Image: MSI
You knew that Nvidia’s newest graphics cards wouldn’t be cheap, even if you could find one to buy. But between scalpers and tariffs, finding one at anything resembling Nvidia’s suggested retail price is all but impossible. MSI is doing its part to make sure it stays that way with an across-the-board price increase.
VideoCardz.com noticed that MSI raised the price on its OEM version of the “base” RTX 5070 Ti Shadow 3X, from $750 at launch to $819.99 now. That $70 bump means there isn’t a single card in MSI’s US store showing the base price that Nvidia promoted at the CES 2025 announcement. The least expensive RTX 5080 is $1,140 instead of $1,000, and the cheapest MSI RTX 5090 is now a whopping $2,400 (that’s $400 over MSRP).
To be fair, these results don’t appear to have changed much since early February, according to the Internet Archive. And there’s no cached version of the site showing that $750 RTX 5070 Ti, so I can’t independently confirm that MSI raised the price on the cheapest 50-series card. And all of this is a bit academic, since there isn’t a single card available to buy at any price on MSI’s US store in any case.
There are a lot of factors in play driving these prices up. You have the usual relationship between Nvidia and OEM card manufacturers, who relish the chance to splash adjectives on their cards and pretend that a shiny cooler or a 5 percent overclock justifies a much higher price tag. You also have the huge demand from both PC gamers and the AI industry that makes these cards hard to find in the first place. And in the US, you have the Trump regime’s import tariffs, which are taxes that manufacturers and retailers tend to pass directly onto consumers to keep their profit margins intact. It’s a perfect storm driving prices higher.
VideoCardz says that MSI “has now become a scalper themselves.” I wouldn’t go that far — scalpers trying to flip hard-to-find retail items on the gray market will usually shoot for double their money right away. And the practice of offering only a tiny number of cards at MSRP, followed by the vast majority of OEM cards in these more expensive, profitable configurations, is nothing new.
But that doesn’t make the ballooning prices any more tolerable, especially coming from a source that’s supposed to be as close to the manufacturer as possible. It gives AMD and Intel an opportunity to make their affordable cards look all the more appealing.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he’s the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop “battlestation” in his off hours. Michael’s previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he’s covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he’s always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.
