Nvidia will now sell graphics cards only to worthy customers

Against the backdrop of a global shortage, the dominance of resellers and uncontrolled price increases for the latest models of GeForce RTX 50-series video cards, Nvidia has returned to the practice of selling reference versions of its accelerators only to verified users.

Image source: NVIDIA

Nvidia has launched the Verified Priority Access program for buyers of the reference versions of the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 graphics cards on its official website. The offer is available only to US residents and allows you to purchase these cards at their recommended prices: $999 for the GeForce RTX 5080 and $1999 for the RTX 5090. It is unknown whether Nvidia plans to expand this program to other countries. It is also unknown whether it will work with the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti model, which goes on sale today.

According to the Verified Priority Access program, only those users who registered their Nvidia account no later than January 30, 2025 can purchase the reference versions of the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 Founders Edition through the official Nvidia website. Users wishing to purchase these video cards must follow this link and submit an application. Again, the program is only available to US residents.

The program applies exclusively to reference versions of Nvidia video cards. It does not cover products from partners such as Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, PNY and others.

Let’s recall that Nvidia resorted to a similar practice of selling reference versions of video cards when launching the GeForce RTX 4090 in 2022. Later, the company expanded the program to the RTX 4080 model, as well as to some accelerator options from its partners.