Seemingly inevitable, consumer pricing for graphics cards is once again on the rise as Best Buy increases prices for select RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 models. The premium flagship ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 is edging closer to a $5K card now that its price is listed at $4,829.99, but that unobtainium tier pales in comparison to the price jump seen with the ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC. This card is reported by VideoCardz to have seen a 40% increase, or another $600, to a whopping $2,099.99. This places the ASUS enthusiast graphics card at more than double NVIDIA’s RTX 5080 MSRP and roughly $100 more than the MSRP for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition.
No reason has been provided for the price hikes, and there are any number of bingo slots to choose from. Does AI prefer a new flavor, or have shipments been hijacked en route to a clandestine location? Perhaps an unreported power outage or tsunami interrupted production; it’s anybody’s guess. What is known is that just last week it was reported by some of NVIDIA’s all-in-board (AIB) partners that NVIDIA is raising memory kit prices for its GPUs. This news came with the immediate realization that consumers would be left to pick up the tab for these increased costs. It’s expected that the biggest increases could be for GDDR7 VRAM 2GB modules, but also the even newer 3GB GDDR7 modules. The aforementioned 3GB modules were expected to be used in NVIDIA’s unlaunched RTX 50-series “SUPER” lineup, which continues to have rumors circulate regarding a possible release.
Meanwhile, it’s not known if NVIDIA’s reported memory kit price hikes are playing a factor here, but they could well be. Time will only tell if other graphics card manufacturers are planning to do the same and are, for now, just trying to weather the storm to see if the clouds break or are simply considering their options.
Discussion (3 replies)
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Gotta stuff those coffers one way or another!
"Best Buy" ... a horrible, misleading misnomer.