NVIDIA RTX 4090 Scalped Out of Stock, Company Tests "Verified Priority Access" Buying Program

It’s barely been a day, and the $1600-2000 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 "Ada" graphics card is already out of stock in leading US retailers such as Newegg. Either the inventory was barely large enough to last a day; or the scourge of scalping is back to haunt graphics card buyers. NVIDIA is testing a new way of retail for its GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics cards, which it calls "Verified Priority Access." From the looks of it, this is copied from EVGA ELITE Priority Access program; where you reserve a graphics card purchase regardless of it being in stock, and when the reseller is ready with some stock, you’re given a position in a queue, with a limited time window in which to complete your purchase and place the order.

NVIDIA Verified Priority Access (VPA) program is only available in a handful markets, and through participating retailers. These include Best Buy (United States), Scan (United Kingdom), NBB (Germany & Netherlands), and LDLC (France, Italy, and Spain). One big catch with VPA is that you should already be owning a GeForce GTX 10-series, GTX 16-series, RTX 20-series or RTX 30-series graphics card; and be signed in with GeForce Experience. When your position in the purchase queue advances or opens up for you to make the purchase, you will be notified through a pop-up in GeForce Experience, from where you’ll be taken to a page by the participating online retailer to buy your card.