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.
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.
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.
