Nvidia under fire over disastrous 5090 launch issues

The announcement of Nvidia’s flagship 50 series graphics cards sent the PC community into a collective tailspin as the potential of the cards became clear. Unfortunately, only a select few will be able to get their hands on the hardware for the foreseeable, as stock issues plague the global rollout.

Historically, getting your hands on a brand-new Nvidia GPU at launch has always been a nightmare for the best cards in the series. That said, it’s a problem that has worsened significantly over the last few major releases, and fears over access to 50 series stock were widespread and, as it turns out, well founded.

Since releasing in the middle of January, getting hold of a 5080 has been a tough ask. This problem is even worse for the 5090, where its next to impossible to get hold of a card from any manufacturer. Major US retailers like Newegg sold out instantly, and things are even worse in the UK, where websites like Overclockers predict a 16-week restock time for Nvidia’s highest-performance card.

With the scale of the problem now clear, accusations of a “paper launch” are running wild, and anger is growing among professionals and consumers alike.

Gamers Nexus levels paper launch accusations at Nvidia

YouTube: Gamers Nexus

Over on YouTube, highly-respected tech and computing channel Gamers Nexus detailed their experience trying to secure the cards for testing and review.

Editor-in-chief Steve Burke confirmed that he and several other colleagues had made every effort to secure 5090s from a variety of retailers, with nobody able to do so successfully.

“This morning, three people on our team were focused on trying to buy RTX 5090 GPUs from multiple retailers. Jeremy, Mike and I all had a strategy on which cards to try to review and it didn’t work,” he said.

“Turns out we stood no chance and neither did any of you. We used a mix of stock trackers and manually refreshing tons of retailers. I had a four monitor setup, it was beautiful, and not a single card showed up in stock. Well, one did… then it evaporated.

“It looks like this launch was paper at best and vapor at worst.”

For those who don’t know, a paper launch is a defined product launch in which stock is extremely limited or even non-existent. There are several reasons companies may do this, covering anything from increasing share price to an expectation of increased production.

In this case, accusations of that ilk are more well-founded than ever, with stock levels considerably lower than the 40 series, which itself suffered from supply issues.