I was keeping an eye on the launches in Europe and Asia, which are where I'm from and where I live, respectively. It was kinda wild. Launch days aren't for the sane. I know, I know.
The actual release and sales (such as they were) of the 5090 and 5080 happened at the same exact moment globally, as far as I can tell, at 15:00 CET and 22:00 HKT (already the 31st in Australia
).
In the hours before, it was pretty much the same everywhere: Nvidia's websites for Germany/France/Netherlands/Japan/Taiwan/Singapore just showed some placeholder Blackwell pages and under the 'Shop' sections they'd still list Ada stuff only. Also, the sites were erroring out constantly. It looked like they were suffering from significant load.
Then came reveal time, and updated sites, and eventually, some 'Buying Options' showed up (examples):
5080 from €1,190.00 ($1,240.26)
5090 from €2,369.00 ($2,468.91)
5080 from S$1,660.00 ($1,229.74)
5090 from S$3,320.00 ($2,459.55)
Not that far off from MSRP + VAT, I guess, but it turned out that the international Nvidia website shops didn't really have any ready-to-order Founders Editions.
Instead, these shops settle for links to retailers, some of which actually offer individual cards. Others sell prebuilt systems only.
Because hey why not sell some other components at the same time?
I'm not sure which genius came up with the idea to do the release on the day after Chinese New Year. It's not a great call. A lot of shops in Asia are not responding or updating their stuff on this day.
Some of those that were though could be seen jacking up prices in realtime as the level of demand became clear. Initially, the cheapest 5090 I saw (for preorder!) was about $3,630.60. 15 mins later it had gone up to $3,926.89, and 30 mins later the listing was gone. Meanwhile, most 5080s ended up not all that far off from the $2000 asking price that was supposed to get a 5090. Nuts.
Watching people go mental on forums and chats was entertaining in its own right. I reckon that the actual ratio of 5090 to 5080 cards out there must've been something on the order of 1 to 20 or worse. Finding 5090s actually in stock was
super rare. Some shops reported having received one or two samples only. As for Founders Editions - outside of the US you can forget about those altogether. At least anytime close to launch day. Which is a pity, as I kinda lust after that design.
Anyway, as much as some people like to go on and on about the sad state videocard prices, and youtubers declare that the cards they hated yesterday are now sooo much better value than the latest batch, there sure seems to be a lot of pent up demand, and excitement.
So.. did I buy anything? I actually don't really know. I'll have to see how that goes.