WTF?! It is nearly inconceivable to seek out an RTX 5080 or RTX 5090 exterior of public sale websites proper now, particularly at MSRP – until, that’s, you occur to be an attendee at Nvidia’s 2025 GPU Expertise Convention, the place they are often bought for these costs from a meals truck.
From 7AM to 12PM on Thursday and Friday (they had been additionally offered on Wednesday), Nvidia is promoting RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 playing cards at their $999 and $1,999 respective MSRPs from the Nvidia gear van at GTC park.
For apparent safety causes, the playing cards aren’t all sitting within the van ready to be handed out like hotdogs. Consumers should choose up their bought playing cards from the South Corridor most important entrance the identical day they’re purchased.
As Tom’s {Hardware} notes, there are many caveats with this deal, the largest being that the playing cards will solely be offered to holders of a convention move ($1,145 for at some point or $2,295 for 5 days) or an exhibit move.
Furthermore, there are solely 2,000 playing cards up for grabs – 1,000 RTX 5080s and 1,000 RTX 5090s. Unsurprisingly, gross sales are restricted to at least one card per particular person. The occasion is anticipated to draw some 25,000 attendees this 12 months.
Based on on an official X publish, Nvidia is promoting the playing cards in bursts: it writes in one which 90 models can be found for the following half-hour.
🚨 GeForce RTX 5090s can be found on the Gear Retailer within the park proper now at #GTC25
90 models can be found for the following half-hour, with extra coming tomorrow. Come say hello! pic.twitter.com/oHdwMlp87r
– NVIDIA AI Developer (@NVIDIAAIDev) March 19, 2025
These playing cards will find yourself within the fingers of the software program builders attending the convention, somewhat than on a regular basis shoppers, after all. Discovering one from a retailer is just about a pipe dream proper now, although you could possibly all the time pay $6,000 for an in-stock pre-built PC from Greatest Purchase (MSI MEG Visions X AI Gaming Desktop) that packs an Intel Extremely 9 285K and an RTX 5090 – for the rock-bottom worth of $6,000.
System builders equivalent to PowerGPU have defined the excessive worth of their Blackwell machines by highlighting how they’re additionally paying a fortune for the RTX 5090/5080 playing cards. The actual fact Asus lately raised the costs of its RTX 5090 and AMD RX 9070 sequence has exacerbated the state of affairs.
Elsewhere at GTC, Nvidia revealed its upcoming lineup of AI-accelerating GPUs, together with Blackwell Extremely in 2025, Vera Rubin in 2026, Rubin Extremely in 2027, and Feynman in 2028.
