Paper launch or not? Nvidia RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs sell out instantly, frustrating customers

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Skye Jacobs

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WTF?! Nvidia's highly anticipated RTX 5090 and 5080 graphics cards launched on January 30, but the release was marred by severe stock shortages, leading many to label it a paper launch. Despite warnings from Nvidia earlier in the week about potential supply issues, the scarcity of available units has left many eager customers disappointed and frustrated.

Nvidia's launch day saw long lines of enthusiasts camping outside retailers, hoping to secure one of the coveted GPUs. However, many stores had minimal stock, and some locations never received RTX 5090 allotments.

Micro Center's Tustin, California store got the largest allocation with 67 RTX 5090s and 199 RTX 5080s, but it was an outlier. Most Micro Center locations had to make do with just a handful of cards, some having as few as four or five RTX 5090s.

The shortage extended beyond brick-and-mortar stores, with online retailers like Best Buy and Amazon quickly selling out of their initial stock. The scarcity has led to a surge in second-hand market prices, with some RTX 5090 cards listing on eBay for over $5,000 – more than double the $1,999 retail price.

YouTube channel GamersNexus reported on the shortages, noting that even major system integrators struggled to obtain inventory. One builder reportedly received just a single RTX 5090 on launch day, while another received none. This scarcity has raised questions about Nvidia's production capabilities and allocation strategies, especially considering the company had reportedly halted production of the previous-generation RTX 4090 to focus on the new 50-series.

The impact of the shortage has rippled across the GPU market. Prices for older models, such as the RTX 4090, have seen significant increases, with some units now selling for around $2,500 on the second-hand market – a stark increase from the $1,600 price point seen at the end of 2024.

As frustrated buyers seek alternatives, some retailers have resorted to creative methods to combat scalpers and bots, such as listing cards in ways that trick automated purchasing systems. Meanwhile, Nvidia stated that they and their partners are "shipping more stock to retail every day" to meet the overwhelming demand.

The RTX 5090 and 5080 shortage could persist for months, with some UK retailers suggesting that new stock may not arrive until April or May. This situation leaves many PC enthusiasts and gamers in a difficult position, forced to patiently wait for restocks or consider alternative options in the highly competitive graphics card market.

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Paper launch or not? Nvidia RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs sell out instantly, frustrating customers

 
I speculate that nVidia has shipped less than 100,000 units world wide, maybe closer to half that between the 5090 and 5080. 1 of 2 things is happening here. Either they can't produce as many cards as "demand" implies they need or, what I find more likely, this is an artificial shortage in order to create FOMO of a sub-par card.

From what I read, almost no one is interested in this card. Both reviewers and commenters seem so disappointed by the performance of this card that I don't see demand ever being that high at basically any price. If you have a 40 series card, there is no reason to buy this card outside of "I'm an enthusiast and I want one because I find it interesting." The only people that I see with a legitimate interest in this card are people who work with AI and they only want the 5090. The 5080 offers them nothing over what they currently have(usually a 3090 or 4090) because of the VRAM.

 
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Nvidia said clearly who are the FIRST CUSTOMERS AGES AGO ! not you, but the companies (Micro$, amazon, facebook,openAI, and every damn AI company after) ! all the stocks you see are peanuts compared to the hundreds of thousands that are RESERVED for these big tech customers.

Paper launch for you but not for them.
 
The news cycle surrounding new GPUs is becoming a bit of a broken record. Reviewers get their hands on the cards, put out reviews complaining about the value. Loud (and likely poor) members of the PC gaming community scream hatred towards Nvidia over the pricing, you get videos from Hardware Unboxed for example carrying the thumbnail headline "5080 = Bad" etc. Then the cards launch and sell out instantly. Apparently, the actual people who buy these things either didn't get the memo from the tech community or they don't care and are happy to pay the money.
 
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yRaz said:
If you have a 40 series card, there is no reason to buy this card outside of "I'm an enthusiast and I want one because I find it interesting." The only people that I see with a legitimate interest in this card are people who work with AI and they only want the 5090.
Click to expand...

And people who skipped the 40 series.
 
