It’s another water-is-wet situation as claims from multiple sources have said there could be limited quantities of the NVIDIA RTX 5090 at launch. Premium electronic hardware such as PC parts, or the latest gaming console, are often hard to get at launch these days but usually, that can be attributed to a combination of limited quantities worsened by scalpers buying up inventories to resell. This time around the ladder is still expected to happen but it appears there’s another factor at play regarding the limited quantity aspect.
VideoCardz has gathered reports from multiple sources claiming that the NVIDIA RTX 5090, which is set to launch at the end of the month, may not actually be available until mid-February. NVIDIA has chosen to launch the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 during the Spring Festival (New Year) holiday in China and Taiwan. The new year happens on January 29 and the launch is said to be happening on January 30. This has led to communication issues among NVIDIA AIC partners, one of whom (Zotac), formally announcing delays for RTX 5090 but does not yet have details for the RTX 5080.
Per Zotac (machine translated):
“hello,
This is Tak tak Mall from Zotac
We’ve received many inquiries regarding the recent RTX 50 series sales schedule, so we’d like to inform you of the schedule.
Zotac Korea’s RTX 5090 model is scheduled to arrive in February.
We would like to inform you that sales and delivery will be difficult on January 30th, which is currently known as the scheduled sales date.
The RTX 5090 is expected to be available and on sale in early February.
Please understand that the delivery schedule may be delayed up to mid-February due to some external factors.
The RTX 5080 model is currently being checked for availability.
We will notify you again as soon as the delivery schedule is confirmed.
We would like to thank all consumers who have shown interest in Zotac Korea and Taktak Mall and have made inquiries.
thank you”
Per Benchlife (machine translated):
“For NVIDIA, we will see GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 go on sale on January 30, but we can confirm that there are not many supplies on the market. This is mainly due to some communication issues between NVIDIA and AIC partners, as well as the Spring Festival Factors are expected to improve in February. In addition, we expect to see the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti starting to appear on the channel in mid-to-late February.”
For up to 3 months?!?
Furthermore, one system integrator has stated that those hoping to snag the latest flagship gaming GPU may have to wait up to three months before they can get their hands on one due to extremely limited quantities being available.
Warning you all now.
— PowerGPU (@PowerGPU) January 21, 2025
The launch of the RTX 5090 will be the worst when it comes to availability. Already being told to expect it to be that way for the first 3 months.
It should noted for those looking to buy any of the new GPUs being released by AMD or NVIDIA, that if these claims pan out to be true it could make it interesting to see what will be available since it was said by an AMD exec yesterday that their RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics cards would be available to purchase in March. Essentially right in the middle of when the above claims state NVIDIA’s first round of Blackwell-based RTX 50 series will become available.