Nvidia RTX 4090 supplies are dwindling, prices skyrocketing as likely RTX 5090 launch approaches

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 has had a good run, but it's now approaching the finish line and getting ready to hang up its hat. It remains the fastest graphics card for the time being, but two years after the initial launch, most people on the outside looking in might be shocked to discover that a 4090 now costs more than it did two years back. But this is all par for the course for Nvidia's halo products.

Recently, we reported on news that German retailers were seeing dwindling RTX 4090 supplies. It's not just Germany, though: RTX 4090 supplies seem to be drying up around the world. That's having a knock-on effect for both 4090 pricing as well as the penultimate RTX 4080 Super prices, but logic and business both suggest this is the most sensible path forward. We've seen this all before, nearly every graphics card generation in fact.

When the RTX 2080 Ti launched at $1,199 initially, we never saw much in the way of the promised $999 cards. By the time RTX 2080 Ti was due for retirement, supplies had mostly run out and the cards remained expensive right up to the last minute. Almost the exact same scenario played out with the RTX 3090 Ti, RTX 3090, and RTX 3080 GPUs two years later. Pricing remained high until the very end.

Ethereum miners and pandemic influenced shortages were definitely extra factors with the past two GPU generations, but I can't recall the last time I saw a massive discount on an outgoing high-end/enthusiast Nvidia GPU. The company has been very successful overall in clearing out old inventory to make way for the new.

All indications are that Nvidia will launch both the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 in January 2025. CEO Jensen Huang will be giving the CES 2025 Keynote, and while AI has become a huge part of CES these days, we also think the Nvidia Blackwell RTX 50-series will have plenty to offer for AI users. It's not the usual way Nvidia has done GPU launches in the past, but then these are unusual times for the company. Riding the AI boom, its market cap currently sits at around $3.25 trillion, nearly triple what it was at the start of 2024 — and about nine times where it sat at the start of 2023. If being at the forefront of AI has allowed Nvidia to accomplish that, why not announce the latest generation of consumer GPUs at CES 2025?

There are also plenty of indications that, despite ostensibly being "gaming" GPUs, vast numbers of RTX 4090 — and even lower tier Ada Lovelace RTX 40-series GPUs — have been put to work running AI workloads. It's an echo of the cryptocurrency mining boom, only without quite the same level of scalping and backdoor dealing. Nvidia wasn't particularly keen on GPU mining back in the day, going so far as to implement Ethereum mining limiters (that, yes, were eventually broken).

But running AI on Nvidia GPUs has been a major topic since the RTX branding was first revealed in 2018. If you're an individual or business running AI on a bunch of GeForce cards? That's perfectly acceptable behavior, as far as Nvidia is concerned.

The result is that, for better or worse, GPU prices aren't coming down, especially not at the top of Nvidia's product stack. You can see the two best "deals" we're tracking right now on the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 Super above; the latter is selling at MSRP and the former starts at $200 above MSRP. (Inflation over the past two years could be a potential factor as well, of course.)

And my bet is that generational pricing will increase for the RTX 5090 and 5080 — possibly a lot. $1,999 for a 5090 and $1,199 for the 5080 is probably the best we can hope for. $2,499 and $1,299 launch prices frankly wouldn't surprise me.

Jarred Walton is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on everything GPU. He has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge '3D decelerators' to today's GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.