A Reddit post by u/Chaise91 in r/pcmasterrace shows a photo of RTX 50-series prices at a Japanese retailer. Tom's Hardware compared those prices with Amazon US listings at an exchange rate of JPY 153.38 per USD and found pre-tax prices running from 5.66% to 41.1% higher. The biggest gap was the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB at 41.1%, while the RTX 5080 averaged 12.71% higher.
The price gaps shrink when US sales tax is included. Adding a representative 8.5% tax, the difference falls to between 3.88% and 30.04%. Still, the source notes Japan is typically more expensive for GPUs, and the current spike points to broader supply problems.
Tom's Hardware attributes the pressure to a memory chip shortage and heavy demand for AI compute. It also cites reports that Nvidia may stop making RTX 5090s to focus on AI data center and professional GPUs, and that high-end cards have largely vanished from online retail, with third-party sellers asking nearly $10,000.