Absurd GPU Pricing Update Mid-2026: What Graphics Cards Cost Around the World

[Mark Fuller]

And the real slap in the face is Nividia is in no rush to make more GPU because all the memory is still being shuttled towards AI data centers.

Worse: even if a new card, 6080 or 9090, comes to market, you'll have scalpers scalping as they have not created any way to control who gets cards and who doesn't.

Apple killed scalping during the iPhone 7 Plus launch simply by forcing pre-orders and then qualifying pre-orders on the date of pickup. No bot can beat that.

I personally think they love this. After all, they are propelled to the world's #1 company and they have massive profit. It always feels like there is an artificial pressure pushing these devices up.

I have a 5090 and 64GB DDR5 just like both my cousins do. I think we can weather the storm for 10 years. I don't see any software coming any time soon to challenge the 5090. If a 6090 and 7090 does come, my cousin will spend whatever it takes to get it. I don't need it. I can wait till the 10090.

Hopefully the system will be better then.

Scalpers are going to scalp, and, could it be, because the manufacturers themselves set them up so they can get their kickbacks. I know of a real incident like this that happened by a large world famous pharmacueticals company when I worked in the Veterinary supply industry, and you mentioned so and so. As far as a better system is concerned, don't count on it. In my opinion, so and so has not made very much of an improvement in their operating systrem since the days of WXP. The basic compter shell, which is for the most part the registry, has changed very little at all. Just changes to contextual menu processess and cosmetic appearances. They only real changes of any value I see are hardware changes, like to reduce size, and increase speed and performance. And you may indeed be able to wait till the 10090 to make any difference in that.

 

[yRaz]

Yeah, I remember. I also remember that was during the great financial crisis, where we had 10% unemployment and people were trying to keep roofs over their head, not to mention nvidia had a NEGATIVE profit margin in 2009.

But sure, tell us how corporations should run like charities and ignore inflation so you can have cheaper bing bing wahoo

well the interesting thing about the 8800GT is that it did not have the DirextX10.1 fix and they were already manufacturing the cards. The 8800GT was made on the G92 die and was originally supposed to be the 9800GTX but the revised version ended up being the G92b with the DX 10.1 fix.

And here is the fun thing about it, there is only 1 game that used the full revised instruction set for DX10.1 and that was Crysis: Warhead. The bug is only visible in the boss fight at the end of the game.

But nVidia ended up producing the dies before the DX10.1 standard was finalized and that's why the 8800GT's could be had for 220-250 when the 9800GTX went for around 300-320 initially.

 

[AndrettiGTO]

Remember when an 80 class card was less than$500? Remember wh3n you could get 2, 8800GTs for $500? Now let's see who virtue signals for the major corporations

Old enough to remember a 4870X2 was over $630! …and I was dumb enough to buy another.
So really, prices now are higher but enthusiasts seem to find a way to

 

[loki1944]

Honesly I wish devs would stop using UE5 and go back to UE3 or 4 and other pre RT crap. Go back to 3GB VRAM capable engines.

 

[yRaz]

Honesly I wish devs would stop using UE5 and go back to UE3 or 4 and other pre RT crap. Go back to 3GB VRAM capable engines.

How dare you suggest something so reasonable!!!!!

 

[Draconian]

If you already have something sufficient...

I have a 4080 that has served me well for 3 years.

...our advice is to keep using it until a new generation of products arrives.

Will do.

 

[ihashid]

Thank you for including the Indian price list. I noticed a small typo in the Intel B580 pricing. It's listed as **₹320** as the launch price, which would be only about **US$3.5**. I believe the actual launch price was around **₹28,000**.

 

[Win7user]

Vote with your wallet!

 

[bexwhitt]

Funny, here a 5080 cost 1650 euro atm. The absolute cheapest you can buy (from GB) and the most pricy one is from Asus, for around 1900-2000. Depending on models. Some GB cards are also selling for 1700 ish, but they are usually gone. It was supposed to be Palit, the cheapest but that has been gone for at least 5 months now.

