Over the years, graphics cards have become increasingly powerful, but it has also become increasingly difficult to purchase one. To address this issue, NVIDIA has introduced a new program called Verified Priority Access for its recently released GeForce RTX 50 series of GPUs. This program offers a limited number of people the opportunity to buy a GeForce RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 Founders Edition graphics card directly from the company.

This opportunity is only available to US customers who have an NVIDIA account that was created on or before January 30 at 9AM ET/6AM PT. Interested individuals can sign up on a form, and invitations will be sent out starting next week.

NVIDIA has taken a similar approach to dealing with shortages of its 4090 card in the past, although that was an invite-only pilot. This system aims to keep more products away from scalpers and crypto operations, instead favoring legitimate customers. However, given the long history of GPU access issues, it would be beneficial to see more comprehensive responses from manufacturers to address this problem.