- XMG warns that ‘substantial price increases for upcoming GPU shipments’ mean it’s hiking RTX 5090 laptop prices
- One model is already pricier and bigger hikes for XMG’s other notebooks could be coming soon
- At the same time, we’re hearing more about the struggles of Nvidia’s partners for supply of components for the desktop RTX 5090
The position of Nvidia’s RTX 5090 is looking shakier by the day, as even more chatter is emerging suggesting that this GPU is effectively sidelined at this point, even if it hasn’t actually been discontinued.
You may have read up on those recent rumors claiming that Nvidia has discontinued the RTX 5090 — which is speculation that Team Green has firmly denied, I should make clear.
The fresh negative news from the grapevine comes firstly from laptop maker XMG on Reddit, which is sharing more bad news on the RAM crisis affecting its prices, specifically with the RTX 5090.
XMG says: “We expect laptops with the RTX 5090 to become significantly more expensive again over the coming weeks.” (We already saw price hikes from XMG last month, if you recall).
The company explains why: “Procurement conditions for the RTX 5090 Laptop GPU have deteriorated considerably within a short period. We have received new information indicating substantial price increases for upcoming GPU shipments.
“At the same time, availability is becoming increasingly constrained. Replenishment orders that have already been planned or, in some cases, even confirmed are being significantly reduced in quantity.”
XMG notes that beyond these existing orders, it is “currently difficult to make reliable predictions about future supply volumes and delivery dates.”
The laptop maker also tells us that “other laptop GPUs are also facing supply constraints”, but that the “combination of massive price increases and extremely limited supply” is “particularly pronounced” with the RTX 5090.
That doesn’t sound very comforting, does it? The immediate result is that the Schenker Key 18 Pro laptop (Schenker is XMG’s parent company) with the RTX 5090 has increased in price by €250 (around $280 / £210 / AU$400) as of today, and the XMG NEO laptops with the RTX 5090 will see at least a similar price increase — although we’re warned that the “increase could be even higher” for those notebooks depending on how the situation develops. Nasty.
The second shot of negativity here is from overclocker Der8auer in Germany, who as Wccftech reports, has heard from one of Nvidia’s board making partners.
Add seasoning as appropriate here, but the unnamed graphics-card maker claims that while it hasn’t been informed that the RTX 5090 is discontinued — Nvidia Germany also told Der8auer this (backing up other statements to this effect from Team Green) — it cannot currently purchase the GB203 chip plus VRAM package (32GB of GDDR7 video RAM) to make the RTX 5090 laptop card.
The more worrying part is that the board maker says that this kind of component shortage has happened before, but it has always been able to place a backorder to be fulfilled later. However, right now it’s not even possible to obtain a backorder from Nvidia.
A maker of coolers for the RTX 5090 further observes that it has witnessed reduced orders from board makers, and it doesn’t have any orders at all for heatsinks for Nvidia’s flagship GPU for Q2 2027 at this point. That obviously suggests that the production quantities for the RTX 5090 are looking even shakier for the future.
Analysis: bleak times
At some point, the accumulation of rumors begins to reach a kind of critical mass where it seems very unlikely that they’re all off base, and that in all likelihood, something really is going on.
We appear to be arriving at this point with the RTX 5090 rumors, in my opinion. There are too many of them, and the indications at the retail level — vanishing stock, and ever-increasing RTX 5090 prices, which have become truly ridiculous — also back up the grapevine here.
What’s worrying is the further gloom from the likes of a cooler manufacturer, and the fact that the RTX 5090 laptop GPU is also involved. Remember that this doesn’t use the GB202 chip seen in the desktop RTX 5090, but Nvidia’s GB203 silicon; however, the supply problem lies in getting the video RAM (3GB GDDR7 modules, which are now thinner on the ground and far pricier than the 2GB modules used in the RTX 5080 laptop graphics card).
So, while the RTX 5090 may not be discontinued, it would appear that supplies are getting so low for this GPU — on both desktop and laptop fronts — that while technically it’s still in production, the quantities are dipping to such an extent that the flagship is effectively being pushed aside.
All in all, it feels like an especially bleak time for higher-end Nvidia graphics cards, and the fear is that the situation may worsen from here.
Certainly when we look at the predictions for the RAM crisis next year, they’re universally pessimistic, and there’s a greater level of belief these days that memory supply woes could last for the rest of this decade. Of course, VRAM is bound up in that, as well as AI demand for GPU chips, and all this could affect the launch timeframe of Nvidia’s next-gen GeForce graphics cards, too.
