News Nvidia says it shipped twice as many 50-series GPUs as 40-Series at launch, but it's a misleading comparison

[Eximo]

As an older long term gamer that has used Nvidia GPU's for decades and has a fairly extensive library of older well revered classic games I like to revisit the announcement that Nvidia had dropped the 32 bit PhysX support on the 50 series cards which affected the special graphical features of a fair number of these still top ranked older classic games greatly reducing the performance and the graphical effects of this Nvidia "exclusive feature" that was used as a selling point for consumers to choose Nvidia is making me think twice before continuing to have faith in any Nvidia exclusive features going forward.

Nvidia touted the "way the game was meant to be played" I guess until for them it was not any longer.
This to me is the biggest reason to not continue to support Nvidia as they can take away a feature set a lot quicker than it takes to implement it regardless of how it may affect their consumers.

Yeah, there was another article about a guy buying a 3050 6GB to use as a PhysX card. Probably the way I will go when I replace my 3080Ti. Have to see how well my passive GT1030 does PhysX I suppose first.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

It's misleading...but also relevant right? Yes they launch the 4080 later, but that can also be described as launching the 5080 earlier...ie shipping more product and getting more done all at once.

So it is misleading but also true...which melts my brain a bit. I guess what that slide really proves is that it wasn't a paper launch. They didn't launch the 5080 early with no stock, they basically did what they did with the 4000 series but faster/all at once.

So, yeah it's fluff, and a bit disingenuous but I wouldn't call that one a flat out lie.

edit: I just don't get why they don't fight scalpers. Do they really think the product won't sell out? Seems like a giant missed opportunity to get cards into the hands of people and hurt AMD. You don't get more money from selling to scalpers if you will sell out anyway. Only 3rd parties make more.

Well, the thing is that Nvidia generally sells more (twice as many?) 5080/4080 than 5090/4090. So by launching 5080 and 5090 at the same time, purportedly (according to Micro Center stats) with 10X as many 5080 cards, that right there makes sure that the numbers look better.

If the stats had been for the first six weeks, how would that have changed things? Because then we'd have 4080 in the mix for sure. Right now, from Oct 12 to Nov 16 is 50 days... which means the 4080 launch supply likely wasn't counted.

It's going to be very interesting to see when and how RTX 50-series cards turn up on the Steam survey!

 

[Jabberwocky79]

It's misleading...but also relevant right? Yes they launch the 4080 later, but that can also be described as launching the 5080 earlier...ie shipping more product and getting more done all at once.

So it is misleading but also true...which melts my brain a bit. I guess what that slide really proves is that it wasn't a paper launch. They didn't launch the 5080 early with no stock, they basically did what they did with the 4000 series but faster/all at once.

So, yeah it's fluff, and a bit disingenuous but I wouldn't call that one a flat out lie.

edit: I just don't get why they don't fight scalpers. Do they really think the product won't sell out? Seems like a giant missed opportunity to get cards into the hands of people and hurt AMD. You don't get more money from selling to scalpers if you will sell out anyway. Only 3rd parties make more.

Take that sound logic somewhere else! We're too busy emotionally ranting over here 😛 😏

 

[Energy96]

Agreed. The gaming market will always exist, but I think Nvidia is teetering on the brink of pulling out of it. This is a prime moment for AMD and Intel to seize some momentum. That will take time, and in the meanwhile, I can foresee a "dark ages" of sorts for game / graphics development. But if Nvidia continues to head in the same direction, it's only a matter of time before someone sees the opportunity and takes their place.

Currently they are still making the most powerful gaming cards out there. The thing is, think how much more powerful they would be in gaming if all that silicon was dedicated to graphics performance instead of AI and other stuff. Until someone does that there won’t be any other options. AMD and Intel are both pursuing the same AI and Data center usage, that’s the golden cash cow so I wouldn’t put much faith in them either. As long as that market is so dominant I think gamers will be left with whatever can be adapted to work in gaming.

 

[mac_angel]

I think how many shipped BEFORE launch is something that needs to be shared, too. How much stock did the retailers have on launch day?

