If you can’t wait to get your hands on a new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, then you’re very much not alone. In fact, according to retailer Newegg, demand for the new graphics cards has been “overwhelming,” with the store’s entire RTX 5000 GPU inventory emptied 20 minutes after the launch, and most of it gone after just five minutes.
We monitored several retailers at the time of the Nvidia launch, and saw just how quickly the cards disappeared, with even big online stores regularly crashing due to heavy demand. Gamers clearly can’t wait to get their hands on the best graphics card in town right now, but you also only need to take a look at Ebay to see that bots and RTX 5090 scalpers are also accounting for a massive chunk of that demand.
Newegg itself claims that it experienced an 8-10x surge in traffic after the GPUs went on sale, saying that “the RTX 50 Series accounted for 18 of Newegg’s top 25 most-visited product pages.” Given that Newegg stocks a wide range of products, from home appliances to car alarms, it’s remarkable that the launch of two PC gaming GPUs has dominated the store’s traffic to such a degree.
Other statistics released by the retailer include the search trends at the time, with Newegg saying that nine out of ten search queries on the site were related to either the RTX 5090 or 5080, and that searches for these two GPUs increased by 25x compared to the week beforehand.
Newegg wasn’t selling the Founders Edition of the cards, which we tested in our RTX 5090 review, as well as our new RTX 5080 review, but did stock cards from a number of third-party manufacturers, including Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, Zotac, and PNY. What we don’t know, of course, is how many cards the retailer has actually sold, and whether there was a decent enough supply to start with.
Whatever the situation, though, if you didn’t manage to get hold of an RTX 5090 or 5080 when they first launched, you’re now going to have to wait for more stock to arrive. It’s a depressing time for gamers wanting to buy a new GPU, particularly now that the RTX 4090 and 4080 cards are also in short supply.
If you’re looking to buy one of the new GPUs, then we’re here to help. Check out our where to buy 5090 page for the latest stock information on the flagship GPU in the US, UK, and Australia. You can also check our where to buy 5080 page for the same information on the cheaper GPU.