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manowar51 said:
The news cycle surrounding new GPUs is becoming a bit of a broken record. Reviewers get their hands on the cards, put out reviews complaining about the value. Loud (and likely poor) members of the PC gaming community scream hatred towards Nvidia over the pricing, you get videos from Hardware Unboxed for example carrying the thumbnail headline "5080 = Bad" etc. Then the cards launch and sell out instantly. Apparently, the actual people who buy these things either didn't get the memo from the tech community or they don't care and are happy to pay the money.
Click to expand...
Yep, I got mine without problems....yeah,and those poor ppl 😂
 
I find it interesting that over the last decade or so there's been a steady trend towards businesses massively spending on overhead and then struggling to produce the actual product. The marketing is there, the hype is there, the presenations are there, the pricing is there, the partnerships are there, all flawlessly implemented but when it comes their turn to deliver a product... There's always an excuse.

My money, on the other hand, is always reliable. My money doesn't overheat. The warranty on my money never expires. My cash requires no special membership programs or pre-ordering and is delivered instantly.

Step it up Nivida. Justify your continued existence. As it stands, you barely deserve payment.
 
NumberNine said:
I find it interesting that over the last decade or so there's been a steady trend towards businesses massively spending on overhead and then struggling to produce the actual product. The marketing is there, the hype is there, the presenations are there, the pricing is there, the partnerships are there, all flawlessly implemented but when it comes their turn to deliver a product... There's always an excuse.

My money, on the other hand, is always reliable. My money doesn't overheat. The warranty on my money never expires. My cash requires no special membership programs or pre-ordering and is delivered instantly.

Step it up Nivida. Justify your continued existence. As it stands, you barely deserve payment.
Click to expand...
They chase profit so hard that they forget how to innovate...
 
manowar51 said:
The news cycle surrounding new GPUs is becoming a bit of a broken record. Reviewers get their hands on the cards, put out reviews complaining about the value. Loud (and likely poor) members of the PC gaming community scream hatred towards Nvidia over the pricing, you get videos from Hardware Unboxed for example carrying the thumbnail headline "5080 = Bad" etc. Then the cards launch and sell out instantly. Apparently, the actual people who buy these things either didn't get the memo from the tech community or they don't care and are happy to pay the money.
Click to expand...

Not sure what you are saying. can I summarise
Nvidia's prices are getting worse
NVidias year on year improvements are declining and need to be propped up by fake frame generations
There is a potion of the population who will pay no matter what - ie all the 5090s would have sold even if $5000

Let's see the wash in 1 year sale figures . NVidia doesn't care as can offload onto LLM markets to boot

Nvidias brand loyalty is taking a hit , even the bigger simps must be starting to choke swallowing the prices and BS

My take Nvidia doesn't give a F about you, they are happy to sell less units at higher margins to wetware , as can offload elsewhere. they know this makes people hold on to existing GPUs longer.
But they know people have short memories and if GPUs are no longer needed for crypto or LLM , they can then actually release good value GPUs with plenty of memory - they know they can play people like puppets with shiny shiny

Fact is people holding onto top phones longer etc

Let's see how their main models do , if they care if the 5070 series as most won't pay 5080 silly prices

Smart people will wait for 5080s models and price drop like last time

Sensible people who know can play lots of games that exist on cheaper and older GPUs will just wait it out for new S models, AMD and price drops.

Ie the smart choice is not to buy these , unless you love AAA gaming , expensive monitor and you get RTX 5090 for near MMP( as they never really get discounted )

Plus some people are silly with ego purchasing - I got a 5090 I will struggle with rent , but I have one nah nah nah

Someone gloating above how rich they are , surest way to impress people how lovely you are . Er Ok that's nice, must be great letting everyone know.

It's all relative , a road bike can cost north of $10 000

The real interest is what happens for 5060/70 where bulk of market is , no matter how rich people are
 
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I have purchased almost every new GPU on launch day since the ATI VGA Wonder+.
I’m passing on this one. That’s not to say I’ll never buy it…I’m just really happy with my ASUS 4090 and as my eyesight gets worse with age, 4K at 1000fps means nothing to me anymore.
 
