RTX 4090 availability has gone from bad to worse in the German market. 3DCenter reports that RTX 4090 retail volume is reportedly diminished. Several local retailers are almost out of one of the best graphics cards. Meanwhile, any remaining retailers with decent RTX 4080 inventory to spare have seemingly increased pricing to compensate for the low volume.
At the time of writing, Mindfactory.de and Alternate have only one RTX 4090 listing available. Mindfactory has a PNY RTX 4090 Verto for €1,998.99 — $2,225.65, and Alternate has a single Asus RTX 4090 ROG Strix Gaming OC White edition for €2,079.00 — $2,314.73.
CaseKing is still ripe with RTX 4090 listings — featuring 20 air-cooled and liquid-cooled cards from MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI. Still, pricing has purportedly increased significantly to keep supply in stock. The cheapest RTX 4090 models start at €1,917.08 and go beyond €2,400 for some models. For perspective, that is a price range of $2,100 to over $2,600, around $1000 more than MSRP.
3DCenter reports that these exorbitant prices are up "a good €150" over average RTX 4090 pricing, which was settled around €1,700 during the summer, still well over the GPU's original MSRP.
If this is not a brief supply hiccup, it suggests that the rumor(s) surrounding the discontinuation of the RTX 4090 may have some credence. A rumor has been circulating for a week based on information from Chinese board partners that Nvidia will "officially discontinue" the RTX 4090 and its Chinese counterpart, the RTX 4090D, in October, letting the remaining supply dissipate until after November.
October is not here yet, but we're just one week away from it. If we see the RTX 4090 supply start to run dry in other regions, we may also get extra hints about the legitimacy of this rumor. If this starts to happen, Nvidia could launch the GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards this year or early next year.