That sounds like a resounding success—until you look at the details and realise it’s just a masterclass in statistical gymnastics. 

As PC Gamer points out, this supposed "milestone" conveniently ignores that Nvidia launched four different RTX 50-series cards within those five weeks, compared to just two RTX 40-series cards in the same time frame.

The RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 kicked things off on 30 January, followed by the more affordable and higher-volume RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 on 20 February and 5 March, respectively. Each card flew off the shelves, mainly because Nvidia ensures supply is scarce enough to keep hype levels high. 

In 2022, the RTX 40-series rollout was a different story. The RTX 4090 hit shelves on 12 October with its $1,600 price tag, followed by the RTX 4080 five weeks later. That means the only card available for most of the comparison period was the eye-wateringly expensive RTX 4090. So yeah, selling twice as many GPUs this time isn’t a triumph—it just means that Nvidia released more cards at lower prices instead of drip-feeding them over months. 

If we strip away the marketing fluff, the real takeaway is that Nvidia sold twice as many RTX 50-series cards as the RTX 4090. Which isn’t the great news Nvidia wants it to be. 

The real question isn’t how many cards Nvidia sold—it’s how many gamers actually got one at a reasonable price before scalpers and AI farms snapped them all up. But that’s a stat we’ll never see in an Nvidia PowerPoint.