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Apple ended lines and campouts -and scalping - by forcing everyone to pre-order their new phone. You preorder, the AI verifies you and you simply show up to pick up your new phone. I camped out overnight for iPhone 6 Plus and managed to get it. Never had to camp out after that thanks to Apple.

Microcenter had people camping out, in freezing weather, since January 6th. They didn't know what inventory would be, but they could have either done preorders and sold people the cards as they came in - in order of first come first serve - or they could have given out vouchers earlier in the exact same manner: first come-first serve.

Instead, they waited till the night before launch and then told everyone to go home after giving them a voucher. Microcenter on average had less than 10 of the 5090 cards and more than 40 of the 5080 cards. A lot of people gave up, disappointed and tried their luck online instead.

I got my 5090FE. I really wanted a Kingpin 5090 but EVGA no longer does cards.

The price for these things is obscene. In the old days, people would have told me I didn't need it. Now, everyone is suffering from advertisement generated FOMO and they all line up, credit cards ready to buy the biggest card they can finance.

One thing's for certain: the 5090's 32GB VRAM will ensure it is a powerful card and investment for years to come. The 5080 has been gimped with only 16GB vs the 4090's 24GB. It won't be till the 5080Ti gives you more RAM that it's ungimped.
 
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The 5000 series was rushed. Most likely to get ahead of Trump's tariffs. The 5080 was available in decent numbers. The 5090 wasn't. My guess is they get you online for the 5090 and you leave with the 5080 because you refused to leave empty handed.
 
We have just 5 microcenters nearby: Westbury, Yonkers, Brooklyn, Flushing and Paterson.

5 / 4 / 4 / 4/ 4 were the 5090 counts respectively.

78 / 75 / 63 / 64 / 90 were the 5080 counts respectively.

The only store with a healthy count was Tustin 67/ 199.

Everyone else was lower than 12/ 80.

That's as unfair as it can get.
 
Megalomaniac said:
The 5000 series was rushed. Most likely to get ahead of Trump's tariffs. The 5080 was available in decent numbers. The 5090 wasn't. My guess is they get you online for the 5090 and you leave with the 5080 because you refused to leave empty handed.
Click to expand...
It wasn't rushed, it needed to be redone by TSMC because of an nvidia design problem that TSMC found and then engineered a solution to. They publicly stated this. I doubt there were more than 100,000 50 series card available world wide. Also, Large companies are canceling massive orders of blackwell chips. MS, Meta, google, ect. Many of the hyper scalers are canceling their orders for AI chips because processing power isn't the problem anymore, it's DATA.

This summer is going to be a great time for gamers because I see cheap GPUs flooding the market. nVidia is going to have to offload all those unsold blackwell chips as 5090's or 5090TI's. Who knows, they might actually make a blackwell Titan this generation.
 
kiwigraeme said:
Not sure what you are saying. can I summarise
Nvidia's prices are getting worse
NVidias year on year improvements are declining and need to be propped up by fake frame generations
There is a potion of the population who will pay no matter what - ie all the 5090s would have sold even if $5000

Let's see the wash in 1 year sale figures . NVidia doesn't care as can offload onto LLM markets to boot

Nvidias brand loyalty is taking a hit , even the bigger simps must be starting to choke swallowing the prices and BS

My take Nvidia doesn't give a F about you, they are happy to sell less units at higher margins to wetware , as can offload elsewhere. they know this makes people hold on to existing GPUs longer.
But they know people have short memories and if GPUs are no longer needed for crypto or LLM , they can then actually release good value GPUs with plenty of memory - they know they can play people like puppets with shiny shiny

Fact is people holding onto top phones longer etc

Let's see how their main models do , if they care if the 5070 series as most won't pay 5080 silly prices

Smart people will wait for 5080s models and price drop like last time

Sensible people who know can play lots of games that exist on cheaper and older GPUs will just wait it out for new S models, AMD and price drops.

