Nvidia RTX 3060 spotted before launch from over-hasty retailers

The Nvidia RTX 3060 is due for official release later this month with the 12GB GDDR6 GPU marked in the diary to hit store shelves on February 25. Now, news has landed that several of them have already appeared in the wild in some as yet unspecified retailers.

The card is being dubbed as a mid-range GPU that will bring the twinkle of Nvidia gaming at a more palatable price point. It’s tipped as the best ‘cheaper’ graphics card for a more budget gaming rig with Nvidia confirming that the GPU will launch at $329 (roughly £255 / AU$460), making it less costly than its siblings in the RTX 3000 series.

Short supplies are amplifying mark-ups across retailers; therefore, it's only right that we help you keep abreast of updates with our stock trackers. Use the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti tracker for the Ti model, or chance your hand at getting hold of the notoriously scarce, exorbitantly priced Nvidia RTX 3080. These near-impossible feats become a bit more likely with our tracking tools, lending you a fighting chance; that said, you still must be on the ball, as experience shows that sightings are ludicrously fleeting.

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This brings us nicely to these perplexing appearances of Nvidia’s RTX 3060. It’s the first GPU from the brand to abandon a Founders Edition; but now, Reddit user, He_never_sleeps, has supposedly been able to find an Nvidia RTX 3060 Eagle OC in a store – and actually buy it. All of this before the touted February 25 release date (via Rock Paper Shotgun).

It’s spurred a slew of flummoxed responses from Reddit users trying to work out what exactly is going on; and, like any Redditor worth their salt, another user, Danger656, has popped up adding that they, too, have been able to nab one for $750. There isn’t any confirmation of where these reportedly have been purchased.

Despite these premature purchases, the user cannot mount the card and get it working in his Windows OS, maybe because of the lack of drivers pre-release. It does, of course, beg the question of what retailers are selling these, less what Nvidia would think with the ongoing stock sensitivity because of scalpers.

Despite attempts to foil scalper bots, the lamentable rise of bot-automated purchases has been a recurrent news story over the past year, not least because it has obliterated GPU stock levels globally, but it’s seeped into the console arena, too. You can always check our pick of the best graphics card to fill the current void left by stock shortages; or, head over to our pick of the best gaming laptops for pre-made gaming goodness.

The PS5 and Xbox Series X shortages are the crux of this current craze, as scalpers open forums where users can break bread together, and pay a subscription fee for the bot, which has heavily impaired stock supplies and even forced Sony into selling the PS5 at a loss.

For now, the Nvidia RTX 3060 should bridge the gap between price and performance. This all depends, of course, on the ability to actually rig out your machine with one. As we head deeper into 2021, we hope that cheaper GPUs stem the tide of bots and impair the gargantuan profit margins they seem to be making.

Source: PCGamesN