Nvidia sold RTX 50-series Founders Edition graphics cards at original MSRP during QuakeCon 2026 (Aug 6–9, Grapevine, Texas), an event now framed as a draw for GPU-hungry gamers. The 5090 ($1,999 MSRP), 5080 ($999), 5070 Ti ($749), and 5070 ($549) were announced at CES 2025 but have been priced well above launch since April 2026 when memory shortages accelerated. GPUs selling at launch prices more than a year after release constitutes an attraction—a stark marker of supply-demand inversion.
Tom's Hardware's GPU price tracker shows current market prices 14% to 119% above MSRP: 5090 at $4,381 (2.2x MSRP), 5080 at $1,289 (+29%), 5070 Ti at $989 (+32%), 5070 at $629 (+14%). Additional pressure emerged in South Korea, where RTX 50-series prices jumped 30% recently, with TSMC wafer costs increasing and GDDR7 modules surpassing $20 each. The company announced concern that U.S. retailers may follow Korea's price spike.
Nvidia's scarcity play is deliberate: the GeForce booth offered "Verified Priority Access IRL" to enable in-person purchases at MSRP while supplies lasted. The memory shortage—HBM demand from AI data centers, plus now competition for GDDR7 from both gaming GPUs and inference accelerators—is the binding constraint. For architects watching AI capex: this GPU price floor suggests AI infrastructure costs will stay elevated through 2028 per SK Hynix forecasts, with gaming as a secondary market in the memory allocation hierarchy.