Where To Buy Nvidia’s Geforce RTX 4090

The RTX 4090 is the best graphics card you can buy right now just read our RTX 4090 review. And unfortunately, that means it’s very popular. Across retailers, most (if not all at this point) RTX 4090 models are sold out. Although the RTX 4090 is easily the best graphics card you can buy right now, it carries a hefty premium. We checked the prices at all of the brands above, and you’re looking at around a $1,600 premium over the base model at most of them. The only exceptions are Origin PC and Falcon Northwest, both of which are charging around $1,400 above the base price.

If you don’t need a full system, however, the best option is to wait. The RTX 4090 is in high demand, certainly, but there’s no reason to believe it will cause another GPU shortage. In addition, Nvidia is releasing two RTX 4080 models in November and AMD is set to launch its next-gen RX 7000 GPUs on November 3. If you just can’t wait, though, there are ways to buy the RTX 4090 you just might need to pick up a system around it.

It’s launch day for Nvidia’s latest, greatest, and absolutely girthiest graphics cards. If you’re at all interested in the GeForce RTX 4090, you should check out our exhaustive RTX 4090 review. “Nvidia’s monstrous GeForce RTX 4090 delivers luxuriously fast frame rates and futuristic features, but DLSS 3’s AI speed boost may be the real star,” we said. “It’s a behemoth of a GPU that draws a lot of power, but Nvidia’s sublime Founders Edition design remains cool, quiet, and eye-catching.” And if you’ve sold a member or two of your family and you’re ready to buy this luxurious $1,599+ graphics card, you probably want to know where you can actually get your hands on an RTX 4090 when it hits the street on October 12.  At launch day, it’s often hard to find both Nvidia’s standard “Founders Edition” cards and the various flavors of the GPU offered by third-party manufacturers in stock, so click fast if you’re interested. Generally, we find that it’s best to start with Nvidia’s online store, then walk your way through the usual suspects of electronics retailers. While we reviewed Nvidia’s own Founders Edition (it’s great!) you’ll also find custom RTX 4090 graphics cards from Nvidia partners available.

Here are all the listings we’ve found so far:

Nvidia

• Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition

Amazon

• PNY RTX 4090

Best Buy

• Founders Edition
• PNY RTX 4090

Newegg

• Asus ROG RTX 4090
• Asus TUF RTX 4090
• Gigabyte RTX 4090
• MSI RTX 4090
• Zotac RTX 4090 Trinity
• Zotac RTX 4090 Extreme AIRO

B&H Photo Video

• Asus RTX 4090 ROG Strix OC
• Gigabyte RTX 4090
• Gigabyte Windforce RTX 4090
• PNY RTX 4090
• Zotac RTX 4090
• Zotac RTX 4090 OC
• MSI RTX 4090
• MSI RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X

MicroCenter

• Asus RTX 4090
• MSI RTX 4090
• Gigabyte RTX 4090
• Zotac RTX 4090

Note that a lot of retailers are using dummy pages until they get verified stock of the GPUs in. And retailers that allow third-party sellers, like Newegg, are seeing some rather egregious increases over the basic $1600-1900 prices for the card and its custom upgrades. Expect to see similar price hikes once the cards hit Amazon and initial stock sells out.

NVIDIA Unveils RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 Graphics Cards

NVIDIA and its graphics cards continue to push the world of technology forward with power that is climbing exponentially. Amidst the crypto mining craze, graphics cards grew increasingly difficult to find at reasonable prices. Fortunately for consumers, prices have since stabilized and NVIDIA is expanding its offerings with the introduction of its 40 Series, beginning with the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080.

Introducing the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture powering GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs:

✔️ New SMs provide up to 2x perf and power efficiency
✔️ 4th Gen Tensor Cores with up to 2x AI performance
✔️ 3rd Gen RT Cores with up to 2x ray tracing performance

Welcome to #BeyondFast

Featuring new NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture, the cards carry new fourth-gen tensor cores, third-gen ray tracing cores, shader execution reordering and NVIDIA DLSS 3 which boosts performance by using AI to output higher resolution frames. Results of these breakthroughs include an expected doubling of the performance from the RTX 4090 when compared to its predecessor, the RTX 3090 Ti. The RTX 4080 16GB should double the power of the RTX 3080 Ti while the RTX 4080 12 GB is comparable to the RTX 3090. Release for the NVIDIA RTX 4090 begins October 12 at a price of $1,599 USD with the RTX 4080 16GB and 12GB arriving in November priced at $1,199 USD and $899 USD respectively.

Nvidia confirms it accidentally unlocked RTX 3060 Ethereum mining

A software update released by Nvidia inadvertently bypassed the Ether (ETH) mining block the firm placed on its own GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card. A spokesperson for Nvidia confirmed on Tuesday that the latest 470.05 driver update was mistakenly released with code intended for use only by Nvidia developers, which allowed for the removal of the hash rate limiter. “A developer driver inadvertently included code used for internal development which removes the hash rate limiter on RTX 3060 in some configurations,” said an Nvidia spokesperson, as reported by The Verge. In February, Nvidia decided to intentionally hamper the Ether-mining effectiveness of its RTX 3060 series graphics cards to prevent a demand-induced shortage caused by crypto miners.

 

A three-way handshake between the hardware, the software and the computer firmware was supposed to ensure that the card recognized when it was being used to mine Ether and cut its computational power in half, from 50 megahertz per second to 25 MH/s. But the back door that allowed the card’s hash rate limiter to be bypassed came from the software side, and it was released by Nvidia itself. The offending beta update has since been pulled by the software company, but versions of it have already made it out onto the internet. Elsewhere on Tuesday, Andreas Schilling of tech website HardwareLuxx tested reports that custom edits to a computer’s BIOS were required to bypass the hash rate limiter. After testing driver 470.05 with a custom and standard BIOS, Schilling confirmed that no special modifications were required and that Nvidia’s driver removed the hash rate limiter itself. While the news only compounds the misery of gamers waiting to upgrade their graphics cards, the gaffe by Nvidia might not necessarily result in Ether miners eating up the next supply of GPU shipments. According to Hexus, the latest reports suggest that the affected driver can only unlock one RTX 3060 at a time, rendering it unsuitable for use in large mining-farms, for the time being at least. Initial rumors suggested a custom modification had bypassed the RTX 3060’s hash rate limiter last Wednesday, allowing it to mine Ether at full capacity. It was later revealed that the mod had not enabled the card to mine Ether specifically but had been rigged to enable the mining of another GPU-mineable cryptocurrency, Ravencoin (RVN).