While other AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards are experiencing price drops, the GeForce RTX 5090 continues to see its price skyrocket. Supply chain sources indicate that manufacturers like GIGABYTE and Zotac have implemented a new price increase on their GPUs. This increase applies to all GPUs shipped with a base cost of $500, effectively adding approximately €425 to the price of GIGABYTE and Zotac RTX 5090 models now arriving in stores.
This price surge means that the industry’s most advanced models are approaching and even exceeding the €6,000 mark. A prime example is the recently launched GIGABYTE AORUS RTX 5090 INFINITY, the company’s flagship GPU. This card will hit the market with an additional premium due to its ambitious design, featuring higher quality components and the company’s most advanced cooling system. While the exact price hasn’t been revealed, as a reference, an RTX 5090 AORUS MASTER already costs around €5,000. Consequently, the RTX 5090 INFINITY, coupled with the new €425 surcharge, is expected to surpass the €6,000 threshold.
RTX 5090 Price Increase Driven by 32GB VRAM and AI Profitability
The GeForce RTX 5090 has become a significant anomaly in the graphics card market. As many current GPUs see price declines, the RTX 5090 operates in a separate league. This is attributed to the combination of factors that drive up GPU costs today: a massive chip, substantial memory, limited availability, professional demand, and buyers less sensitive to price. NVIDIA officially lists the card (without stock) at a recommended retail price of €2,099. However, in reality, this GPU is more of a work tool than a gaming-focused card, boasting 32GB of GDDR7 memory, a 512-bit bus, 21,760 CUDA cores, the Blackwell architecture, and an impressive AI processing capability of 3,352 AI TOPS. This fundamentally alters market dynamics.
This shift fundamentally changes market logic. GPUs like the RTX 5060, RTX 5070, or even RTX 5080 primarily cater to traditional gamers. If their prices become too high, buyers can wait, opt for a lower-tier card, consider AMD, or simply refrain from purchasing. This is precisely why those cards are seeing price reductions. In contrast, the RTX 5090 attracts significant interest beyond gaming, appealing to fields such as rendering, local AI, 3D creation, video editing, simulations, workstations, and small studios or universities. For this demographic, paying €3,800 or €4,300 (the lowest prices achievable before this latest increase) might be painful but can still be a worthwhile investment if it leads to faster work completion or avoids the need for a much more expensive professional GPU.
Adding to this is the memory crisis. The RTX 5090 utilizes a substantial amount of GDDR7 memory, configured in a particularly demanding setup: 32GB on a 512-bit bus. The current AI boom is placing immense pressure on the memory market. Consequently, any slight increase in memory prices is significantly amplified in a GPU with 32GB. Essentially, the RTX 5090 ceased to be a gamer’s GPU a long time ago, which explains its continued price appreciation while the rest of its family sees price drops.