 

[Jabberwocky79]

I think how many shipped BEFORE launch is something that needs to be shared, too. How much stock did the retailers have on launch day?

I think that number would be the same. I personally have been checking daily and haven't seen any indication that a single round of restocking has been done yet.

 

[fybyfyby]

They probably turned on Multi Sales Generation.

 

[mac_angel]

I think that number would be the same. I personally have been checking daily and haven't seen any indication that a single round of restocking has been done yet.

I'm not sure, I haven't looked into it. But even before launch day it was rumoured that there was a supply issue. Thing is, NVidia does this every generation; it just seems that people forget about it. Several months before a launch, the cut supply, even to the AIB partners, causing problems with warranty supply. They release their new GPU, but not have enough stock, creating a whole lot of 'supply and demand', and media attention. "Look at how great our cards are, no one can keep them in stock". Meanwhile it's them that's causing the stock issue.

 

[Jabberwocky79]

They probably turned on Multi Sales Generation.

Ohhhhh that explains it.... Of course! With that setting enabled, it seems to Nvidia like they made 147 GPUs per second, but they actually only made 30 the entire month! 🤣

 

[Jabberwocky79]

I'm not sure, I haven't looked into it. But even before launch day it was rumoured that there was a supply issue. Thing is, NVidia does this every generation; it just seems that people forget about it. Several months before a launch, the cut supply, even to the AIB partners, causing problems with warranty supply. They release their new GPU, but not have enough stock, creating a whole lot of 'supply and demand', and media attention. "Look at how great our cards are, no one can keep them in stock". Meanwhile it's them that's causing the stock issue.

I don't doubt it. This is my first real experience with the ridiculousness because I haven't been in the market for a new GPU in a while.

 

[Energy96]

I don't doubt it. This is my first real experience with the ridiculousness because I haven't been in the market for a new GPU in a while.

I bought a 4090 last year and it was nearly impossible to get. I ended up getting one from a private sale through an acquaintance. Only cost me $50 over msrp + a little shipping so worked out well for me. Retail purchases don’t even seem like a viable option anymore. Ironically I suspect the better the wafer yields are the less will be used for gaming cards. The best silicon is always going to go to AI and data center applications. They make way more money on those. Good luck finding anything outside of scalpers lol.

There is zero incentive for Nvidia to use silicon that meets AI/Data center specs in gaming cards when they can’t even fill those orders fully. We get whatever doesn’t meet professional requirements and that’s it.

 

[Quirkz]

Agree 100% on Nvidia deliberately drying out the market. I'm not so sure about AMD. I'm not an AMD fanboy by any means, but I don't recall having any trouble getting AMD cards until Nvidia's supply started drying up. Once that happened, prices and availability went haywire across the board.

plus, the 7000 series from AMD just weren't that competitive with nvidia. The 6000 series radeon were a lot more competitive vs the 30 series nvidia.
AMD fumbled their new multiCCD architecture, leaving nvidia holding all the cards, right at the point that nvidia decided that gaming wasn't worth their time any more. (and it's not. Profitability in the datacenter cards makes selling gamer cards look like running a lemonade stand vs costco)

 

[spongiemaster]

Well, the thing is that Nvidia generally sells more (twice as many?) 5080/4080 than 5090/4090. So by launching 5080 and 5090 at the same time, purportedly (according to Micro Center stats) with 10X as many 5080 cards, that right there makes sure that the numbers look better.

This very site posted an article after the 4080 launch about 4090's outselling 4080's 3.4:1 on ebay. Nobody wanted a 4080 at launch, so I doubt it would have significantly effected the early sales volume.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/bad-news-for-scalpers-rtx-4080-ebay-sales-data

If you look at tracking sites like nowinstock, it appears that every 50 series model but the 5090 are seeing multiple models going on sale every day at the major retailers so there is a steady stream of cards restocking constantly. What we don't know is how many cards are being shipped for those restocks. At this point, it's practically impossible to buy a card since script bots can ping sites 24/7 while actual customers would have to get insanely lucky and look at a specific model product page within a few minutes of it showing in stock.

