If you’ve tried to buy a new graphics card recently, you already know the painful truth: prices are terrible, and availability is even worse. The advertised MSRPs from companies like Nvidia and AMD often feel like a fantasy, completely detached from what we see in stores.
This isn’t just a feeling; an exhaustive statistical analysis from the Gamers Nexus team proves it. They looked at the current graphics card market and found some depressingly predictable results that confirm our worst fears.
Their extensive data shows that high-end cards, particularly the RTX 5090 and 5080, and the RX 9070 XT, are consistently selling for 45% to 55% above their suggested retail price. Even cards that are supposed to be in the midrange, like the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti, are seeing markups of 20% to 27%. And all of this assumes you can even find them in stock, as they tend to disappear from shelves almost instantly.
🤑 What’s Driving These Absurd Prices?
The reasons for these outrageous prices are many, but they are depressingly familiar. Low stock levels are a constant problem as PC gamers scramble to try to find an upgrade, to say nothing of scalpers gobbling them up to try to squeeze more money out of people.
Add-in board partners and retailers are also trying to make as much as they can out of the situation, with only a tiny percentage of GPUs actually made and sold at the “base price,” flooded out by more cards with nigh-useless “upgrades” to drive up the prices. Additionally, there’s a strong possibility that Nvidia and AMD are prioritizing corporate and startup partners during the AI boom, mirroring the shortages of the cryptocurrency mining race from a few years ago.
💔 The Takeaway for Gamers
If you’re a PC gamer in need of a new graphics card, the message is clear and disheartening: it’s a bad time to be shopping. The most easily available cards are often the budget ones that nobody seems to want, like the RTX 5060, which got very poor reviews. The data from Gamers Nexus paints a bleak picture, showing that while we might get a few budget-friendly options, the mid-to-high-end market is a mess. It’s a frustrating reality, and unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better anytime soon.
Works Cited
Crider, Michael. “GPUs are too expensive and too hard to find—here’s the proof.” PCWorld, Aug. 2025, pp. 19-20.
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