A $ 329 Nvidia RTX 3060 was impossible to find, but you could give Newegg’s lottery a try

Nvidia supposedly launched a $ 329 graphics card today called the GeForce RTX 3060, but I have yet to see a lot of evidence.

Orders started today at 9AM PT / 12PM ET for a card whose listed prices ranged from $ 329.99 to $ 629.99, averaging $ 471. Those aren’t scalping prices, mind you. These are the sales prices set by Nvidia’s partners.

As far as I know, the only places that actually claimed to stock a card for $ 329.99 were Newegg and EVGA’s own website, nor were they simply putting the card up for sale: Newegg is only raffling off opportunities to buy the buy tickets, and EVGA has a queue where you hit a “report me” button. In either case, wait for the company to hopefully send you an email with good news.

Screenshot by The Verge

The lottery and queue are good things in my opinion! It means you may have a chance to actually get one. You have until noon PT / 3:00 PM ET today to join the Newegg Shuffle, which also includes a PS5 bundle, and you’ll know at 2:00 PM PT / 5:00 PM ET if you’re lucky. But it also means we have little proof that $ 329 is the actual price of this GPU.

There is also a question of whether Nvidia initially managed to ship many 3060s. Queues and lotteries aside, today it seemed to have one of the scarcest GPU availability to date, with some accusing Nvidia of a “paper launch”, much like AMD’s RX 6800 series in November. PCGamer gave up live blogging from the launch after an hour of failure. She barely had Best Buy. They never showed up at some other retailers. I saw offers for some versions taken directly from the Internet. Micro Center only had them in stock.

One bright spot (for American gamers, anyway): Best Buy has some Others Nvidia GPUs today, with the 3060 Ti, 3070 and even the hardest to find 3080 popping up from time to time.

In fact, it may have shown how difficult the RTX 3060 launch is: I was on Falcodrin’s Twitch channel, a popular hangout where people try to track down the cards and share their success, and Falcodrin held a poll in which only two people admitted to taking a 3060 at all:

It’s also worth noting that at least two of the four supposedly $ 329.99 graphics cards look suspiciously like token offerings to match that price. EVGA has a second nearly identical version of the 3060 with a slightly higher boost clock that retails for $ 390.

And while Newegg may be offering Zotac’s 3060 Twin Edge for $ 329.99, Zotac does mention it himself and briefly sold the exact same card for $ 479.99 this morning. (I saw the add to cart button on one refresh, but Zotac’s website broke and it was out of stock as soon as I got back.)

The RTX 3060 is a good card, but even at $ 330, I think you might want to wait and see what’s next as the 3060 Ti is so much better. At $ 400 and above, that doubles. But perhaps you didn’t have a choice to begin with. We’ll ask Nvidia if it has any more thoughts, and we’ll let you know what we hear. EVGA would just confirm that it will deliver a $ 329.99 GPU, and that “we have more inventory.”