As we cross over to 2026 from 2025, there’s a whole lot of things happened regarding GPUs and the associated market. Here’s a post to help you catch up on some of the bigger announcements.
1. GPUs are more expensive, no matter Team Green or Red
New reports from Board Channels have suggested AMD will be pushing out new price tags for its graphics cards as early as this month, with NVIDIA following close behind in February. Recent surveys that check on GPU prices also revealed Team Red’s latest lineup is creeping towards MSRP, with one case being the Radeon RX 9070 XT.
This will be followed by AIB partners, where they will continue the price hike strategy over the next few months, since both of the components make up close to 80% of a retail GPU card’s cost by the time it reaches them, and it is all due to GDDR VRAM and gaming-class GPU chips getting their supply squeezed by AI demands (Everyone wants that big piece of AI pie, not gonna lie).
Adding to the issue, AMD’s RDNA 4 lineup is relatively small, while many previous-generation cards are already at end-of-life. That leaves fewer alternatives for buyers, just as prices begin to creep up. Board Channels also suggests these won’t be one-off adjustments, with both companies potentially raising prices month after month for a while.
Despite partners having the final say in how they wanna price their offerings, the higher cost of producing these GPUs leaves them little choice, and flagship cards such as the GeForce RTX 5090 would just fly off the charts from its intended US$2,000 MSRP, and it won’t be as shocking as it sounds.
2. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 for, how much??
According to Videocardz, the US$1,999 is only possible through the Founders Edition of RTX 5090, with AIB variants at US$2,499, which is the plan. But retailers have already pushed it towards the three to four “K” range, while another post by Wccftech confirms that FE cards have already reached US$3,695. Meanwhile, the “oil prince specialty” ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Dhabab Edition sits nicely at US$6,990 and remains untouched.
While NVIDIA hasn’t come out with any official statement regarding this, at this pace, the king of Blackwell-based GeForce cards would push towards the US$5,000 mark, if the rumor and speculation groups are on the correct side. The same thing might happen to the China-exclusive RTX 5090 D and D V2 variants, although one may say that people from the “big land of the East” have no problem sourcing and gobbling up stocks of the original that has the “full AI power” reserved for the underground prosumer clients.
3. The winter is here for the EU
Referring to a post on Reddit by u/Gb2753, who’s running a PC DIY shop, the owner has received an email from one of the German-based distributors stating that RTX 5090 / 5080 / 5070 Ti stocks are all at zero. Yes, the big ol “0”. All orders placed after December 30 have been voided, too.
Mid-range cards like the RTX 5070 are still in stock but will only be sold in a highly controlled flow, with Amazon Business limiting how many GPUs can be ordered at once. Meanwhile, Japanese retailers have been extra strict recently on how much they sell and who they sell to, signaling a heavy GPU rationing trend on a global scale.
4. If one 12VHPWR can toast your card, how about two
While the SUPRIM models from MSI are about performance, look, and class, one will not forget about the Lightning when they see it, and it’s all because of the Red Dragon brand putting all skill points in performance alone for the family. With the last one being the RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z in 2019, it seems that that name will finally return after 6 years for the RTX 5090.
Tom’s Hardware‘s report shows the leaked photo of the PCB carrying not one but two 12VHPWR connectors and a 40-phase VRAM array in order to push the GB202 chip to the boundary. And this is real, as the top spot on HWBot for the 3DMark Time Spy Hall of Fame benchmark has been refreshed with 59,438 and 58,786 points by users nv1diafan and oc_windforce, respectively.
And what do you know, it seems like the teaser embargo has been lifted, as the official MSI Gaming account on X is playing on the elements of “lightning”. Real subtle right there.
MSI has not revealed how much wattage the card could take in, but judging from its competitor, ASUS’s release of the XOC BIOS enabling up to 2000W of crazy juice, the RTX 5090 Lightning Z could come close to it, whether it is through the stock configuration or a manually-flashed overclock-exclusive version.
[Update #1]
The latest report from Coolaler confirms that MSI is pushing a whopping 2500W for the RTX 5090 Lightning Z via XOC BIOS, leading to a 3.742GHz world record number over the now 2nd place 3.65GHz achieved by GALAX RTX 5090D HOF OC V2.
Such a magic number is achieved through the usual LN2 setup, and the GDDR7 VRAM chip is rated at 36Gbps, which is the same number on the GALAX RTX 5090D HOF OC V2 results, suggesting that the physical bottlenecks of GDDR7 might be the limiting factor for the design of this generation.
