Summary

  • Nvidia claims RTX 50-series GPUs are off to a better start than the previous generation.
  • Nvidia has released four GPUs in the past several weeks, compared to only two in the previous generation.
  • RTX 50-series GPUs remain out of stock at most major retailers.

Even with new generations from AMD and Nvidia, it's felt impossible to find a new graphics card in stock anywhere, much less for list price. That's true of both current- and last-gen options, with cards like AMD's RX 7800 XT selling for north of $800 despite sporting a list price of just $500. Despite barren inventory and claims of "paper launches" online, Nvidia says that it's actually shipped twice as many RTX 50-series GPUs than it did RTX 40-series GPUs in the same time period.

But there's a little more to the story

This detail came from a briefing with the press about Nvidia's announcements at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this year, which includes the public release of Nvidia's modding platform RTX Remix out of an open beta, as well as the arrival of a two-hour demo for Half-Life 2 RTX, which is releasing for free on March 18. The note was a bit of stage-setting, with Nvidia suggesting that gamers have latched onto its new generation, despite generally disappointing reviews for multiple cards in the range -- see our RTX 5070 review for more on that.

According to Nvidia, it's shipped twice as many RTX 50-series GPUs in their first five weeks on the market compared to the first five weeks of the RTX 40-series release. There's one little problem with this stat, though. In the first five weeks of the current Blackwell generation, Nvidia has released four graphics cards: the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070. In the first five weeks of the previous Ada Lovelace generation, Nvidia released only two cards: the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080, both of which were priced over $1,200.

nvidia-rtx-50-series-sales Credit: Source: Nvidia

Naturally, with more GPUs available and at more affordable prices, Nvidia has shipped more cards in the past five weeks than it did in the previous generation. The "shipped" language is worth noting, too. Shipped doesn't mean sold or even sent to retail. Nvidia maintains a long list of board partners that use Nvidia's GPUs to make the graphics cards you actually buy, so just because Nvidia has shipped GPUs doesn't mean that they've sold or even been available for sale.

It's a striking stat to look at, especially considering how hard it's been to find an RTX 50-series GPUs. Some retailers claim they only saw single-digit inventory of the RTX 5090, and Nvidia opened its Verified Priority Access program, which is a lottery program where random Nvidia account holders are given the opportunity to buy one of the company's Founder's Edition models.

Despite seemingly popular sales for RTX 50-series GPUs, all the cards in the range are sold out, short of a few models floating around at various Micro Center locations around the country. Hopefully, more cards will show up at retailers soon -- and hopefully at list price.