Once again, it is genuinely cheaper for me to fly to PAX West and track down Nvidia’s ‘GeForce Evangelist’ rather than buy the RTX 5090 anywhere else

Hello, and welcome to another episode of ‘I’d do anything for an Nvidia RTX 5090 at MSRP, but I won’t do that.’ This time, ‘that’ is hopping on an international flight from the UK to Seattle, Washington in the US, so I can buy a 50-series card at PAX West.

Nvidia’s self-described GeForce Evangelist Jacob Freeman wrote on X, “Hello PAX West! VPA IRL is here! Come find me if your looking for a GeForce RTX 5090, 5080 or 5070 AT MSRP! While they last.”

Unlike QuakeCon earlier this year, there didn’t appear to be a Nvidia booth or any boxed Founder’s Editions purchasable at the event itself. Instead, Freeman explained that he was giving out cards with “a code that you use to purchase from the Nvidia web store.” For context, ‘VPA’ stands for Verified Priority Access, which in the past has been used as a draw system that only granted gamers the chance to buy a full-price GPU.

Now, it’s a little late for me to hop on a plane as PAX West ran from September 4 until September 7. But if I’d gotten my act together, hopping on a short-notice flight to the West coast for approximately £1,000 (about $1,352), plus grabbing the most expensive PAX day-pass for $89, then picking up the RTX 5090 for $1,999 MSRP would have totalled $3,440—and that’s still significantly cheaper than the $5,500 price tag we’ve most recently seen at Best Buy as part of our graphics card price watch.

That is a ridiculous state of affairs, but given that Freeman was out of 5090 and 5080 cards by the end of day three, clearly the maths is maths-ing for some. I barely remember the last time Nvidia mentioned gaming at all in an earnings call, but this runaway pricing doesn’t appear to be hurting the company.

For a start, Nvidia’s AI profits completely overshadow what it makes from gaming. In fact, the company is dining so well on AI’s demand for hardware like Vera Rubin, that it recently announced its intention to acquire Hugging Face for $13 billion. Purchasing this development platform will likely further shore up the company’s prime position within the AI industry.

It’s old news, but Nvidia hasn’t been a gaming company primarily for some time now. As such, it can kind of do what it likes with its gaming business (Notwithstanding the memory supply crisis). As such, I suspect we’re far from seeing the last of ‘VPA IRL’ stunts like those at QuakeCon and now PAX West. Meat Loaf, anyone?