Ie the smart choice is not to buy these , unless you love AAA gaming , expensive monitor and you get RTX 5090 for near MMP( as they never really get discounted )

Plus some people are silly with ego purchasing - I got a 5090 I will struggle with rent , but I have one nah nah nah

Someone gloating above how rich they are , surest way to impress people how lovely you are . Er Ok that's nice, must be great letting everyone know.

It's all relative , a road bike can cost north of $10 000

The real interest is what happens for 5060/70 where bulk of market is , no matter how rich people are
Click to expand...
Unless AMD can shake things up and let's face it, they practically never do, Nvidia will sell all their GPUs at MSRP this generation. When the 4000 series came out, many commenters claimed nobody would buy them. But we never saw heavy discounts and Nvidia are now phasing those cards out. They obviously sold enough at MSRP to make it worth it for them. And I predict the same with this gen.

There is no competition for these cards and there wasn't really any last gen. So I'm not sure why people are expecting things to change.
 
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Looming tariffs would have had a big impact on sales too. People that missed out now will be in for rude shock.
 
I suspect most of the cards are either on their way to China or the Big Tech Bros for their AI programs. You Lumpenproletariats deserve nothing and you'll be happy. 😉
 
manowar51 said:
The news cycle surrounding new GPUs is becoming a bit of a broken record. Reviewers get their hands on the cards, put out reviews complaining about the value. Loud (and likely poor) members of the PC gaming community scream hatred towards Nvidia over the pricing, you get videos from Hardware Unboxed for example carrying the thumbnail headline "5080 = Bad" etc. Then the cards launch and sell out instantly. Apparently, the actual people who buy these things either didn't get the memo from the tech community or they don't care and are happy to pay the money.
Click to expand...
Scalpers are buying them up, as pointed out in the article.
 
You think Nvidia would of learned from the past debacles and came up with a solution that benefits their customers, gamers especially. By not fixing the scalper problem, it sounds like this is a way for Nvidia to artificially prop up its sales figures to it's shareholders. Honestly I wouldn't admit that I spent $5,000 for a video card so I could claim bragging rights to my friends circle.
 
Luckily I don't have the urge nor necessity to buy these GPUs so I don't suffer at all. With this strategy of "artifical shortage", we'll see the 6090 or 7090 reach 4500usd/euros MSRP soon. There will be a day when most customers say Enough is enough, but not these days, perhaps when the xx70 series MSRP reach 1000usd/euros ??? xD
 
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yRaz said:
I speculate that nVidia has shipped less than 100,000 units world wide, maybe closer to half that between the 5090 and 5080. 1 of 2 things is happening here. Either they can't produce as many cards as "demand" implies they need or, what I find more likely, this is an artificial shortage in order to create FOMO of a sub-par card.

From what I read, almost no one is interested in this card. Both reviewers and commenters seem so disappointed by the performance of this card that I don't see demand ever being that high at basically any price. If you have a 40 series card, there is no reason to buy this card outside of "I'm an enthusiast and I want one because I find it interesting." The only people that I see with a legitimate interest in this card are people who work with AI and they only want the 5090. The 5080 offers them nothing over what they currently have(usually a 3090 or 4090) because of the VRAM.
Click to expand...
Let's not be naive. Think 10 time less, ratio 10% to 5090. They can produce, and they can assess the demand upfront. There is an interest, of course, that's why we're here. Even 4xxxx owners want to upgrade. 5080 offers new stuff like MFG, DP2.1 and noone wants to miss it. But this is a retail play, a small revenue channel for them, and keeps collapsing. Tons of their other, higher priority, products remain readily available.
 
yRaz said:
I speculate that nVidia has shipped less than 100,000 units world wide, maybe closer to half that between the 5090 and 5080. 1 of 2 things is happening here. Either they can't produce as many cards as "demand" implies they need or, what I find more likely, this is an artificial shortage in order to create FOMO of a sub-par card.

From what I read, almost no one is interested in this card. Both reviewers and commenters seem so disappointed by the performance of this card
Click to expand...
There is alot of interest as Nvidia has stopped producing 4080 and 4090.
People that skipped the 40’series will buy the 50 series, even though performance may only be 12-14% faster on the 5080 series
 
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