In a recent post on the GeForce forums, an Nvidia community manager announced that the company is testing a new program called “verified priority access.” The program will give some potential shoppers the opportunity to reserve a GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics card without the kerfuffle that can sometimes be required to get their hands on a new GPU.
The program, as VideoCardz correctly pointed out, is a similar idea to EVGA’s Elite Priority Access system, which gave the company’s “Elite” members 24 hours of exclusive early access to its new products. Elite status didn’t cost money — users who were active in the company’s forums and Twitch streams or who had purchased and registered EVGA products recently were eligible. (EVGA, as of September, is no longer in the graphics card business.)
Those who are invited to join the program will receive a notification within the GeForce Experience app with a unique URL to make their purchase. It’s not yet clear how Nvidia will determine who will receive this notification. Testing “currently” includes Best Buy in the US, Scan in the UK, NBB in Germany and Netherlands, and LDLC in France, Italy, and Spain, according to the post.
The program is likely an effort to mitigate one-day availability issues. Flagship Nvidia cards often sell out immediately after launch and are difficult to find in the months to come. This system, if successful, will hopefully ensure that at least some Founders Edition models fall into the hands of gamers, rather than scalpers, directly after launch.
In his recent review of the RTX 4090 Founders Edition, Verge editor Tom Warren called the card “a beast.” The device is priced at $1,599 and uses 450 watts of power. Warren, testing the card, found a massive increase in performance over the RTX 3090 at high resolutions, writing that “the high frames I’ve been getting used to at 1440p are now available in 4K.”