Nvidia’s RTX 5090 branded a “paper launch” after major stock shortages

Scalpers helped nvidia push the MSRP of GPUs up dramatically. That's what they learned.

The 3080 launched at $699 and scalpers sold it for at least twice that and people ate it up. So, nvidia launched the 4080 for $1,199

Why even do this? All this does is make scalpers rich. When will NVDIA learn

Scalpers helps with price inflation. What did Nvidia learn it's to keep making trillions; I wonder if they are realizing they are quickly becoming an hated company.

The term paper launch has been kicking around for a while now.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=paper launch

Who calls it that - if it's a spade, it's a spade.

From memory a paper launch used to mean something that only existed on paper / a press launch; where no consumer could purchase the product. Considering stock quantities that GN has sourced for the US it's near enough a paper launch.

To add a bit more context, it's been used in the tech industry for at least 20 years, if not more.

There doesn't seem to be too much actual proper etymological documentation on the first usage or history... as you say, it most likely derives from ordering something, and not getting it, and being left with only a paper invoice, from back when such things were mailed or faxed...

...it may have derived from the old layaway process retail stores used to do: you order and pay for something upfront, they hand you a voucher, and when they get the product, they hold it in inventory for you, as opposed to putting it on the sales floor for general purchase by anyone, and then you exchange the voucher for the item.

But that's just a guess.

Others have mentioned the history of the term.

GanersNexus started the trend of the term for this launch (I believe).

No! Everyone needs to buy the 5000 series and sell off their 3080yi and 2080ti to lowly patient gamers!

Given that Trump has now reiterated multiple times, at least once after he personally met with Nvidia CEO Huang, that he will indeed be going forward with tariffs on Taiwan...

If you're in the US, I wouldn't expect to be able to get any 5000 series Nvidia GPU any time soon, at least not for under $3000+.

EDIT:

AMD cards will also be affected by the Taiwan tariffs, but uh, they tend to price things a bit more affordably, and provide more actual stock volume... but as of right now all we know is the 9070XT was planned at some price below $899, most people expected $450 to $500... but there's still no official price, or date, and now the tariffs are a thing... so... maybe $899 actually is now a realistic price estimate for the 9070XT?

Who knows! All the gamers can now thank Trump for making all PC / Console components and likely video games themselves more expensive.

EDIT 2: Also, you can run professional production, CUDA style workloads on AMD cards:

https://repairspotter.com/computers/what-is-the-amd-radeon-equivalent-to-nvidias-cuda

YMMV.

Also also, the RDNA 4 architecture for AMDs 9000 series cards seems to be rebalancing toward more raytracing performance, but that's based on leaks so far.

The most surprising thing to me is that people actually want this garbage.