GeForce RTX 3060 Ti sale fail - and how to fix it

By Chris Burns/

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This morning it became clear that the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti launch wasn't going to be simple. As sources like NewEgg noted, inventory did not match traffic. Not by a long shot. As of two hours ago, NewEgg suggested they had RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards available for sale. In well under an hour, they made a statement.

At 8AM, NewEgg revealed that they had GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards in stock. Within the hour, the site was entirely sold out of the card, in every single configuration available. That includes more than one version each made by ASUS, EVGA, ZOTAC, GIGABYTE, and MSI – with the greatest of ease.

An update at 9:07 AM from NewEgg suggested that the traffic on their site at launch "was in the 6 figures" and that their "inventory was nowhere near that amount." They went on to congratulate the people who actually purchased the card to use for themselves, called out the bots, and said they'd try to do better in the future.

The Best Buy listing for the Founders Edition of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics card still appears to be "coming soon" as of 10:30 AM Central Time. No word yet from the folks at the online Micro Center store. You might want to check with your local outlet to make sure – but chances are slim they'll have stock.

The issue here is several layers deep. We can blame the manufacturers of the graphics cards for not making supply enough to meet demand. We can call out the stores that sell the cards online for not doing enough to stop bots from buying cards. We can blame NVIDIA for making graphics cards that are... I don't know... too enticing for their own good?

SEE TOO: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Review – Price pinch

The only very effective thing we can do as consumers in a situation like this is avoid scalpers. It does not make sense to pay extraordinary amounts of cash on eBay for a graphics card that's made to perform at a level equivalent to its initial cost.

Sure, NVIDIA added value to the latest set of RTX cards with features that do not appear on cards released in the past. But given the prices these cards are sold for on eBay, the value doesn't add up. You can buy older cards with equivalent processing power for lower prices than what's being fetched on eBay for new cards today. Do NOT participate in this nonsense.

If you're able to buy a card at retail, the RTX30 series is good for the money. If your only choice is to buy 3rd and 4th-hand flips and scalps, the price-to-value doesn't add up. If no scalper is able to sell their product for any sort of significant profit, no scalper will buy the product in the first place. If only it were that easy.

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