Leaker claims that the RTX 5090 will not have a significant price increase.' And even though AMD is down for the count, here's our prediction of how the RTX 50 series will line up.

Graphics card pricing can be a controversial topic. Many of us can remember the days when you could get a good mid-range graphics card for less than $300-$400 and even the high-end cards were still reasonably priced. Halcyon times, my friends. And they are ripe for nostalgia. It was really better in the old days, wasn’t it?

But it's a new world, where $1,600+ RTX-4090s are everywhere. According to kopite7kimi - a leaker who is well known - we shouldn't expect a significant amount of money on top of MSRP for Nvidia’s upcoming high-end card. They posted a tweet that was reassuring, stating they "don't think there will be a substantial price increase for the RTX5090".

This might surprise you, given the alleged (and truly massive) specs of this GPU. If the specs are accurate, we could be looking at a powerful GPU with 32 GB of GDDR7 and a 512-bit bus.

Nvidia has probably already reached a price cap with the RTX 490. It may have learned from its current-generation efforts that people are willing to pay astronomical amounts of money for performance levels that are similar, but a $2,000 or comparable halo card seems like it would be too much for even the most wealthy gamers.

Nvidia did make this calculation when it released the RTX-3090 Ti, in order to chase the covid/GPU scarce dollar. It repaid that by releasing the RTX 4090 at $1,600.

Assuming kopite7kimi's claim is true, I wonder how they define "significant". Even though the overall costs are $1,600, an additional $100-$200 on top of that would only be a 6%-13% increase.

This kind of increase does seem reasonable to me. A $1,700 or $1,800 RTX-5090 might be too expensive for some gamers, but RTX-4090s continue to sell well above that price. There's probably enough of a market to support the highest-end Blackwell-based consumer cards.

What happens now that AMD has withdrawn from the high-end market for this new generation of GPUs? It's Nvidia to dominate. Nvidia is free to do whatever it wants, as there's no competition.

I'm not excluding it, but even in the open skies of Nvidia's high-end GPU market, it seems like a step too much.

What about the RTX5080? I'd say that Nvidia is likely to price it at around $1,000. The RTX 4080 Super and RTX 4080 were released at $1199 and $999, respectively. The latter was well received because it delivered almost the same performance for a lower launch price.

What about the RTX-5070, which is rumoured launch at CES in 2025 along with its faster siblings? Here's where it gets interesting. AMD will want its RDNA 4 GPUs to remain competitive in the midrange, even if they have conceded the high end market. So there could be real competition here.

Nvidia isn't concerned at all with what AMD is doing these days.

When it comes to midrange, price is a big factor. While I doubt that the RTX-5070 will launch at the adjusted price Nvidia offered the RTX-4070 to cover the RX-7800 XT, it wouldn't surprise me if the price was similar to the original launch. This would make it $599. Add $50 for inflation, Nvidia tax, etc. and I'd say $649 is a good bet.

This is speculating, and I could have this article thrown at me if the RTX GPUs are released for outrageous prices, and the internet goes into a collective meltdown.

While graphics card prices have risen dramatically over the last decade, it feels like the top has been reached, at least for a little while.

Andy's big mistake? I know you've just read it but I'm going to hedge my bets on this one.