While graphics cards have been getting almost ludicrously expensive and powerful over the years, it’s also been increasingly difficult to actually get your hands on one. In an effort to address this problem, NVIDIA has introduced a plan it’s calling Verified Priority Access for its recently released GeForce RTX 50 series of GPUs. Verified Priority Access offers an unspecified number of people the chance to buy either a GeForce RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 Founders Edition graphics card directly from the company.
This “opportunity” will only be available to US customers with an NVIDIA account that was created on or before January 30 at 9 AM ET/6 AM PT. Interested parties can sign up on a form and invites will be sent starting next week.
NVIDIA took a similar approach to dealing with shortages of its previous models, although that was an invite-only pilot. This system could help keep more of the products away from scalpers or crypto operations in favor of legitimate customers. But considering how long GPU access has been a challenge, it would be nice to see more robust responses coming from the manufacturers.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at Engadget.
