Nvidia RTX 4090 (opens in new tab) went on sale yesterday. It sold out 10 minutes later. Shortly after that, the RTX 4090 ended up on eBay. Standard stuff. Although what's really surprising is that these graphics cards on eBay aren't as terrible in terms of price as you might expect them to be. Okay, they're not cheap by any means, not at all. Good business, but things could absolutely be worse. In fact, they have been worse for a long time.
These less inflated prices are perhaps actually indicative of better supply for GPUs and less frenetic demand than at any other time in the past 18 months. One of the few reasons why you shouldn't take anyone on an RTX 4090 with an inflated price tag.
Over the past two years, resellers have made money by selling in-demand graphics cards for far more than their suggested retail price. An RTX 3080 would fetch over 220% compared to its original suggested price (opens in new tab) from US$1,699 in the months after its launch and an RTX 3090 around US$1,80% or more.
Though those MSRPs don't mean much for most of the life of these graphics cards anyway.
But today the RTX 4090 is listed at 'just' €301T over its suggested price, at around US$2,100. That's the cheapest I've found so far. eBay (opens in new tab). Although, admittedly, you'll find the Founders Editions worth a bit more – the Nvidia cover design is the one we like the most, and it looks the most sought after too.
I’m not saying run out and buy a graphics card from a reseller on eBay – you shouldn’t pay more for an already extremely expensive card, or make reselling GPUs a worthwhile venture for those who choose to take advantage of the launch day rush. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Demand is high for the RTX 4090 right now, and that’s to be expected. Even before the big GPU shortages in previous years, stock never lasted until launch day. That’s pretty normal. What we can only hope for now is quick restocks. What we’ve heard from UK retailers we’ve spoken to is that supply should be steady for the RTX 4090 going forward. We’ve also heard of at least one restock on the way to a UK retailer today, October 13th.
However, I'm not going to pretend that everything is rosy now. A post in Reddit (opens in new tab) suggests that a customer who snagged an RTX 4090 on launch day from Box was later disappointed to learn that their order had been canceled due to insufficient stock. Box also claims that it has no visibility into other shipments of RTX 4090s.
We reached out to Box to confirm this situation, and a spokesperson responded by saying that they are seeking clarification on the situation from product managers. They also mentioned that this may have been an issue due to sales overtaking the system and overselling being done before the automatic out-of-stock notification could be activated.
However, it's a frustrating situation for those affected, especially as we were expecting more robust sales systems after the previous 18 months of high GPU demand.
When asked about Newegg’s launch, a spokesperson responded by saying, “The launch of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card went well for Newegg. Demand for the 4090 was extremely strong. Newegg sold out of our first batch of inventory quickly.”
“Our expectations have been exceeded and it is clear that customers are excited about the 4090 Series and the 40 Series in general.”
The supply situation is not entirely clear, then – we are certainly hearing mixed messages. The important thing to remember is that the actual supply for GPUs is not as constrained on a larger scale as it once was. And the biggest drain on GPU supply for cryptocurrency mining purposes, Ethereum, no longer requires GPUs. (opens in new tab). We can only expect more readily available restocks in the coming weeks and months, as some retailers seem to suggest.
