While regular readers of TechRadar might recall me saying this before, the GPU market is in such a poor state that it's one I've never seen in my lifetime, and I'll never get tired of saying it. Contemporary factors like tariffs, the AI boom, and economic uncertainty are present, don't get me wrong, but the issue of overpriced GPUs has been active long before recent sanctions from President Trump.
Based on what I've seen over the last few years, it's mostly the price of Nvidia's third-party GPUs that are always skyrocketing: this was never clearer than with the likes of the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080, which both launched during the period of the pandemic. While it's obvious that a global emergency like COVID-19 would result in inflated pricing, I've not seen the price of RTX 4090 partner cards fall below their launch price in the years following the pandemic, but rather an increase - and it's a three-year-old card!
