Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 and 5080 Sold Out Seconds After Release
|
|
Key points
- Nvidia launched the GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics card on January 30, 2025.
- Scalpers are likely responsible for the shortage.
- Online retailers expect RTX 5090 cards will not be available until February, with more potential delays.
The much anticipated GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards were sold out seconds after release, including the $999.99 base GeForce RTX 5080 and the higher end $2799.99 ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 GDDR7. Consumers attempting to purchase the brand new products were greeted with an “out of stock” option, which quickly spread to all the variations of the products across the website.
Nvidia’s graphic cards include GDDR7, which is the next generation of memory following GDDR6, and was marketed to support graphically intensive applications and machine learning.
As for the Ge Force RTX 5090, it is the strongest graphics card commercially available. Considering these leaps in technological advancement, alongside Nvidia’s prior release trends, the immediate shortage was to be expected. The demand is further driven by the growing need for GPUs in AI applications, which have increasingly relied on Nvidia’s graphics card.
Scalping of Nvidia’s graphics card has become an unfortunate norm in the hardware industry. Average consumers simply cannot compete with bots programmed to buy out the product stock, resulting in inflated second hand market prices on websites such as Ebay and massive shortages on official venders’ sites.
“Speaking with retailers and third-party manufacturers, we’ve been told to expect the low supply to continue. MSI, one of the more prolific Nvidia partners, doesn’t expect to have RTX 5090 stock to ship from in its online store until February 6,” said PCWorld.
