- Nvidia’s Blackwell stock levels are again rumored to be shaky
- Launch stock of the RTX 5090 might be very thin on the ground
- The RTX 5080 should be better, but still might be tricky 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 fresh rumor is right – and this isn’t the first time we’ve heard chatter 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 stock in his latest video.
The top-level summary is that the RTX 5090 is looking very shaky indeed for its amount of launch stock, and the news doesn’t sound all that much better for the RTX 5080.
MLID’s first source – season all of this appropriately – works at a US distributor and said that their organization will only have around 20 boards for the RTX 5080, and nothing at all for the flagship. Yes, zero stock for the RTX 5090, which sounds worrying indeed.
The theoretical allocation of 20 or so for the RTX 5080 graphics cards is for the first month of sales (meaning February), and to compare with the last generation, this distributor had a couple of hundred RTX 4080s back at launch in 2022. So we could potentially be looking at a tenth of that stock for the RTX 5080.
The second source is a graphics card maker (presumably in the US) who said that their firm has the same amount of RTX 5090 boards as with RTX 3090 – and if you recall, RTX 3090 stock was vanishingly thin on the ground. As for the RTX 5080, apparently supply is a ‘fraction’ of that seen with the RTX 4080, although this source doesn’t estimate it’ll be quite as bad as a tenth – more like a third to half of that seen with the RTX 4080.
Another source, also a graphics card maker (in the EU), said that the RTX 5090 is looking like it’ll be ‘very rare’ but that the RTX 5080 seemingly has ‘okay’ stock levels, for the graphics card’s initial launch anyway.
Remember that these are all rumors around third-party Blackwell graphics cards, so they don’t apply to Nvidia’s own Founders Edition RTX 5090 and 5080 cards.
MLID did hear from a contact at Nvidia, although that person made it clear that they weren’t involved in any discussions related to supply – but did observe that Team Green has warned staff that there won’t be many RTX 5090 Founders Editions available from the employee store at launch. They noted that with the RTX 4090, it was very easy to get one of those (heavily discounted) GPUs from that in-house store.
Analysis: Caveats and more optimistic glimmers
Obviously, all this comes with weighty caveats. It’s still only a few sources, even if multiple insiders have chimed in here – and it’s only the one US distributor (others could be faring better, perhaps, especially for the RTX 5080).
Indeed, there’s some mixed chatter here for the RTX 5080, and some indications of stronger stock levels, like that mention of inventory being a third to a half of that seen with the RTX 4080. That doesn’t sound as gloomy as some of the other estimations here, but as MLID points out, 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 could prove a great deal more in demand, and so could still sell out in a relative flash.
We don’t know how much trust to put in this speculation, of course, and the Founders Edition could be different too – there’s no solid evidence on those models. But it certainly makes sense that Nvidia wouldn’t particularly want to prioritize RTX 5090 stock in particular – for its own boards, or third-party graphics cards. Firstly, because AMD RDNA 4 isn’t even remotely competing with Nvidia’s new flagship, and secondly, because Team Green will doubtless want to use the top Blackwell chips for AI rather than the 5090, as that’s where all the big profits lie.
All this doesn’t fill me with confidence about the general picture of RTX 5000 stock, it must be said, particularly as a report from last week chimes pretty much with the assertions here, hinting that it could be a battle to get one of Nvidia’s next-gen GPUs at launch.
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