 

[spongiemaster]

Given that multiple retailers have said that there were more 9070/XTs at launch day than all the Blackwells received since release combined, tells the story.

No, it doesn't since we know AMD originally planned to launch in January and had already started shipping cards to retailers back then. Navi48 is a slightly smaller die than GB203 and half the size of GB202, so they can produce more GPU's per wafer than Nvidia can. AMD claimed to delay the launch to get the software right, so in reality, they have also been producing RDNA4 cards in volume longer than Nvidia has been shipping 50 series cards.

 

[spongiemaster]

Agree 100% on Nvidia deliberately drying out the market. I'm not so sure about AMD. I'm not an AMD fanboy by any means, but I don't recall having any trouble getting AMD cards until Nvidia's supply started drying up. Once that happened, prices and availability went haywire across the board.

Nvidia's market share increased to 90% in q4 of 2024. How is that possible if they were deliberately drying up the market and AMD wasn't doing it to an even more extreme level? What on earth was AMD doing to lose market share while NVidia wasn't producing any cards and trying to empty the supply chains?

Nvidia's GPU market share hits 90% in Q4 2024 (gets closer to full monopoly)

AMD and intel right now are losing its gpu market share with crazy speed. Right now in Q4 2024 nvidia probably owns more than 90% of gpu market share. Only few small steps and AMD will be in worst position in it's entire gpu history ever!!! So get ready for extreme prices with new RTX 50 Series...

www.techpowerup.com

Something people never bring up with this launch, is that for only the 2nd time in their history, Nvidia used the same node on 2 consecutive releases. That means that they had to stop production of one to start production ramp up for the 50 series. Instead of producing the out going models while working to ramp up the new models at different fabs concurrently.

 

[Jabberwocky79]

Nvidia's market share increased to 90% in q4 of 2024. How is that possible if they were deliberately drying up the market? What on earth was AMD doing to lose market share while NVidia wasn't producing any cards and trying to empty the supply chains?

Nvidia's GPU market share hits 90% in Q4 2024 (gets closer to full monopoly)

AMD and intel right now are losing its gpu market share with crazy speed. Right now in Q4 2024 nvidia probably owns more than 90% of gpu market share. Only few small steps and AMD will be in worst position in it's entire gpu history ever!!! So get ready for extreme prices with new RTX 50 Series...

www.techpowerup.com

My guess would be A) Q4 is Oct-Dec, and I noticed the 'dry up' starting in December. Which means at least 2 months of 'normalcy'. That also includes holiday shopping, which may have an impact. B) People smarter than me started scooping up 40-series in droves when news broke that Nvidia shut off production. Prices quickly started to climb thereafter.

This is all anecdotal, mind you, but I stand by it, because I have been in the market for a new card since November and I was watching things closely. Unfortunately I decided to wait for 50 series and that's a decision I'm still regretting.

 

[spongiemaster]

My guess would be A) Q4 is Oct-Dec, and I noticed the 'dry up' starting in December. Which means at least 2 months of 'normalcy'. That also includes holiday shopping, which may have an impact. B) People smarter than me started scooping up 40-series in droves when news broke that Nvidia shut off production. Prices quickly started to climb thereafter.

This is all anecdotal, mind you, but I stand by it, because I have been in the market for a new card since November and I was watching things closely. Unfortunately I decided to wait for 50 series and that's a decision I'm still regretting.

That doesn't answer the question of what AMD was doing over that same period and why they aren't receiving the same criticism. We know Nvidia had to end production before starting production of the 50 series. I edited my previous post why this was different than the usual transition which you may not have seen before your response.

 

[systemBuilder_49]

The current Nvidia prices are so high that only stupid people can afford them. This is probably not how NVidia wants to be bragging, but its true ....

 

[valthuer]

The current Nvidia prices are so high that only stupid people can afford them.

