Demand for Nvidia's RTX 5090 and 5080 cards is so high, there are major delays

To no one's surprise, it's really hard to get your hands on Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5090 and 5080 graphics cards.

The tech company's next generation of highly-anticipated GPUs officially launched Thursday, Jan. 30, but Nvidia itself said to expect delays and backorders. "We expect significant demand for the GeForce RTX 5090 and 5080 and believe stock-outs may happen," said a Nvidia staffer in its online forum via Engadget. "Nvidia and our partners are shipping more stock to retail every day to help get GPUs into the hands of gamers."

Retailers have already shared that they're running low or out of stock for the GeForce RTX 50 series. PowerGPU issues a fair warning on X to set expectations about when the GPUs will become available, saying, "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."

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And they're already out of stock on retailer sites like Newegg, B&H, and BestBuy. Globally, UK retailer Overclockers already reported last week that they're were down to "single digits at present" for the RTX 5090 and a "few hundred" for the RTX 5080. Per VideoCardz, retailers in Korea are expecting delays in availability until mid-February.

Nvidia is a GPU giant, supplying critical chips for gaming and top AI models from OpenAI and others. Early reviews from Mashable's sibling sites PCMag and IGN say the GeForce RTX 5090 "exceptionally powerful but forbiddingly expensive" and "this is the kind of GPU you get if you want to bet on Nvidia’s vision of an AI gaming future," while noting the RTX 40 series is plenty good for most gamers, given the astronomical price ($2,000).

But even if you're willing to shell out big bucks for the cutting edge GPU, it looks like you'll have to wait.