Scalpers have a stranglehold on online orders, and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs were only the latest victims of money-grubbing resellers. Nvidia’s high-end graphics cards had such limited supply and enormous demand that leeches started selling some cards for three or four times the price of the $2,000 5090. One OEM has a novel solution to the scalper problem. Rather than dropping more stock on digital storefronts, it’s selling its cards through a direct-to-consumer raffle.
Those who join the U.S. Discord for Zotac and show that they are human by posting and engaging can enter the company’s raffle to buy the RTX 5080 or 5090 at MSRP. Videocardz first caught onto the scheme, which—despite its casino nature—seems much fairer to buyers than trawling through eBay looking for a second-hand GPU.
Starting Feb. 7, the company has offered “giveaways” (though we should note it’s not a “giveaway” if you still have to buy it) for RTX 5080 and 5090 cards at regular intervals. Participants have around two hours to put their names in the hat. These drops occur on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT or 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. ET. One of Zotac’s community moderators clarified on Discord that “It is completely RNG-based. This is an opportunity to win to PURCHASE the card; this is NOT for a free graphics card.”
In its announcement post, Zotac explained that participants must be server members and “actively engage in challenges, discussions, and community activities. Spam low-effort messages will not count.” There’s only one card “per household.” Even better, Zotac said it keeps track of serial numbers if somebody tries to resell the card immediately for a premium.
Anybody who wins the raffle won’t know how much the card will cost until Zotac reaches out to them. The OEM has promoted its three-fan config $2,200 GeForce RTX 5090 SOLID, SOLID OC, and 5090 AMP Extreme INFINITY on its site. Those cards are currently out of stock from popular websites like Newegg. Zotac is a smaller OEM than competitors like Gigabyte or Asus, and it only receives half a dozen or fewer cards for sale at a time.
The situation is so ridiculous that some consumers prefer an RTX 50-series raffle to the current stock situation. Before launch, Nvidia told buyers there wouldn’t be enough GPUs to meet demand. Nvidia previously told Gizmodo it’s still expecting to launch the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti sometime this month, though the company has yet to provide a more specific release date. As noted by VideoCardz, French retailer topAchat listed RTX 5070 availability as Feb. 20. Either way, we may not have to wait long to learn if the mid-range Nvidia GPUs will have as limited stock as the $1,000+ graphics cards.