Guilty as charged! 🤣

 

[Jabberwocky79]

That doesn't answer the question of what AMD was doing over that same period and why they aren't receiving the same criticism. We know Nvidia had to end production before starting production of the 50 series. I edited my previous post why this was different than the usual transition which you may not have seen before your response.

Dunno what AMD was doing. I wasn't shopping for an AMD at the time. I think they have dodged some criticism because, well, Nvidia is doing a great job of earning all the criticism they can get. And in hindsight, AMD may have saved a lot of face by delaying their launch while building up better stock. Was it a smokescreen? Probably. But perception is reality... and the general perception is that 'AMD cares about gamers because they shipped out more than 5 GPUs on launch day.'

The current Nvidia prices are so high that only stupid people can afford them. This is probably not how NVidia wants to be bragging, but its true ....

Seems like you're on to something. I can afford Nvidia and I'm also stupid. You should look more into this and see if it's actually correlation or causation. 🙄 😏

 

[RodroX]

Is anyone counting the black market in all of this (favorite market for Jensen Huang)?

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

This very site posted an article after the 4080 launch about 4090's outselling 4080's 3.4:1 on ebay. Nobody wanted a 4080 at launch, so I doubt it would have significantly effected the early sales volume.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/bad-news-for-scalpers-rtx-4080-ebay-sales-data

If you look at tracking sites like nowinstock, it appears that every 50 series model but the 5090 are seeing multiple models going on sale every day at the major retailers so there is a steady stream of cards restocking constantly. What we don't know is how many cards are being shipped for those restocks. At this point, it's practically impossible to buy a card since script bots can ping sites 24/7 while actual customers would have to get insanely lucky and look at a specific model product page within a few minutes of it showing in stock.

But eBay sales are scalpers, basically. So if there was more stock of 4080 at launch, and it was a less impressive gen-on-gen upgrade compared to the 4090, there would be less space for scalpers to come in. Here, we're not talking scalper sales, we're talking retail sales.

Incidentally, RTX 5090 on eBay since launch vs 5080 on eBay since launch:

RTX 5090: 276 sales with an average price of $4570.66 (that's eliminating all sub-$1900 sales as I don't believe they're "real" — there were 10 of those)

RTX 5080: 670 sales with an average price of $1,865.95 (eliminating all sub-$950 sales for the same reason)

It's a given that more people would pay more for the halo 5090, so having it sell at over twice the MSRP isn't too surprising given a limited supply. The 5080 is still selling at far above MSRP as well, and there are clearly more available, but the margins aren't quite as compelling from a scalping standpoint.

RTX 5070 Ti: 182 sales with an average price of $1,208.03 since Feb 20. That suggests supply and/or scalping aren't as compelling here as well, which makes sense. The 5070 Ti isn't even faster than a 4080, unless you count MFG (which I don't).

 

[Jabberwocky79]

Speaking of scalping, I added a 9070 XT to my wishlist on Amazon. At the time it was OOS. But today they offered a total of 4 cards, priced at $1500.00. After 2 hours there are now only 2 left. I'm just shocked that I'm seeing a 9070 XT going for more than double the starting amount. Wow.

 

[logainofhades]

Nvidia really loves to mislead people. GTX 970 with it's v-ram allocation, GTX 1060 6gb vs 3gb being different dies. The 1030 dd5 vs ddr4. GT 730 refreshes made up of who knows what die. The 4080 12gb that became a 4070ti, because they got called out on it. The 5070 being as fast as a 4090, and so on. I know there's other examples that I just cannot remember right now. I know all companies are guilty of such things, but Nvidia has quite the stellar track record in this regard.

 

[Eximo]

RTX 3060 8GB.

3050 6GB/3050 8GB (though I don't mind that one as much since the time gap was significant) There is also an OEM only 3050 8GB with less cores.

1060 5GB is also a thing.

The perceived value in not making sub 50 cards seems to really have stuck with them. Though it is interesting to see the 5050 and 5050 Ti make an appearance, seemingly near the start of a generation. Though if you treat 40 and 50 series as a refresh of the same generation, then the timing is about right to replace the 3050.