RTX 5000: Nvidia’s warning is almost unprecedented, but unfortunately also inevitable

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For the first time, Nvidia is warning of poor availability shortly before the release of new graphics cards. This is anything but surprising, and yet I find it annoying.

I’ve been dealing with gaming hardware professionally for 15 years. In all that time, it has almost never happened that a major manufacturer of Nvidia’s caliber has warned shortly before the release of new products that they will quickly sell out.

Normally, manufacturers are very secretive when it comes to the availability of their products. Exceptions like Sony and the PS5 confirm the rule, and it’s no surprise that Nvidia is now doing things differently with the Blackwell generation, which is coming out on January 30.

  • On the one handit almost had to happen, also because the rumors about poor availability of the RTX-5000 graphics cards have recently become so widespread that Nvidia probably felt compelled to address them (albeit only very briefly).

  • On the other hand, I’m annoyed about the overall situation to be expected, and not only with regard to the particularly fast RTX 5090, which will probably be most affected by the problems (see also the info box below).

RTX 5000 availability: How bad will it be at release?

I currently expect most stock to sell out in a few minutes at most. Nvidia’s own statement on this in the GeForce forum is not so clear:

We expect a high demand for the Geforce RTX 5090 and 5080 and believe that there may be supply bottlenecks.

But feedback I’m getting from Nvidia’s board partners and dealers makes it clear that once again, we can expect very poor availability – and for at least weeks. One of my sources, who doesn’t want to be named, describes it this way:

»The availability of the new graphics cards at launch is not expected to be sufficient to meet the expected high market demand.

This will be particularly noticeable in the first few weeks after launch, especially for the RTX 5090. Here, we expect to see a particularly strong discrepancy between supply and demand. Even with the RTX 5080, of which we will have significantly larger quantities at launch, availability will still not be sufficient to fully meet demand.

I expect a similar situation with the RTX 5070 Ti and later with the RTX 5070. While specific initial availability numbers for these models are not yet not yet available, but previous forecasts suggest that initial stocks could be in short supply here as well.

In summary, the situation remains tense, especially in the first few weeks after the market launch of all RTX 50 models.«

Can AMD be an alternative? Only to a limited extent, since the RX-9000 generation, on the one hand, will not be released until March and, on the other hand, will not reach the performance level of an RTX 5090. Furthermore, there are only a very few manufacturers worldwide that can produce the chips for AMD, Apple, Nvidia & Co., so that AMD could also have to contend with low stocks.

Why it had to happen like this

In the end, it’s the same for Nvidia as it is for GlobalESportNewsowner Webedia and any other employer: it’s about business.

  • It is well known that Nvidia has long since been making by far the most money from the sale of professional cards and AI accelerators, and these cards are based on more or less the same chips as gaming GPUs.

  • So it’s no wonder that Nvidia’s top priority is not to meet the demand for new gaming graphics cards at release, but to sell as many AI accelerators as possible. Whether cases like the surprising appearance of the Deepseek AI, which initially had a major impact on Nvidia’s share price, will change that in the long term remains to be seen.

  • In the case of the RTX-5000 release, the earthquakes in Taiwan and the approximately two-week shutdown of factories in China due to the New Year celebrations are compounding the situation. Ultimately, however, the difficult delivery situation would certainly persist either way.

Why does Nvidia still make gaming graphics cards at all?

From an entrepreneurial point of view, it is usually a good idea to generate revenue from multiple sources (did someone say Deepseek again?). Nvidia also knows and dominates the gaming market like no other, thanks in part to the structures and partnerships it has built up over decades. Last but not least, this allows chips that are not suitable for use on the most expensive AI cards to be monetized.

What bothers me about it

Even though I fully realize that there are many different (and from Nvidia’s business point of view certainly good or profitable) reasons for releasing the RTX-5000 graphics cards at exactly the time and in the way that is now happening, it just doesn’t feel right.

  • After RTX 3000 and RTX 4000, we can now expect the third Nvidia generation in a row in which a large number of interested buyers will be left empty-handed at release. Unless, of course, they are willing to pay extremely high prices to scalpers.
  • Personally, I would rather wait another year for new GPUs and then be able to buy them reliably at MSRP, instead of having to deal with sold-out cards and outrageous scalper prices again.
  • To make matters worse, the RTX 4000 generation will probably no longer be available as a cheaper alternative relatively soon because it is probably already being sold off.

Of course I can just wait myself and of course I won’t buy one of the new GPUs from a scalper. But the offers will be there again anyway and the graphics cards will certainly sell well.

This is the way things are, and unfortunately there are good reasons to assume that future GPU releases will be no different for the time being.

But even if all my complaining can’t change the situation, sometimes you just have to vent your anger.

When the exception becomes the rule

I can understand if someone says: That was absolutely foreseeable, why get upset at all? But in my opinion, you also have to take into account the different signs of the last Geforce generations.

  • RTX 3000; or rather the RTX 3080 was eagerly awaited by most after the rather disappointing RTX 2000 generation, both in terms of performance and the initially announced price. At the same time, the extent of the impact of the Corona pandemic and the boom in cryptocurrencies on the actual purchase costs and availability was only partially foreseeable.
  • RTX 4000; appeared at a time when the GPU market had largely stabilized after more than two years of poor availability and very high prices, and the pandemic was coming to an end. In addition, the AI boom was still in its early stages, so there was reason to hope for better availability at release (which did not materialize).
  • RTX 5000 comes at a time when Nvidia has long been the focus of full AI attention and, as mentioned, is likely to be the third consecutive Geforce generation to be in short supply and very expensive at release. And as the saying goes: once is never, twice is coincidence and three times is a rule.

A small consolation and little hope

In the end, the situation for me with regard to the MSRP of the new GPUs is probably similar to that with the new multi-frame generation or MFG!

Just as an exemplary number of 150 FPS with MFG is of little use to me if the corresponding feeling for the game is missing, an MSRP of 1,169 euros is of little use to me if I have to pay several hundred euros extra to reliably to get one of the new graphics cards.

Admittedly, I have not yet tried MFG myself and, in view of the prices, things may still get better than I currently fear. But to be honest, I don’t have high hopes.

For the time being, the only consolation I have is that we are still only talking about gaming graphics cards, especially since they are aging much more slowly than they used to.

And who knows, maybe there will come a GPU generation again where the new cards will be readily available at release and for their MSRP – but please not until the price recommendations reach the mid-four or five figures.