Image: Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics,” said Mark Twain over a century ago. While I’m not exactly accusing Nvidia of lying with its latest mollifying statement on the woeful lack of options for anyone trying to buy a new graphics card right now, I will say that it all sounds awfully… statistical.
TweakTown spoke with Nvidia’s product manager for GeForce desktop GPUs, Justin Walker, at an event before the Game Developers Conference. Walker claimed that the company has shipped twice as many RTX 50-series GPUs during the first five weeks of availability compared to the same stretch of time during the RTX 40-series launch back in 2022.
Let’s take that statement as true, even though we have no hard data on it. What we do have is verified launch dates. The RTX 40-series of desktop GPUs landed at retail on Wednesday, October 12th, 2022, so a five-week stretch would go to November 16th of the same year. The corresponding dates in 2025 would be January 30th to March 6th (just one week ago).
Thiago Trevisan / IDG
Here’s where the “statistics” part comes in. Back in 2022, Nvidia only launched the RTX 4090 on October 12th, and it was the only card in the series available until November 16th when the RTX 4080 debuted. The next card in the series wouldn’t arrive for almost two months. So even being generous and assuming Nvidia got every single RTX 4080 card to distributors and retailers on day one, we’re looking at only two cards… and the most expensive (and presumably limited) ones at that.
It’s a different situation in 2025. Nvidia launched both the RTX 5090 and 5080 on the same day, January 30th. The RTX 5070 Ti and 5070 followed on February 20th and March 5th, squeezing into that same five-week window. So, in short, Nvidia launched twice as many graphics cards in the same timeframe with the RTX 50-series.
Even if there are exactly the same number of RTX 5070/5070 Ti cards as there are RTX 5080/5090 cards—and that doesn’t appear to be the case if availability is any indication—getting double availability for double the SKUs is neither astonishing nor impressive. It’s exactly what you would expect, the bare minimum of a launch if nothing was improved in terms of initial availability. And considering we saw exactly the same problems back in 2022, it doesn’t look like much has been improved.
Not to hammer home the point, but Walker gave some very precise wording here that makes it hard to defend him. He could have said “compared to the 40 series” or something a little more nebulous. But five weeks is five weeks, and it’s a bad look.
Walker went on to say that Nvidia is working with its partners to increase availability and that “shipments have already ramped up.” Considering that these cards are disappearing as soon as they hit listings, it doesn’t seem to be enough to meet the demand, at least during this early period. Nvidia expects more cards to become available at the promised MSRP… though I wouldn’t bet on that if I were in the market.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he’s the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop “battlestation” in his off hours. Michael’s previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he’s covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he’s always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.
