NVIDIA’s flagship GeForce RTX 5090 continues to climb in price. According to German price-comparison data, the lowest street price in Europe now exceeds €4,250, with the median new listing above €5,000. NVIDIA’s own online store listed the card at $4,929.99 as of August 5, 2026 — roughly double its $1,999 launch MSRP from January 2025. The driver is a GDDR7 shortage: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have prioritized wafer capacity for AI-datacenter HBM, leaving the 32GB of GDDR7 the RTX 5090 uses among the most supply-constrained consumer memory types (for the wider GPU memory shortage, see our article on AMD’s Radeon price hikes).
What This Article Covers
- How far the RTX 5090’s street price has risen since launch
- The GDDR7 shortage behind the increase
- How much of a GPU’s cost VRAM now represents
Overview
The RTX 5090 briefly traded below its official MSRP in summer 2025, but prices have climbed steadily since a limited sale in February 2026. It had already reached about €4,000 by mid-June, and continued rising afterward. The entire RTX 50 lineup, from the RTX 5080 down to the RTX 5060 Ti, shows the same upward trend.
Details
The following points were confirmed across multiple independent sources.
- The lowest street price in Europe now exceeds €4,250, with median new listings above €5,000, based on ComputerBase’s own price-tracking data
- NVIDIA’s own online store listed the RTX 5090 at $4,929.99 as of August 5, 2026, roughly double its $1,999 launch MSRP from January 2025
- At one South Korean retailer, the RTX 5090 reached about $5,112, with the entire RTX 50 lineup up as much as 30%
- The primary driver is a GDDR7 shortage, as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have prioritized wafer capacity for AI-datacenter HBM production, squeezing consumer GDDR6/GDDR7 supply
- VRAM now accounts for more than 80% of a high-end GPU’s bill of materials; one memory configuration estimated at roughly $80–100 before the surge now costs as much as $320
- Analysts at TrendForce, IDC, and Intel expect memory supply to meaningfully normalize only by 2027 or 2028, making further price increases before Q4 2026 more likely than not
Industry Impact
The RTX 5090’s price surge reflects the same AI-driven memory supply squeeze behind AMD’s Radeon price increases — a structural issue, not a single vendor’s pricing strategy. With both major GPU vendors, Nvidia and AMD, raising prices, and analysts pointing to 2027–2028 before supply normalizes, high-end GPU prices are likely to stay elevated for some time.
Relevance to Japan
Based on the materials reviewed for this article, there’s no direct mention of Japanese companies. That said, the production-allocation decisions by memory makers Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron feed directly into GPU pricing worldwide, and the same dynamic is likely to reach Japan’s PC-parts and gaming-PC markets. Domestic retail price trends are worth continued monitoring.
What to Watch Next
- How and when the price increases reach retail markets in Japan and elsewhere
- How GDDR7 and broader memory supply trends develop through 2027–2028
- How far the increases spread to lower-tier RTX 50 models (RTX 5080 and below)
- Whether Nvidia issues an official price revision
We will update this article as these developments become clearer.
Summary
The GeForce RTX 5090’s street price has roughly doubled from its $1,999 launch MSRP to around $5,000. The driver is a GDDR7 shortage caused by memory makers prioritizing AI-datacenter HBM production, pushing VRAM’s share of a high-end GPU’s cost above 80%. With analysts expecting supply to normalize only by 2027–2028, high-end GPU pricing trends warrant continued attention.
