When the RTX 5090 launched almost two years ago, Nvidia put a staggering $1,999 price tag on its new flagship. I called it “the most brutally fast graphics card ever created” because it was (and still is). The RTX 5090 delivered a huge jump in raw performance, combined with a mammoth next-gen 32GB GDDR7 memory and Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture.
It was exaggeration incarnate.
Now? Buying an RTX 5090 can really cost vastly more than its already amazing sticker price. In September, a new RTX 5090 had risen to at least $5,000 in North America. Current price tracking in the United States puts the average even higher.
Five. Thousand. Dollars.
And make no mistake: the RTX 5090 is much faster than cheaper graphics cards. This isn’t one of those situations where a $549 GeForce RTX 5070 suddenly matches Nvidia’s flagship if you turn on some magic setting, no matter what Nvidia’s marketing material says.
It’s not like that.
