NVIDIA’s RTX 50 series has officially arrived, with the RTX 5090 and 5080 being the first two GPUs to hit the market. However, the extremely limited supply turned out to be even worse than expected. Days before launch, enthusiasts were camping outside Micro Center after NVIDIA warned about potential “stock-outs” due to “significant demand.” But the supply was so scarce that only a handful of consumers managed to secure an RTX 5090, and within hours, it was out of stock at major retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, and Newegg.
From this, it’s clear that the RTX 5090 launch was more of a paper launch. Despite NVIDIA’s claims of massive performance gains, it wasn’t ready to deliver the product at scale. In fact, creators are pointing out that Micro Center – one of the few stores with in-person inventory – only had around 200 units for the entire U.S. market.
Nvidia’s RTX 50 Series GPU has launched
Nvidia’s RTX 5090 & RTX 5080 are now live! Here are the latest GPU and gaming PC listings that feature the new cards:
UK Retailers
Prices correct as of January 30th, 2025.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition
Micro Center and other retailers struggle with low inventory
According to Micro Center’s inventory report, the retailer reportedly had exactly 233 units of the RTX 5090 across all its U.S. stores. Meanwhile, the RTX 5080 had better stock levels (2393), but was still far from ideal. Creators like PC Builder took to social media to highlight the disappointing launch, with consumers also backing up with similar struggles. From monitoring stock trackers to refreshing retailer pages, the chances of securing an RTX 5090 were next to impossible.
Micro Center wasn’t the only retailer hit by shortages. Gamers Nexus reported that Canada Computers had no RTX 5090 stock at all, while in Japan, one retailer reportedly held a lottery, not to win the GPU, but for the chance to buy it. For those lucky enough to place an order, many are facing months-long delays, and some even had their purchases retracted by retailers shortly after ordering.
Will the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti face the same fate?
With so many complaints about stock shortages, many are wondering why NVIDIA went ahead with the launch at all. One theory, as presented by Gamers Nexus, is that NVIDIA wanted to capitalize on the CES hype while avoiding competition. Since AMD has no direct competitor to the RTX 5090, this launch ensured NVIDIA had the spotlight all to itself. Now, we’re used to seeing companies take months for products to become consistently available at retailers, as we saw with Team Green’s last-gen flagship, the RTX 4090, which took five months to reach that stage. With that in mind, things could improve for the RTX 5090 in the future, but they could also get worse.
As for the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti, PC Builder claims that stock levels should be much better. Unlike the RTX 5090 and 5080, these GPUs will face direct competition from AMD’s upcoming RX 9070 series, which launches in March. But for now, the only real winners are the scalpers, who are taking full advantage of the situation and cranking up prices to nearly double retail. On the bright side, some people are trying to deter further scalping by flogging photos of the RTX 5090 and 5080 for thousands in a bid to catch out scalping bots.
