Here's How Much Nvidia GPUs Cost In 2006 Vs. 2026

Earlier this month, you probably heard the news that certain retailers were selling the latest Nvidia GPU for 10 times the cost of a PlayStation 5 Pro. The Nvidia RTX 5090, Nvidia's current flagship graphics card, initially hit markets in 2025 with a $1,999 price tag, but now retails for anywhere between $9,000 and $14,000, depending on the model. To be fair, none of these GPUs are Founders Edition graphics cards, but variations on the basic schematics modified by companies such as ASUS and Gigabyte with upgraded capabilities. Plus, you can always buy Nvidia's cheaper GPU options, which, while not as powerful, are generally less than $1,000. Almost makes you appreciate the cost of GPUs two decades ago.

Around this time in 2006, Nvidia announced and subsequently released the next wave of GeForce 7 series GPUs. Not GTX or RTX, just plain old GeForce. These included the GeForce 7900 GS and 7950 GT, but they weren't the company's only offerings. Nvidia also sold high-end cards such as the GeForce 7950 GX2 and 7900 GTX during that year. When Nvidia announced the 7900 GS and 7950 GT graphics cards, it listed price ranges of $199 to $249 for the former and $299 to $349 for the latter. Meanwhile, the 7950 GX 2 cost between $535 and $650, while the 7900 GTX ranged from $450 to $500.

There's no two ways about it: GPUs have risen significantly in price over the past 20 years. Then again, they've increased exponentially in power, too. The Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2 only had a clock speed of 500 MHz and 1GB of memory. Meanwhile, Founders Editions of the RTX 5090 have a clock speed of 2.01 GHz and 32 GB of memory — that's four times the clock speed and 32 times the memory. To truly put that into perspective, we need visual aids. The RTX 5090 powers games such as "Crimson Desert," Cyberpunk 2077," and "Black Myth: Wukong." Meanwhile, the GeForce 7950 GX2 was designed for titles like the original "BioShock," "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" (not the remastered one), and vanilla "World of Warcraft." Comparing the two GPUs as "night and day" would be the understatement of the century.

If we're being honest, the straight-up cost of a GPU has only barely outstripped the value of what you get for the price you pay. Just look no further than the 7950 GX2, which might as well have been the flagship of that year (not counting dual or quad-GPU models like the Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2 Quad-SLI). Accounting for inflation (using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' inflation calculator), that graphics card would be anywhere between $888 and $1,079 today. That's about what you get for the RTX 5070 today — or a 5080 at launch. If it weren't for the ongoing shortage of components needed to manufacture GPUs (and RAM), we wouldn't be surprised if GPU value outpaced their cost.