Nvidia RTX 3090 prices revealed — and they’re 3x the Xbox Series X

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Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 listings show crazy-expensive graphics cards

Gigabyte RTX 3090
(Image credit: Gigabyte/Best Buy)

We are mere days away from Nvidia’s release of its new Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3000-series graphics cards, and listings for the enormously powerful RTX 3090 have started to pop up on Amazon and Best Buy. 

Versions of the GeForce RTX 3090 have been listed from EVGA and Gigabyte, offering ‘aftermarket’ takes on Nvidia’s own Founders Edition RTX 3090. These graphics cards pack in 10,496 CUDA cores and 24GB of GDDR6X memory under a triple-fan chassis, promising vast amounts of graphical power to drive next-generation games. 

The graphical grunt the RTX 3090 is not only set to easily blow away the performance of Nvidia’s last high-end consumer graphics card, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, but also offer far more power than the PS5 or Xbox Series X. However, that power will come at a hefty price. 

We already know the Founders Edition RTX 3090 will go for $1,499, but third-party versions will be even more expensive, with the Gigabyte Eagle and Gigabyte Gaming versions listed at $1,549,99 and $1,579.99. And you’ll want a pretty powerful PC to take advantage of all the GPU power the new Ampere architecture offers, which means building an RTX 3090 gaming PC will likely cost north of $2,000. 

For the price of the graphics card alone, you'll be able to buy three $499 Xbox Series X consoles and still have a bit of cash to spare. PC gaming has always been expensive on a hardware front, but this is certainly a hefty price. 

It’s also worth noting that Gigabyte’s graphics cards are using air-based cooling. As such, aftermarket versions with fancier cooling systems, such as water cooling systems, will likely cost even more. 

EVGA RTX 3090

(Image credit: EVGA)

The EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 Kingpin, for example, comes with a twin-fan radiator, and the also sports a water cooling system. The card's price has yet to be revealed but expect it to be eye-wateringly expensive.

But if you’re after the very best tech gaming can offer and want a PC over a next-generation console, then the GeForce RTX 3090 is the way to go. It will deliver 4K resolution, 60 frames per second gaming, with ray-tracing enabled. And in some cases it promising to offer 8K gaming.

This makes it a fantastically powerful and expensive bit of gaming hardware. But it should deliver performance that will take years for other graphics cards and gaming tech to catch up with.

Roland Moore-Colyer
Roland Moore-Colyer

Roland Moore-Colyer a Managing Editor at Tom’s Guide with a focus on news, features and opinion articles. He often writes about gaming, phones, laptops and other bits of hardware; he’s also got an interest in cars. When not at his desk Roland can be found wandering around London, often with a look of curiosity on his face.