The availability of Nvidia's top-tier RTX 5090 graphics card has dwindled significantly across major US online retailers, with remaining listings often coming from third-party sellers at greatly inflated prices. Previously, it was more economical to attend industry events like PAX West or QuakeCon to purchase the card at its $1,999 MSRP than to find it through standard retail channels. This scarcity follows a trend observed in graphics card price tracking, where the RTX 5090 has seen its price surge dramatically, even exceeding $6,000 at times.
For example, a Gigabyte Windforce RTX 5090 that was available for $5,700 just last week is now listed for $9,050 by a third-party reseller on Newegg. The same model is sold out on Amazon and Best Buy. Similarly, the cheapest new RTX 5090 found is an Asus TUF model, also from a reseller, priced at $6,800. In the UK, the Zotac RTX 5090 is available for £3,940 from Scan, a price still considered very high.
This disappearing act of the RTX 5090 stock is attributed to several factors. Recent research indicates a broader trend of increased high-end graphics card purchases, with 12.5 million units shipped in the last quarter alone, despite rising costs. Nvidia maintains a dominant 90% market share in this segment. The demand is further intensified by the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang mentioned that 100,000 Nvidia GPUs were used to train OpenAI's latest model, GPT-6 Astra, with plans to scale that hardware requirement significantly. While the RTX 5090 may not be the specific card used for this particular AI training, other AI firms are reportedly purchasing high-end gaming GPUs in bulk to equip their server PCs, potentially as alternatives to datacenter accelerators or RTX Pro 6000 GPUs. Evidence supporting this includes images of RTX 5090 pallets shared online, suggesting bulk purchases by AI companies.
Furthermore, Nvidia may be reallocating production of its 4nm GB20x Blackwell chips away from consumer gaming GPUs and towards its professional products, such as workstations. This shift, even if overall production remains consistent, would inevitably reduce the supply of gaming-oriented cards like the RTX 5090, contributing to the current scarcity and escalating prices.