GeForce RTX 5000: poor availability, expensive, little prospect of improvement

In recent weeks, the sales launch of Nvidia's new graphics card family has been characterized by two things: You can hardly buy the GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080 – and if you can, then only at prices far above what Nvidia claims. In a few days, the next smaller model, the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, is due for launch in Nvidia's salami-tactic launch schedule, but there is no improvement in sight. The largest Blackwell card also had problems with the power supply.

Although it is not yet possible to buy Ti cards – Nivida will not allow this until February 20 –, some retailers have already listed the new cards and their prices. Caseking has nine different GeForce RTX 5070 Ti cards, the cheapest of which is listed for 1149 euros and the most expensive for 1399 euros. For comparison: Nvidia itself has announced the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti at prices starting at 879 euros – the promise is not even close to being fulfilled. A piquant fact: Unlike the 5080 and 5090, there is no so-called Founders Edition of the 5070 Ti, which Nvidia itself would sell at the official price point.

The inflated prices are not a German or European problem: In the USA, you can already find listed cards at the MicroCenter retail chain, among others. There is – after all! – a card at the official list price of 749 US dollars (without tax), but the rest of the not-yet-offered cards start at 900 US dollars and go up to over the 1000 mark.

No prospect of improvement

Rumor cooks are currently saying that availability could improve in the coming weeks – but not across the board, but only at the top end for the time being, i.e. the 5090. Nvidia doesn't make the big money with gaming anyway, but with AI accelerators for data centers. It is therefore unlikely that the production plans at TSMC will be changed significantly: It is the thickest chips that are most in demand there.

For smaller expansion stages, on the other hand, it does not look like there will be any improvement in terms of quantities, which also applies to gaming notebooks: there are currently no 5000 GeForce chips in them. The first gaming notebooks may be sold as pre-orders from February 25th, but delivery will not take place until March. Even then, this only applies to high-end configurations, while more affordable versions with reasonable GPUs are unlikely to reach their first buyers before April. Neither the notebook manufacturers nor the CPU suppliers AMD and Intel are happy about this: the expensive complete systems cannot be delivered because everyone is waiting for Nvidia.

Unlike desktop PCs, there is also no alternative, as AMD will not be bringing its Radeon RX 9000 family to notebooks. In the case of desktop graphics cards, it remains to be seen whether retailers and manufacturers will adhere to AMD's price targets or whether they will have to expect the same mark-ups. The first customers are likely to be supplied at the beginning of March, when Nvidia's 5070 without Ti is on the schedule. (mue)