Nvidia is dangling rare MSRP Blackwell cards at QuakeCon while board partners are reportedly preparing another price gouge.
According to TechRadar, gamers who fancy an RTX 5070, 5080 or 5090 Founders Edition at the official price must leg it to QuakeCon in Texas. The catch is that the show starts today, and punters need to reach the GeForce booth before supplies vanish.
Given the state of the graphics card market, those cards could disappear in minutes.
Nvidia calls the stunt ‘Verified Priority Access’ in real life, which sounds like marketing guff but at least points to actual stock. It gives gamers a shot at buying an RTX 5080 or RTX 5090 at the intended price, which normal retail channels have made look mythical.
The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell-on-earth yarn that MSI Nvidia GPUs are apparently heading for price hikes of 20 per cent or more.
The blame is being dumped on rising memory prices, with Nvidia paying more for video RAM modules and passing the pain to partners.
The reported increases work out at about $300 for the RTX 5080 in China, roughly $200 for the RTX 5070 Ti and about $100 for RTX 5060 models.
The nastier bit is that current GeForce cards are not the only targets, as RTX 4000 and RTX 3000 models could be dragged in while GDDR6 and GDDR7 costs rise.
