GeForce RTX 50-series GPU prices spike as much as 39% as Blackwell price hikes hit the US — RTX 5070 gets a 36% hike, RTX 5060 up 27% at the median of Newegg listings

News of regional price increases for Nvidia graphics cards has been rolling in over the past little while, and those hikes have now arrived in the United States. We nearly spit out our coffee this morning while checking Newegg prices for Blackwell products. After months of painful but still relatively reasonable e-tail prices versus skyrocketing RAM and SSD costs, popular Blackwell GPUs are now eye-wateringly expensive. And those increases appear to be rolling out across other e-tailers, too.

As part of our ongoing research for the best graphics cards, we track the prices of every e-tail listing we can find for consumer graphics cards and calculate the median price of those products. We specifically track this figure as we feel it represents the price of a given graphics card model that you're most likely to find in stock, not stripped-down models that might be produced in limited volume to hit an artificially low MSRP.

With that, the theoretically entry-level RTX 5060 is now $469.99 at the midpoint of current prices, which is now two rungs up the MSRP ladder compared to its $299.99 launch MSRP. Just a couple of months ago, 5060s were selling for a median $369.99, or just below the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB's $379.99 launch MSRP. Now, the cheapest GDDR7 Blackwell card costs more than the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB's $429.99 launch price.

RTX 5060 Ti 8GB cards used to be among the least marked-up Blackwell parts thanks to the fact that their performance and VRAM capacity was out of line with their high $379.99 launch MSRP, but they're now headed up the escalator like their stablemates. The median 5060 Ti 8GB now costs $529.99, which is about 13-15% more expensive than a couple of months ago.

The RTX 5060 Ti 16GB now commands an astounding $799.99 median price, a jaw-dropping 38% more expensive than the $579.99 midpoint we last calculated. The 5060 Ti 16GB was already far too expensive to recommend for gaming at that price, and the new markup suggests that it'll only be of interest to local AI explorers trying to get the most VRAM they can on a Blackwell card for under $1000. Pour one out for what used to be the best entry-level enthusiast GPU we recommended.

The RTX 5070 was another one of the last gaming holdouts near its MSRP thanks to strong competition from the RX 9070 16GB, but the midpoint of prices for 5070s has now leaped an incredible 29% over our last survey, to about $850-$900. Even comparing lows to lows, prices for the cheapest 5070s have jumped about 20%. That takes this card entirely out of the midrange running and positions it closer to the much faster RTX 5070 Ti, which also has 16GB of VRAM to play with.

The hikes appear to have hit the middle of the Blackwell lineup the hardest, as the midpoint of RTX 5070 Ti prices is the same as it was during our last check-in. RTX 5080s haven't gotten substantially more expensive than they have been, either, as prices for those cards have always been highly elevated compared to their $999 MSRP. And the RTX 5050's price has barely moved today, either, hovering near the $300 it's maintained since around the beginning of the year.

These increases haven't been matched by hikes on the AMD side-yet. Heavy emphasis on yet. We're only seeing single-digit percentage increases in RDNA 4 card prices compared to our last survey, although Radeon RX 9000-series cards appear to be affected by the silicon supply crunch in other ways.

The assortment of available RX 9070 16GB cards is perhaps a bit smaller than it's been in the past, while the cut-down RX 9070 GRE is available in abundance around its $549 MSRP, suggesting that card has taken over the true midrange role the plain 9070 could never quite manage at the same MSRP.

We felt that the GRE's price was high at launch, but AMD likely has a better crystal ball for silicon supply chain trends than we do, as the GRE now offers incredible bang for the buck compared to the RTX 5070's new sticker.

The RX 9060 XT 8GB isn't completely dead yet, but only one XFX 8GB model remains readily available at e-tail for $399. The RX 9060 XT 16GB's median price has slightly risen to $474.99, and the RX 9070 XT now sits 5% higher than our last check-in at a median of $799.99.

All told, these Blackwell price hikes are another body blow for a DIY PC component market that's already reeling from sky-high RAM and NAND prices. Graphics cards had until recently been one of the less hiked-up component categories in a DIY PC's bill of materials compared to the pre-AI times, but that period of relative solace is well and truly over if you want access to Nvidia's hardware and software stack.

If you're a PC gamer, there's no good news here. We'll have to see whether there's a similar price spike waiting in the wings for Radeon cards in the coming days, or whether this is the sad, sorry new normal.