The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 is already the most expensive gaming graphics card on the market today, and it’s unfortunately looking as if it’ll only become more costly in the near-future. With the United States of America announcing tighter export restrictions of AI-based GPUs to China, worldwide stocks and prices of the pixel pusher may see a knock-on effect that’s bad news for buyers.

While the GeForce RTX 4090 is undoubtedly the best graphics card you can buy for gaming, it’s also sought after for its deep-learning capabilities too. By no means does it compete with Nvidia‘s more specialist offerings, but it’s good enough and relatively cheap to make it an enticing alternative.

These qualities, however, have caught the eye of the US government, and the GeForce RTX 4090 will now potentially be subject to an export ban, specifically to China. According to MyDrives, this will come into effect on November 17, but Nvidia is understandably already taking steps to soften the blow to its profits and those of its AIB partners.

Nvidia has been shipping “tons” of AD102 GPUs this for weeks, according to Zed__Wang. The goal here appears to be to manufacture as many GeForce RTX 4090s as possible before the ban hits, specifically for the Chinese market. This, naturally, could result in stock shortages elsewhere around the globe, resulting in potentially higher prices.

So, if you’re hoping to pick up a GeForce RTX 4090, there’s no better time like the present. That said, we’d strongly recommend checking out the GeForce RTX 4080 or Radeon RX 7900 XTX, as both are much cheaper and offer a large portion of the same performance.