I dunno if our stores are scalping us big time or what but these are the local prices. Also, 5070 ti is 1200 euro here. Yes, 1200. In fact, some of the 5070 ti models go for 1400 euro... my god. The model that is the cheapest is - RTX 5070 Ti, 16GB, Gigabyte Eagle

The Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 WINDFORCE OC SFF 16GB Blackwell Graphics Card is £1,227.98 at scan computers

 

[Axeia]

Honesly I wish devs would stop using UE5 and go back to UE3 or 4 and other pre RT crap. Go back to 3GB VRAM capable engines.

Fortnite seems to run fine on 4GB, heck it can even run on 2GB.

UE3 bogged down open world games like crazy and seemingly it was hard to do a decent UI without performance taking a big hit. Not something I'd want to go back to.

I've little experience with UE4 games other than games getting ported from 3 to 4 and usually seeing a performance increase. So that's a better suggestion at least.

But UE5 isn't the problem, it's what people do with it. Epic doesn't show up at your doorstep and force you to use Lumen and Nanite.
Personally I have always favored games that put the VRAM to good use for high quality textures. It's a shame with the current pricing the 8GB sweet spot well passed its prime might actually become its prime once again.

 

[Guyver1wales]

I remember buying a top of the line Voodoo3 3000 AGP for £130 back in January 2000.
Even with inflation accounted for that's just £205 in 2026.

Halcyon days...

 

[Endymio]

I remember buying a top of the line Voodoo3 3000 AGP for £130 back in January 2000.
Even with inflation accounted for that's just £205 in 2026.

Halcyon days...

What's "halcyon" about that? Today, you can get 10 times the graphical power for around a $15 additional cost of an integrated graphics CPU.

 

[loki1944]

Fortnite seems to run fine on 4GB, heck it can even run on 2GB.

UE3 bogged down open world games like crazy and seemingly it was hard to do a decent UI without performance taking a big hit. Not something I'd want to go back to.

I've little experience with UE4 games other than games getting ported from 3 to 4 and usually seeing a performance increase. So that's a better suggestion at least.

But UE5 isn't the problem, it's what people do with it. Epic doesn't show up at your doorstep and force you to use Lumen and Nanite.
Personally I have always favored games that put the VRAM to good use for high quality textures. It's a shame with the current pricing the 8GB sweet spot well passed its prime might actually become its prime once again.

The bigger issue is ray tracing baked in like in Doom Dark Age or Indiana Jones; then on top of that UE5 games on average running like arse. The focus has very obviously shifted to graphics over substance. I would rather have a Far Cry 2 2008 level experience on my 8800 GTX than an insert UE5 game experience on my RTX 5090. Also with the vast price increases of hardware in 2026 I'm far more interested in affordable gameplay than super shiny vaseline ray tracing games.

 

[yRaz]

The bigger issue is ray tracing baked in like in Doom Dark Age or Indiana Jones; then on top of that UE5 games on average running like arse. The focus has very obviously shifted to graphics over substance. I would rather have a Far Cry 2 2008 level experience on my 8800 GTX than an insert UE5 game experience on my RTX 5090. Also with the vast of hardware in 2026 I'm far more interested in affordable gameplay than super shiny vaseline ray tracing games.

The problem with UE5 is that it renders things that aren't visable and it doesn't have some implementation where it solves this stuff automatically. Take out that issue and UE5 is actually a really good engine, but it's held back back rendering nonsense that noone can see. There is some argument to be made where it's required for Ray Tracing and path tracing, but I'm still in the boat that thinks good game design doesn't need those fancy rendering techniques

 

[argospanoptis]

Hello everybody. A quick pricing update: the pricings in the article were correct on July 31st. However, in my local markets here (Germany and Greece) an rtx 5060 TI with 16gb has gone up to about 700 Euro. You can find some models for about €680, but most models are in the 750 to 770 Euro range, and above. Especially in Greece, which is generally one of the cheaper markets (by a very small margin), prices have exploded.

For a rx 9060 xt 16gb, prices are in the 500-600 Euro range. Ridiculous.

9 years ago, I bought an rx580 8gb for 200 euro, new. These now go for 125-250 Euro. If it wasn't so tragic, it would be funny. And I'm going to continue using that.