NVIDIA says it’ll likely run out of RTX 5090 and 5080 cards due to ‘significant demand’

NVIDIA just warned consumers that it might be pretty difficult for gamers to get their hands on its upcoming high-end RTX 5090 and 5080 graphics cards. The company says it expects “significant demand” for the cards and that “stock-outs may happen.” The term “stock-out” is business speak for “we ran out of the thing you want.”

The official launch is January 30, so many gamers could find themselves out of luck on release day. Several distributors have revealed they won’t even have the cards on January 30. MSI says it won’t be selling the GPUs in the US until February 6 and PC maker PowerGPU told its customers that availability “will be the worst” for the “first three months.”

This is a global issue. VideoCardz has reported that Korea likely won’t see shipments until mid-February and the UK retailer Overclockers has posted that it only has “single-digit” numbers of RTX 5090s in stock. The retailer does, however, have slightly more 5080s in stock. 

Gizmodo has reported that folks are already camping out in the cold for the expensive cards. NVIDIA, for its part, has stated that its “shipping more stock to retail every day to help get GPUs into the hands of gamers.” We’ll see how that goes. In any event, we have compiled some tips to help folks snag one of these cards.

If you pay attention to NVIDIA product launches, this news should come as no surprise. The same thing happened with the 40 series. There was high demand and limited initial availability. It took months until gamers could cruise online and purchase one of the latest graphics cards. The 30 series cards were also difficult to find at launch, due to the pandemic and bitcoin mining.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/nvidia-says-itll-likely-run-out-of-rtx-5090-and-5080-cards-due-to-significant-demand-172030639.html?src=rss