More hefty GPU price hikes are rumored — and your only chance of a high-end Nvidia graphics card at MSRP is at Quake Con | Tech Radar
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More hefty GPU price hikes are rumored — and your only chance of a high-end Nvidia graphics card at MSRP is at Quake Con
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MSI's Nvidia GPUs are rumored to be getting price hikes
They'll be 20% more expensive (or worse) in China, and that kind of increase will surely be seen elsewhere
This is happening against a backdrop of wider price hikes for graphics cards – although Nvidia is offering a rare chance at an RTX 5080 or 5090 at MSRP
As fresh rumors reveal that another graphics card maker is set to hike prices, Nvidia has a plan to let you buy a Founders Edition Blackwell GPU at the MSRP, even in the case of the RTX 5090 — although you'll need to travel.
And you'll need to move very fast, attend Quake Con in Texas, which starts today, and get yourself to the Ge Force booth (hat tip to Video Cardz) before supplies of RTX 5070, 5080, and 5090 Founders Edition graphics cards run out. And I don't think that they will last for long (a matter of minutes, at a guess, although hopefully that won't be the case).
Nvidia describes this as 'Verified Priority Access' in real life, and at least it does give gamers a chance to buy an RTX 5080 and 5090 at the intended price, which is not something you can get anywhere near when purchasing one of these high-end Nvidia GPUs at retail.
As for the most recent news on GPU price hikes, Wccftech spotted that MSI is the latest graphics card maker to announce that its products will be considerably more expensive.
This is just a rumor, one that arrives via the Board Channels in China, and so should be served with some seasoning — but the theory is that MSI's Nvidia GPUs are set for price hikes of 20% or more. This is due to rising memory prices, of course, and what Nvidia charges its partners for video RAM modules (as Team Green is paying more, it passes that bill on, of course).
Retail prices for Nvidia's RTX GPUs may increase due to RAM crisis
Nvidia RTX Super GPUs rumored to be ready, but on hold due to VRAM prices
The price increase is in the order of
Sadly, not only will current-gen Nvidia Ge Force graphics cards be affected, but also RTX 4000 and 3000 models (with GDDR6 video RAM getting costlier, as well as GDDR7).
While this is a rumored cost increase for MSI products in China, these exact same pricing pressures are, of course, happening globally, so there's no reason to believe that MSI's GPUs in other regions won't follow suit.
What's more, this isn't just a problem that pertains to MSI, but Nvidia's other card-making partners, and those companies are also rumored to be implementing hefty price hikes. For example, just this week we've heard that Gigabyte GPU prices will jump between 20% and 40%. Also, on a regional basis, Nvidia RTX 5000 models in South Korea are looking at price hikes of up to 30%.
So, this is a coherent picture of hikes, and those percentages are all in a similar ballpark, indicating increases of at least 20% or a good deal more. They are also backed up by more general chatter from the grapevine about Nvidia's VRAM increases and AMD's Radeon GPUs becoming pricier.
I fear that getting any kind of current-gen graphics card at, or near, the MSRP could be a much tougher task before long, and those at Quake Con better make the most of Nvidia's Ge Force offerings at the firm's booth. As noted, I expect this to be the definition of a flash sale — as in they'll be gone in a flash — although you do have another shot at winning an RTX 5070 in the Quake III Arena RTX Remix and Doom: The Dark Ages challenges.
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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for Tech Radar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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