Skip to main content

Don’t panic, but GPU prices are starting to rise again

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

Nvidia’s best graphics card is regularly out of stock, and if it is in stock, it’s pricier now than it was a few months ago. That’s right — finding the RTX 4090 at its recommended list price of $1,599 is no small feat right now. Does this mean that the dreaded GPU shortage is coming back? Not quite. It’s too early to panic, but it’s true that the RTX 4090 has seen an uptick in price, and there are a few reasons for that.

The RTX 4090 is expensive, but it’s also good value, however counterintuitive that might sound. According to our own testing of the monster GPU, it serves up an 89% performance increase over the last-gen RTX 3090. It’s absolutely unmatched in this generation, and will most likely remain that way, seeing as AMD has no plans to come out with an RTX 4090 equivalent. It’s also massively faster than the RTX 4080, and the fact that it’s favored over the 4080 shows up in the pricing.

Recommended Videos

The RTX 4080, which is arguably Nvidia’s worst-value GPU, launched with a $1,200 MSRP, but you can buy it now for as little as $1,050. The market, currently filled with an abundance of GPUs for all budgets and use cases, corrected Nvidia’s overly inflated MSRP over time and the price has dropped. The RTX 4090, on the other hand, has been on an upward trend.

A quick look through Newegg and Amazon pretty much confirms these suspicions. The RTX 4090 at MSRP is, indeed, a rare sight right now. The cheapest option on Newegg is the $1,650 Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4090 Windforce V2 , and all of the cheaper models are out of stock.

There’s one option at MSRP to be found, though. I spotted the PNY GeForce RTX 4090 Verto up for sale for $1,599 on Amazon . PNY is perhaps not as well-known as Gigabyte or MSI, which can be beneficial if you’re trying to score an RTX 4090 and stick to the recommended list price.

MSI RTX 4090 Suprim X on a pink background.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

As noted by Tom’s Hardware, this current uptick in RTX 4090 prices has been going on for a few months now. Pricing history from CamelCamelCamel shows that, on average, the GPUs went up in price by nearly $100 between mid-June and August. Cards like the Gigabyte Gaming OC went up by nearly $75 over the last few months, and some models are now reaching north of the $1,800 territory.

Is the rising price of Nvidia’s RTX 4090 an indication of trouble for the GPU market? Most likely not. The RTX 4090 is the only card of its kind and the best choice for those who want to ride the wave of the current AI boom. Other GPUs like the RTX 4080 are still in stock and even dropping in price over time. It’s still a good time to build a PC, and with Black Friday sales coming up soon, even the RTX 4090 might see a price cut if the stock levels normalize.

Monica J. White
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
Amazon’s AI shopper makes sure you don’t leave without spending
Amazon Buy for Me feature.

The future of online shopping on Amazon is going to be heavily dependent on AI. Early in 2025, the company pushed its Rufus AI agent to spill product information and help users find the right items. A few weeks later, another AI tool called Interests made its way to the shopping site. 

The new Alexa+ AI assistant is also capable of placing orders semi-autonomously, handling everything from groceries to booking appointments. Now, the company has started to test yet another AI agent that will buy products from other websites if they’re not available on Amazon — without ever leaving the app. 

Read more
This Windows 11 update makes Start Menu much more desirable and usable again
The Dell XPS 13 on a table with the Start Menu open.

The Start Menu has been the central element in Microsoft Windows for nearly three decades. Though loved initially for its resourcefulness, the Menu went through some debatable -- I call them abhorrent -- changes with Windows 8, but eventually returned to occupying less space in the interface with Windows 8.1, and then Windows 10 and 11. Despite the rescuing, it is still reeling under the damaging changes in the form of recommendations and random automatically populating lists that reduce it to a mere glorified search interface. However, Microsoft may now be looking to resolve these issues and bringing back a more simplified interface with an upcoming update.

Microsoft is testing a new interface for Start Menu on Windows 11, reducing the existing clutter of randomly interspersed apps and files. X user @phantomofearth, renowned for testing new features in Windows Insider builds, gave us a good look at the new interface in a detailed video walkthrough.

Read more
Memory prices are about to rise. Here’s why you should care
Micron's GDDR7 VRAM.

I wish this were April Fools, but it isn't. Micron has just announced that it'll be raising its prices all across its product portfolio, including DRAM and NAND flash memory. It seems that the price hikes will be gradual and won't just hit us out of nowhere, but the fact of the matter is that RAM will get pricier. This means that the best RAM might cost more, but this isn't limited to just straight-up PC memory.

The company sent out a letter to its investors, which was later shared by Tom's Hardware, talking about the price increase and the reasons behind it. Micron notes that the memory and storage markets are finally on an upward trend after a period of lull over the past couple of years. We've seen this on the consumer end, too, with memory prices finally stabilizing -- DDR5 RAM was super pricey at first, but buying RAM is now easier than ever. (Not for long, perhaps.)

Read more