RTX 5090 prices blow past $5,000 as AI memory shortage devastates GPU market

[Rogue Di]

Nvidias RTX 5090 has now blown past 5,000 dollars in some markets, and the whole GPU pricing situation has gotten genuinely severe enough that Nvidia is reportedly telling add in board partners it wont be releasing any new consumer GPU generation at all in 2026

Tom's Hardware reported this week that South Korean retailers, citing Danawa and local distributors, are now pricing the RTX 5090 at up to 7.3 million won, which works out to roughly 5,112 dollars, thats up as much as 1,050 dollars in a single month alone, and this comes after the card had already been listing for 4,329 dollars on Amazon in the US as of July, a staggering jump from its original 1,999 dollar launch price just last year

The root cause traces back to the same AI driven memory crunch thats been rippling through basically every corner of consumer electronics lately, VRAM now accounts for as much as 80 percent of a high end graphics cards total build cost, and AI data centers are absorbing such a huge share of global memory supply that Nvidia reportedly cut RTX 50 series production at its add in card partners by anywhere from 20 to 40 percent through the first half of the year

A planned RTX 50 Super refresh, which would have added an RTX 5070 Super, 5070 Ti Super and 5080 Super with higher VRAM configurations, has now been indefinitely delayed, and the reason is genuinely ironic, the exact 3GB per chip GDDR7 memory modules needed for that refresh are the very component already in shortest supply, so the product that could have eased the shortage requires the exact scarce ingredient causing it in the first place

Nvidia even released collectible paper trading cards back in July celebrating GeForce history, which the internet immediately mocked with the line fourteen cards, zero silicon, capturing pretty well how tone deaf that gesture felt given how many actual gamers cant get their hands on real hardware right now

Industry analysts say this isnt like the 2021 crypto mining shortage where availability itself was the core problem, this time the structural driver is genuinely different, AI is currently consuming around 20 percent of global wafer capacity, and real relief isnt expected until 2028 when Micron brings new HBM manufacturing capacity online, meaning gamers and PC builders are likely looking at a multi year stretch of elevated prices rather than a temporary blip

Gaming GPU Prices 2026: RTX 5090 Tops $5,000tech-insider.org

[Gary90]

Fourteen cards, zero silicon is such a perfect summary of how out of touch that trading card gesture felt, Nvidia clearly misjudged the mood of a community that just wants actual graphics cards at reasonable prices

[GhostRider]

The refresh needing the exact scarce memory component that caused the shortage in the first place is such a brutal catch 22, theres literally no way to ease the shortage with more supply because the new supply needs the same bottlenecked ingredient