It hasn’t even been a month since NVIDIA announced the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards, and already it’s been warning the market to expect shortages as soon as they go on sale tomorrow, January 30.

“We expect significant demand for the GeForce RTX 5090 and 5080 and believe stock-outs may happen,” wrote Tim Adams, NVIDIA’s global head of GeForce community, in a post on NVIDIA’s forums. Stock-out means running out of stock. “NVIDIA & our partners are shipping more stock to retail every day to help get GPUs into the hands of gamers.”

So where does that leave you? The world has waited eagerly for three years since the RTX 5000 Series’ predecessor was released in 2022. It looks like all those but the lucky, lucky few who snag one on pre-order will have to wait a while longer.

retailers point the finger

Computer manufacturers and stores expected to stock the new NVIDIA cards are already warning would-be customers left and right that they don’t have enough to satisfy the pent-up demand.

High-end gaming computer manufacturer PowerGPU posted on X, “Warning you all now. The launch of the RTX 5090 will be the worst when it comes to availability. Already being told to expect it to be that way for the first 3 months.”

Computer hardware company MSI released a statement to Videocardz that reads “We are going to allow RTX 5090 preorders on 1/30 at 6 AM PST, with a ship date of 2/6. The RTX 5080 will be available for purchase on 1/30 at 6 AM PST, with an immediate ship date of 1/30. RTX 5090 preorders will open on 1/30 at 6 AM PST, with a ship date of 2/6.”

The RTX 5090 (MSRP $2,000) and RTX 5080 ($1,000) are very high-performance, high-end graphics cards. Gamers building or upgrading their computers to play graphics-intensive video games will be one of the primary user bases for the two cards.

Professionals who deal with heavyweight video editing or rendering programs will also use these cards heavily. So will folks and businesses making extensive use of artificial intelligence models. Forbes calls the RTX 5090 the “fastest and best-performing graphics card in the world.”

It’s all a tease at this point. Both the RTX 5090 and 5080 are the ultimate “look, but no touch” piece of gadgetry in consumer computer hardware this year. But for a bit longer, most of us will have to stick to dreaming in 4K at 30 frames per second, at least until NVIDIA gets its shit together.