How to buy an Nvidia RTX 50 Series GPU

After a two-year wait, Nvidia’s long-awaited GeForce 50 series of GPUs are almost here. Engadget posted its review From the $2000 RTX 5090, but if you’re reading this article, chances are you already know if you want to splurge on a 50-series card. The question then is, how do you go about buying one? Depending on when you read this story, the good news is that we’re at most a week away from major retailers, including Best Buy and Newegg, stocking the new cards on January 30th.

As for the bad news? If the 50 series launch is anything like the 40 series before it, expect high demand and limited initial availability. If you’re ready to buy an RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 TI, or 5070 at launch, be sure to use the Best Buy and other retailers notification feature for the best chance of securing one of the cards before they all sell out .

GeForce RTX 5090 for $2000: The RTX 5090 is the most expensive consumer GPU NVIDIA has ever released. It’s also one of the most powerful and power-hungry, with the 5090 featuring 21,760 CUDA cores, 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM and a potential total power of 575W.

Of course, as with all new NVIDIA GPUs, RAW specs are only half the story. In connection with DLSS 4The entire 50 series is in multi frame condition. With RTX 50 technology, GPUs can generate up to three additional frames for every frame they render using traditional techniques. DLSS 4 is why the 5090 produces an average of 246fps with full ray tracing in games like Cyberpunk 2077.

If you prefer to buy from Newegg or B&HBoth retailers will stock models from third-party OEMs including ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Zotac.

GeForce RTX 5080 for $999: Despite costing half as much as the RTX 5090, the 5080 is no slouch. It features an impressive 10,752 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM, with a memory bandwidth of 960GB/s. Like the 5090, you get the benefit of DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation. What’s more, the overall power draw is more modest at 360W, meaning you probably won’t need a 1000W PSU to power the 5080.

Again, both Newegg and B&H You will stock third party options. For the Edition model, your best bets are Nvidia and Best Buy.

GeForce RTX. If I had to guess, the 5070 TI is probably the model with the most interest from people looking to buy a 50 series card. That’s because it has 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM compared to the 1270’s 12GB. The extra 4GB of VRAM may not seem like much, but it will likely make the 5070 Ti a much better buy in the long run. Modern AAA games use a lot of VRAM, so much so that 8GB GPUs like the RTX 3070 are starting to show their age.

Unfortunately, the 5070 Ti is the only model that NVIDIA won’t be offering a Founders Edition version of, so finding one to buy can be tricky. Your best bet here would probably be B&H. The retailer displays several 5070 TI models on its website.

GeForce RTX 5070 for $549: At launch, the RTX 5070 will be NVIDIA’s most affordable 50-series GPU. It’s also the GPU NVIDIA claims is as fast as the RTX 4090. Of course, that’s with DLSS 4 enabled. If you’re interested in the 5070, I’d strongly advise waiting for the reviews to come out before committing to buying one. As mentioned, with only 12GB of VRAM, the 5070 can quickly become a bottleneck for your system.