Graphics card pricing is a lie

Okay, it’s time to stop pretending that the “retail price” of a graphics card means anything at all. AMD made a big press splash about launching its new Radeon RX 9070 cards at $550 and $600, sliding in well under Nvidia’s pricing for the same performance level. But surprise surprise, it’s essentially impossible to find a new card at that price on launch day. It is, for all practical purposes, a lie.

Without any real intent to pull the “complete order” trigger, I looked around for a $600 Radeon RX 9070 XT card this morning. Initial reports from retailers indicated that there were a lot more AMD cards available than there were for the recently launched RTX 50-series, for which Nvidia seems to have completely abandoned any pretense of delivering chips to PC gamers. But for the fourth time this year, the cards were gone more or less instantly at 9 a.m. sharp.

A familiar problem

While it’s true that there are more Radeon 9070 cards around than GeForce RTX 50-series cards, the only ones left at 9:05 a.m. were showing markups of $150 or more on that oh-so-tantalizing $600 manufacturer’s suggested retail price. And without any cards sold with AMD-only branding, like Nvidia’s much sought-after “Founder’s Edition” cards that actually are at the announced price, the markup is now basically the starting price.

If you’re a long-time PC gamer, you know how this works. Technically there’s a “base model” for each graphics card, and technically — or perhaps theoretically — each add-in-board partner sells one. We’re talking about Nvidia and AMD’s partner manufacturers like Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Sapphire, et cetera. But they also sell versions with some special sauce added on top. A fancy cooler, a little extra factory overclocking, some RGB lights added on. It’s basically the same thing as the “SE” and “Limited” trims of an economy car…with even less difference in the distinction.

Those extras? They do next to nothing. The measurable difference in performance or cooling versus the Founder’s Edition or stock card is a rounding error. Even the most bombastic of upsells, the MSI Suprim edition of the RTX 5090 with a massive, custom closed-loop liquid cooling setup, got perhaps two percent better framerates out of a high-end 4K gaming PC (though this card’s cooling should hopefully increase manual overclocking prowess). For this, MSI asks a $500 premium on a $2000 card.

Less outlandish cards are getting similar markups for these nigh-meaningless Edgelord Triple OC Limit Greak Alpha GigaChad Edition superlatives. XFX is selling a 9070 XT variant (with magnetic fans, oooooh) for $849.99 — a full $250, 40 percent markup over the base model’s alleged price.

Why the “retail price” is impossible to find

So what’s the problem? Just buy those MSRP cards to avoid the BS. Yeah, that’s not really an option. As anyone who’s actually looked for a card at the manufacturer’s suggested price knows, there appear to be so few of them actually making it to retailers that they might as well be mythical. We’re talking Shiny Pokemon levels of rarity.

We don’t have any data from Nvidia, AMD, their AIB partners, or the retailers themselves, but it’s clear that only a fraction of the models sold to consumers actually come in at the prices Nvidia and AMD claim for these graphics cards.

Why not sell more of these cards at the “real” price? Because at the moment, there’s no reason to do so. Between apparently low GPU output (especially for Nvidia) and high demand from PC gamers and scalpers, manufacturers can be confident that they’ll sell every single card they make on launch day, and probably months and months after that, even with gigantic markups. There’s no reason not to gouge the prices, and barely any reason to pretend that they’re delivering extra value with a fancy plastic cooler wrapped around the chip.

Newegg

Okay, so maybe you just need to be a little patient. Wait for the initial rush to die down, save your upgrades for later. Yeah, that probably won’t work either. We’ve already seen graphics cards makers like MSI brazenly raise prices just after launch, even for those alleged “base model” GPUs. VideoCardz.com spotted a retailer admitting that it’s only going to apply the initial prices for cards on the initial shipments. “Our second shipment from PowerColor is already waiting, and we cannot offer it at MSRP prices,” said Swedish retail chain Inet.se.

This is bullshit. And it’s all the more infuriating that we’ve reached this point after years and years of rapid inflation, with shortages during the COVID pandemic and cryptocurrency boom now apparently replaced with companies just catering to industrial AI demand for GPUs. A $600 graphics card is now the “bargain” for PC gaming, which makes sense on paper, but seems pretty freakin’ ridiculous when that’ll buy me a whole-ass console or a Steam Deck.

There are other factors at play. Worldwide inflation is a factor that hits the electronics sector hard, and the Trump regime’s attempts to make Americans pay more for everything from tomatoes to insulin to F-150s is causing market chaos both domestically and internationally. But those are, apparently, very small parts of this equation.

There’s no reason not to charge more

The plain fact of the matter is that graphics card manufacturers (if not Nvidia and AMD directly) and retailers are jacking up prices because they can, and there’s no incentive not to. They’ll sell every card they make, at almost any price. That XFX Radeon card I mentioned with the 40 percent markup? The one that makes it even more expensive than the Nvidia card it’s supposed to be a “bargain” alternative to? Yeah, it’s sold out as well.

The “retail price” might not technically be a lie (I see our lawyers wiping away some sweat over in the corner). But that price is only “the truth” in the Lionel Hutz sense.

If someone asked me how much they should budget for a new desktop graphics card right now, I’d tell them to add $200 to the prices that were announced. That makes those announced prices, in practice if not in every weaselly technicality, a lie.