Nvidia's RTX 5090 launched in January 2025 at $1,999. This week the cheapest one you can order from a US online retailer is $6,449, sold not by the retailer but by a third-party marketplace seller, and the listings run up to $9,500. In Germany the same card that carried a €2,329 list price sits at €5,699 and has climbed every quarter since last autumn. Nothing about this happened overnight. It has been happening in steps for twenty months, and the step this week is only the latest.
The US: a tracker, not a headline
Tom's Hardware has been logging RTX 5090 prices all year, and its numbers draw the line more clearly than any single listing:
| when | cheapest available, US | source |
|---|---|---|
| January 2025 | $1,999 | Nvidia list price at launch |
| January 2026 | ~$4,000, third-party only | TechRadar — the first time first-party stock disappeared |
| June 2026 | $4,299 median | Tom's Hardware price tracker |
| Early September 2026 | $5,199 lowest online | Tom's Hardware price tracker |
| 14 September 2026 | $6,449 cheapest third-party; $8,699 on Newegg's first result; up to $9,500 | Tom's Hardware, checked the same day by PCGamesN |
Two things about that table. First, the January 2026 row is not this week's story: that was an earlier wave, when third-party asks sat around $4,000 and TechRadar noticed that a whole prebuilt PC with a 5090 inside cost about the same. Anyone who finds that piece and thinks the $9,500 figure contradicts it is looking at two points on the same curve eight months apart. Second, the $9,500 is one listing, from one seller. The typical ask this week is $6,400 to $8,700. The number that matters is the floor, and the floor has more than tripled.
Micro Center is the one exception Tom's Hardware found, with in-store cards around $4,299, which is the June median. It sells graphics cards in person only, and that has insulated it from whatever is buying out the online stock.
Europe: the same curve, a smaller multiple
The German price-comparison site Geizhals keeps a one-year history per model. For the Gigabyte Aorus Master ICE, a premium variant, the chart reads roughly like this (values read off the graph, not exported):
| when | lowest offer, Germany |
|---|---|
| January 2025 | €2,329 Nvidia list price |
| September 2025 | ≈ €2,700 |
| March 2026 | ≈ €3,500 |
| June 2026 | ≈ €4,000 |
| August 2026 | ≈ €4,500 |
| 10 September 2026 | €5,699, offers to €8,685 |
Cheaper Gigabyte variants of the same card start at €5,349 across 34 offers. That is 2.3 to 2.4 times list, against 3.2 times in the US, and the shape is identical: a slow climb through the winter, a steeper one through the summer, a jump in the last three weeks. Europe has not yet seen first-party stock vanish the way the US has. It is a few months behind on the same line, not on a different one.
Why it keeps rising
Three causes, all reported months ago, none of them resolved:
- GDDR7 memory. The 32 GB on a 5090 is the same memory AI accelerators use, and contracts for it expired at the end of 2025. Nvidia reportedly cut RTX 50-series production by up to 40% in the first half of 2026 for lack of it, and the RTX 50 Super refresh slipped from January to the third quarter.
- AI demand for the card itself. Tom's Hardware's explanation is blunt: the RTX Pro 5000 uses the same GB202 die with fewer shaders and less bandwidth and sells for $7,000 to $9,000, so a $5,000 RTX 5090 looks cheap to anyone building an inference box. We are part of that demand. Every local-inference article on this site since June, including the one published three days ago, runs on this card.
- A new gaming reason. DLSS 5 neural rendering, which the 5090 exploits fully, landed in the same window. That does not move the supply, but it removes the argument that gamers would stop wanting it.
Nvidia had not commented when Tom's Hardware asked. Nothing suggests the card is discontinued. It is scarce, and the scarcity is priced in a little more each month.
What it changes for local AI
Our RTX 5090 vs GB10 comparison in June priced the card at its $1,999 list against $3,000 to $4,000 for a whole GB10 box with 128 GB of unified memory. The card won on bandwidth and lost on capacity, and the price gap made that a fair fight.
At this week's asks the card alone costs what a whole GB10 box did in June. A 5090 at $6,449 gets you 32 GB at 1.8 TB/s. A GB10 machine, under any of its eight names, gets you 128 GB at 273 GB/s and a complete computer. GB10 prices have been rising too, a story for another day, but the gap that made the June comparison a fair fight is gone. Which one is right still depends on whether your model fits in 32 GB, and our three-flagship comparison shows how much that decides. But the assumption behind "buy a 5090 for local inference", that it is the cheap way in, has quietly stopped being true, and the trend says it will be less true next month.
If you already own one: the June median is what a used card sells for today, and it is going up.
Interlude: Nine Thousand Five Hundred
We could not let the top listing go without a song. Three minutes of country heartbreak about a graphics card, one refresh button, and a seller who is playing cheap.
Related reading
- AI Workstation Comparison: RTX 5090 vs GB10 (HP ZGX) — the comparison this price move rewrites
- GB10, DGX Spark, HP ZGX Nano, ASUS Ascent GX10: Eight Names for One 128 GB Box — what the alternative costs and who sells it
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash on Nvidia 5090? — the newest thing we ran on the card
- Muse Glimmer 30B: 4× Faster Than a 304B Model, and 22% Slower — By Default — what a 5090 does with a model that fits