The RTX 50-series is the worst GPU launch in recent memory

Nvidia has had some less-than-stellar graphics card launches over the years. Its RTX 2000-series was poorly received, with little interest in the flagship features of the time, and the RTX 40-series hardly blew us away. But the RTX 50-series has been something else entirely. It’s the worst GPU launch I can remember in a long time.

If you’ve been following along, the latest is that the RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti are delayed again. But that’s just one more straw on the camel’s funeral pyre for this catastrophic GPU generation.

In the beginning, there was overhype

It all started off strong for the RTX 50 series. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took to the stage at CES 2025 and made some truly grandiose claims which had everyone excited. The RTX 5090 was going to double performance of the RTX 4090. The RTX 5070 was going to offer 4090-level performance at $549. Multi frame generation was going to give Nvidia such a lead, that AMD’s cards would look ridiculous in comparison.

It even “lowered” the launch price of the RTX 5080 from its last-generation predecessor: $1000 instead of $1200 for the 4080 at its debut.

But these claims looked to be more and more hyperbolic as the charts were analyzed in greater detail. Nvidia was fudging the numbers at best, or being downright dishonest at worst. The only fair comparisons on its charts were limited to just a single set of bars, and those painted a picture of cards that were good, but not that much better than their counterparts.

And that proved to be right once reviews landed. The RTX 5090 was at best 30% faster than the 4090, and multi frame generation was useful in niche settings, but only really when native frame rates are already high. The RTX 5080 is only 10% faster than its last-generation counterpart, and the 5070 Ti and 5070 are even less exciting.

Nvidia overpromised and undelivered. And that was just the first of its problems.

Then there were none

Every time Nvidia has launched an RTX 50-series graphics card, two things have happened: It’s gone out of stock within minutes, and the prices have exploded. The RTX 5090 regularly goes for over $3,000 on auction sites, and the RTX 5080 isn’t much better at over $2,000 at times. Retailers and third-party board manufacturers raised their prices, too, so even if you get lucky and grab one of these from a major store it’s already hundreds of dollars more than the Nvidia suggested price.

That hasn’t changed in the weeks since. The various RTX 50-series cards are still nowhere to be found outside of extremely overpriced options, and with new AMD RX 9000 competition, gamers are starting to look elsewhere.

Return of the melt

One of the biggest scandals from the RTX 40 generation of graphics cards, was how the high-power RTX 4090s started melting their power cables. Sometimes that was because of poor third-party cables, or user error inserting the connectors wrongly, but ultimately Nvidia just redesigned the power connector. That redesign was used in refreshed 4090s, as well as all the new RTX 50 cards.

But the problem still persists in the new-generation, too. Several RTX 5090s and 5080s have been involved in melting power cable and connector incidents. Sometimes it’s down to poor third-party cables, but in every instance the power cables have been getting far, far too hot. Over 150 degrees in some cases.

That shouldn’t happen, and though it might not be Nvidia’s fault if a third-party cable melts or breaks, it’s fair to levy criticism at Nvidia’s power delivery design, which continues to have issues.

Missing ROP flops

If you spent thousands of dollars on an RTX 50 card, would you be happy losing 5-10% performance because the card was faulty? That’s the problem faced by hundreds of gamers affected by Nvidia GPUs with missing ROPs. It’s down to a hardware defect so no way to fix it themselves.

Nvidia claims it affects around 0.5% of RTX 50 cards, though that number may be higher (here’s how to check if you’re effected). It suggests affected gamers send their cards back to the board manufacturer for a replacement or refund. With supply issues ongoing, though, that’s not always a great option when it could result in delays in receiving a replacement.

If you’ve been waiting on a more affordable RTX 50-series card, you aren’t alone, but the promised future of cheaper cards, greater stock, and broad card variety just doesn’t seem to come. Nvidia keeps pushing back the launch of its GPUs, with the RTX 5070 first being delayed, and now the 5060 Ti and 5060 might not launch until April or even May.

Any stock of the new cards that does land is quickly gobbled up by gamers and scalpers, too, so there’s no sign of prices coming down any time soon. If Nvidia can launch the 5060 cards with sufficient stock, that might help ease the problem, but at this rate there’s little confidence that they won’t be delayed again, or when they do launch, they just quickly sell out anyway.

No last-gen

Often when a new generation of graphics cards launches the last-generation becomes cheaper and more readily available as people upgrade and retailers look to shift old stock. But Nvidia wound down production of the 40-series in the latter half of 2024, so by the time its 50 series launched there wasn’t much else available. As prices of the new cards exploded, the last-gen got gobbled up too.

So now there are no 40-series cards available that aren’t also ridiculously priced. So there’s been almost no relief from this problem for months.

AMD’s ambitions

The one shining light in this whole debacle is that AMD didn’t drop the ball. When Nvidia floundered, it launched the RX 9070 XT and 9070 to much acclaim. The cards were good, available in large quantities, and more fairly priced. They still sold out pretty quickly and prices have risen in turn, but they aren’t quite as overblown as Nvidia’s, giving gamers at least some next-generation options.

They can’t compete with the top cards, are still limited to 16GB of VRAM, and the ray tracing and upscaling support still trail Nvidia a little, but the gaps have been closed significantly this generation. The 9070 XT is AMD’s best GPU in years.

The waiting game

Whether you’re interested in an Nvidia RTX 50 or AMD RX 9000 graphics cards, you’re going to have to wait for it. Stock is trickling in all the time, and 5060s are on the horizon. AMD is also promising big stock drops in the coming weeks, so prices and stock issues may start to ease in the coming months, but most gamers are still going to need to wait to get a fair deal.

Try not to buy older cards, too. They will bottom out in value once the new-gen cards really arrive in sufficient quantities.