics card to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 for $180.

    I run 4k at 120Mhz for office productivity like Microsoft Excel and games like Witcher 3 and Half Life 2 and Fallout 4, etc

    I bought it new on Amazon. I couldn't find a better deal on used cards on Craigslist or eBay.
    Reply
  • JamesJones44
    Notton said:
    Back when EVGA was still around, AIBs only had around 5~8% margin per card sold at MSRP.
    If sold at $4000, I assume AIBs would reach around 15~20% margin.

    More than that likely. The Founders Edition is $1999 MSRP, even if Nvidia sells those for cost (unlikely) than means an AIB at $4000 would mean the margins are higher than 20% factoring in the labor for the minor changes they add. 20% on $3000 in cost would "only" be $3600. The margin is probably closer to 60 - 100% at these prices.
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    If you want to feed outrage, there are more deserving topics, I believe.

    I don't know if RTX 3090, 4090 or 5090 ever sold to gamers in large numbers. Or were ever really meant to be.

    To me the 24GB on the 3090 vs. the 11GB on the 2080ti were a clear signal that this wasn't a gamer GPU, but a CUDA GPU on a gamer price axis, like a hemi engine muscle car built out from modified family sedan chassis: a new class of product, made affordable from commodity parts reuse: the V100 only had 16GB, even if that was HBM (and there was a 32GB option).

    And for that it was comparatively cheap and the main reason I bought one, only to upgrade it to a 4090 not much later: because it offered significant uplifts for AI work on CUDA. For me it was essentially 50% or even 25% of the previous entry fee and made ML work in the home-lab affordable.

    Of course, I enjoy the fact that I can also use them for gaming and pass them on to my kids.

    IMHO Nvidia made a very conscious choice to allow ML CUDA work on these "gaming" devices, in order to feed an emerging AI market they were then going to exploit via professional and data center products.

    And their gamble has paid off rather nicely: "gamer" cards are just chrippled enough not to enable large scale inferencing yet cheap enough to produce, to feed the developer crowd. They may have lost some "Pro" or Quadro market share, but not those who depend on HBM bandwidth or >40GB VRAM capacity.

    If Nvidia hadn't done that, AMD sure would have gone all in (Intel wanted to) and put a dent into the CUDA-verse.

    And it's simply a separate category, not a high-end gamer GPU, but an over-the-top card good for entry level AI engineering work.

    And that's backed up by the fact that you really don't need an RTX *090 to play even the best games at 4k, the next model down typically does well enough for most.

    Even the much maligned 4070 and 5070 with "only 12GB" are doing rather well, I think. If I didn't do the AI work, I don't think I'd have ever asked for more. Of course there are still games out there that not even an RTX 4090 can make perform properly, I doubt the 5090 would help (e.g FS2020/24 in VR).

    When you call the 5090 "the worst GPU in price-to-peformance ratio" then that might be true from a pure gamer perspective. But that's like calling a 1000HP muscle car bad value for shopping trips: true, ...but somewhat beside the point, when all you need is personal transport. Why criticize something that isn't meant for you? Nor anything you actually need to just game?

    For a driver aspiring the enter F1 (AI) racing, it might just lower the entry price to test and hone his skills on a semi-professional race track yet still be used to get there and as a daily driver. And if that's your real goal, you'll make yourself able to afford it.
    Reply
  • Notton
    JamesJones44 said:
    More than that likely. The Founders Edition is $1999 MSRP, even if Nvidia sells those for cost (unlikely) than means an AIB at $4000 would mean the margins are higher than 20% factoring in the labor for the minor changes they add. 20% on $3000 in cost would "only" be $3600. The margin is probably closer to 60 - 100% at these prices.
    I was being partially sarcastic, but you forget the man in the middle, the distributors, marking up a $2000 card to $3000.
    The AIB is likely selling the cards to the distributor for $2500~2700, add in fees, and it's $3000.
    https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/rtx-50-series-gpu-scalping-extends-to-system-integrators-over-usd3-000-for-a-rtx-5090
    Reply