- Nvidia’s Blackwell stock levels are again rumored to be staggering
- Launch stock of the RTX 5090 may be very thin on the ground
- The RTX 5080 should be better, but it may still be hard to find in the early days
Nvidia’s RTX 5000 graphics cards could be in short supply when these next-gen GPUs first arrive, if a new rumor is true – and it’s not the first time we’ve heard talk from the grapevine along these lines.
This time it comes from a regular source of rumors on YouTube, Moore’s Law is Dead (MLID), who discussed the subject of Blackwell shares in his latest video.
The top-level summary is that the RTX 5090 looks very shaky for its amount of launch stock, and the news doesn’t sound that much better for the RTX 5080.
MLID’s first source – season all this appropriately – works at a US distributor and said their organization will only have about 20 boards for the RTX 5080, and none at all for the flagship. Yes, zero stock for the RTX 5090, which sounds worrying.
The theoretical allocation of 20 or so for the RTX 5080 graphics cards is for the first month of sales (ie February), and to compare to the last generation, this distributor had a few hundred RTX 4080s left at launch in 2022. So we could potentially be looking at a tenth of that share for the RTX 5080.
The second source is a graphics card manufacturer (presumably in the US) who said that their company has the same amount of RTX 5090 cards as with the RTX 3090 – and if you remember, the RTX 3090 stock was vanishingly thin on the ground. As for the RTX 5080, the supply is apparently a ‘fraction’ of that seen with the RTX 4080, although this source doesn’t estimate it will be quite as bad as a tenth – more like a third to a half of what seen with RTX 4080.
Another source, also a graphics card manufacturer (in the EU), said that the RTX 5090 appears to be ‘very rare’, but that the RTX 5080 seems to have ‘okay’ stock levels for the graphics card’s initial launch anyway.
Keep in mind that these are all rumors surrounding third-party Blackwell graphics cards, so they don’t apply to Nvidia’s own Founders Edition RTX 5090 and 5080 cards.
MLID heard from a contact at Nvidia, although that person made it clear they were not involved in any discussions related to delivery – but observed that Team Green has warned staff that there won’t be many RTX 5090 Founders Editions available from the employee shop at launch. They noted that with the RTX 4090 it was very easy to get one of these (heavily discounted) GPUs from the in-house store.
Look at
Analysis: Reservations and more optimistic glimpses
Of course, all this comes with important caveats. It’s still just a few sources, though several insiders have chimed in here – and that’s just the one US distributor (others might do better, especially for the RTX 5080).
In fact, there’s some mixed talk here for the RTX 5080, and some indications of stronger stock levels, like the mention of stock being a third to half of what you’d see with the RTX 4080. It doesn’t sound as bleak as some of the others ratings here, but as MLID points out, the RTX 4080 supply wasn’t great though, and part of the reason it hung around was because this GPU wasn’t very popular. The RTX 5080 may prove to be much more in demand, and therefore may still sell out in a relatively quick moment.
Of course, we don’t know how much faith to put in this speculation, and the Founders Edition may also be different – there is no solid evidence on these models. But it certainly makes sense that Nvidia won’t particularly prioritize RTX 5090 stock – for its own boards or third-party graphics cards. First, because AMD RDNA 4 doesn’t even remotely compete with Nvidia’s new flagship, and second, because Team Green will undoubtedly use the best Blackwell chips for AI rather than the 5090, since that’s where all the big profits lie.
All of this doesn’t fill me with confidence about the general picture of RTX 5000 stock, it has to be said, especially since a report from last week ties in very well with the claims here, suggesting that it could be a struggle to get one of the Nvidia’s next generation GPUs at launch.
