The markup on Nvidia’s $2,000 GeForce RTX 5090 and $1,000 RTX 5080 GPUs has reached new heights. Cards fly off store shelves as soon as they’re posted online, and then they end up on eBay and other reselling platforms at a 50% or 150% markup. Nvidia’s new plan to help you get an FE card for the base price involves entering your name in a raffle and hoping your name gets drawn out of a hat.
Nvidia’s process is very simple. As noted on its official forums Wednesday, anybody with a Nvidia account before Jan. 30 can access this form. You can select either one or both GeForce RTX 5090 or RTX 5080, then hit the button to enroll. Nvidia did not state how many Founders Edition GPUs it will have in stock, though the lucky winners should get notified via email if they’re selected next week. Note, you’ll still need to cough up the $1,000 or $2,000 to own Nvidia’s top-of-the-line Blackwell cards, but this may be the only way some PC gamers may hope to grab one at the base price.
Nvidia’s program is similar to what other OEMs have landed on, specifically Zotac, with its Discord-based raffle to let users buy a card at MSRP rather than at a markup. Other AIM cards from Asus and MSI have increased in price by upwards of 18% since the RTX 5090 launch in January. The r/nvidia subreddit has continued to record 5090 prices, jumping by $300 to $400. The MSRP RTX 5080 16G Ventus 3X from MSI went from $1,000 to $1,139. Meanwhile, MSI’s RTX 5090 32G Vanguard SOC Launch Edition jumped by $310 to $2,689. Meanwhile, resellers pawn these same GPUs on eBay for over $4,000. Some OC models are running for close to or over $6,000.
The direct-to-consumer model shouldn’t be the first way companies should think to beat scalpers. Because manufacturers can’t control the wide breadth of online retailers, the best way to avoid price gouging is to have enough stock that scalpers can’t purchase all of them. Nvidia was warning about low stock values even before launch, and physical retailers found they only had a paltry number of GPUs to sell to customers. When Nvidia launched the RTX 5090 on Jan. 30, online stock sold out in less than 30 minutes.
Feb. 20 marks the launch of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, a card we thought was solid at $750 for 4K gaming. Then again, you’d be lucky to find it for $750. We’re already seeing certain markets planning to sell non-OC cards for over $900 and some OC variants for over $1,000. At that price, you may as well wait to buy the RTX 5080 (as if it’s even possible to purchase that card at MSRP). We’ll update this story if the stock situation for that card is as dire as the card’s more powerful siblings. Nvidia already pushed the launch of the RTX 5070 back to March 5.
For its part, Nvidia shared multiple links with Gizmodo for stock-clocked 5070 Ti cards at MSRP before the launch date. However, checking all those links now lists the cards as out of stock at the time of publication. This situation is not tenable, and even if Nvidia launches another priority access scheme for the 5070 family, it won’t be enough to meet the overall demand. We don’t suggest anybody buy a card for $600 to $3,000 above MSRP, no matter how many frames you think you’ll get in Cyberpunk 2077.
