Nvidia has published materials for the upcoming GDC 2025 conference, which will be held from March 17 to 21. In one of the published slides, the manufacturer stated that in the first five weeks of sales, it shipped twice as many GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards as RTX 40-series models in the same period. Various media outlets have drawn attention to the fact that this comparison is at least incorrect and misleading.
Image source: NVIDIA
The main problem with Nvidia’s announcement is the availability of the cards during the initial launch period. When the RTX 4000 series of graphics cards was introduced, only the RTX 4090 (released on October 12, 2022) was available for the first five weeks. The RTX 4080 was not released until November 16 of the same year. The GeForce RTX 5000 series, on the other hand, saw four cards released in the first five weeks after launch: the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 on January 30, 2025, the RTX 5070 Ti on February 20, and the RTX 5070 on March 5.
This means that Nvidia is comparing the shipments of a single flagship RTX 4090 graphics card to the combined shipments of four RTX 50-series graphics cards in different segments. This comparison is incorrect because it does not take into account the different demand and production volumes of different GPU models.
RTX 50 and RTX 40 card shipments in the first five weeks of sales. Image source: Nvidia
To get a fairer comparison, we need to consider the shipments of all GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards during the same time frame. So the comparison should be based on the first five weeks of RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 shipments, two weeks of RTX 4070 Ti shipments, and one day of RTX 4070 shipments. It’s likely that the combined shipments of these cards will significantly exceed the RTX 50-series shipments to date.
With each new launch of the next model of the RTX 50 series graphics card, Nvidia faced a barrage of criticism, since none of the released models were available for sale at the stated recommended price (MSRP). This circumstance only increased the disappointment of gamers around the world. According to the portal VideoCardz, the slides presented by Nvidia do not prove anything, but only create more confusion.
According to TweakTown, Nvidia is working with partners (including retailers) to increase the availability of its graphics cards at recommended prices.
«”We work closely with not only our AIB partners, but also our retail partners to ensure that we supply graphics cards at recommended prices. Ultimately, the best way to do this is to get more graphics cards into the market. Once supply matches demand, we expect prices to stabilize,” an Nvidia spokesperson told TweakTown.
So far this work has not yielded results. There are still very few video cards in stores, and those that are available are sold at significantly inflated prices. Let’s see what changes in a few weeks.