At first glance, the story we reported earlier this week about the impending export ban of the RTX 4090 seems like something only China should be worried about. But not so. There may be repercussions closer to home.

According to Tom's Hardware, the price of RTX 4090 has skyrocketed in China, where supplies have dried up and the price of the few RTX 4090s available has doubled. In the home country, a rush to buy RTX 4090 in China before the ban takes effect next month may be driving up prices.

As of this writing, the cheapest RTX on Newegg is the Zotac product at $1,699, well above the MSRP of $1,599 set by Nvidia. Incidentally, the RTX 4090 is currently out of stock at Nvidia's store.

The next cheapest 4090 on Newegg is the $1,729 MSI card; the situation is similar on Amazon, where the cheapest model is $1,699. RTX 4090s are prone to strange supply shortages, but until just a few days ago they were available at suggested retail prices.

In short, this is how sensitive GPU pricing is to external factors. Just when it seemed that graphics card prices were trending back to something closer to past standards (including $539 for the cheapest RTX 4070 we've seen yet, but then back to something closer to MSRP), along came the Chinese export ban, and things got messy. At least for RTX 4090 buyers.

In mitigation, the whole RTX 4090 for China thing is likely to be a temporary thing caused by the rush to bag the cards while they can still be legally imported into the country. A month or so from now, it will probably all have subsided.

Still, while it has never been more likely, the odds of RTX 4090s going on sale this Black Friday at a huge discount seem lower than ever.