Graphics card prices are shooting up… and not just because of retailers or resellers. Prices for AMD and Nvidia GPUs made by AIB partner Asus have risen directly at the source, the Asus online shop where the company sells directly to consumers. At the time of writing, almost no cards are available at the manufacturer’s suggested retail price.
The rising prices were spotted by VideoCardz.com, which details prices that have jumped up in the last few days. The company’s top-of-the-line model, the ROG RTX 5090 Astral LC with its all-in-one water cooler, hasn’t gotten a price increase (though since it started at over $3,400, or $1,400 above the 5090’s $2,000 “base” price, that’s not surprising). The cheapest 5090 on the Asus store is now $2,760, rising $280 over its launch price a few weeks ago and $760 over MSRP.
The hikes aren’t limited to high-end models, either. Via Archive.org, you can see that the Asus Prime RTX 5080 launched at $999.99, hitting Nvidia’s MSRP after a “discount” of $265, but that card now goes for $1,265. AMD’s just-released Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT cards aren’t spared, with VideoCardz.com reporting that “Prime” variants of both were listed at AMD’s base prices of $550 and $600 at launch two weeks ago but are now $660 and $720, jumping an even 20 percent. (For the record, I’ve found exactly two recent cards on the Asus online store at MSRP today: the Prime RTX 5070 at $550 and the Prime 5070 Ti at $750.)
All of these prices are somewhat academic, of course, since you can’t find these new GPUs in stock anywhere without a minor miracle. While it appears that AMD made a lot more new cards available at launch, even those sold out fairly quickly—the few base-price cards were gone almost instantly. For various reasons, it seems like the MSRP for new graphics cards is approaching mythical territory.
There are plenty of factors at play here, including low stock, high demand, and possibly the Trump regime’s punishing import tariffs driving up the cost of numerous consumer goods. Even system integrators, who should be able to buy cards in bulk at or near wholesale prices, are getting “scalped” directly from suppliers. (That term was used by the CEO of a system builder company last week.)
But the bottom line is that companies like Asus, MSI, etc. all know that they’re going to sell every single new graphics card they put up for sale, even with hundreds of dollars in markup for unnecessary extras in coolers, materials, RGB lights, and the like. They have no reason not to jack up the prices, at least as long as demand stays so high.