A $ 329 Nvidia RTX 3060 was impossible to find, but you could give the Newegg draw a chance.

Nvidia supposedly launched a $ 329 video card today, the GeForce RTX 3060, but I haven’t seen much evidence yet.

Orders started today at 9am PT / 12pm ET for a card whose listed prices ranged from $ 329.99 to $ 629.99, averaging $ 471. These are not money changer prices, mind you. They are the retail prices set by Nvidia’s partners.

As far as I can tell, the only places that actually claimed to stock a card for $ 329.99 were Newegg and the EVGA website itself, and neither of them simply put the card up for sale: Newegg is just raffling off chances to buy the cards, and EVGA has a queue where you click on a “notify me” button. In both cases, you expect the company to send you an email back with good news.

Screenshot of The Verge

The draw and the queue are good things, in my opinion! It means that maybe you have a chance to actually get one. You have until 12pm PT / 3PM ET today to join the Newegg Shuffle, which also has a PS5 package, and you will know at 2pm PT / 5PM ET if you are lucky. But it also means that we will have little evidence that $ 329 is the real price for this GPU.

There is also a question as to whether Nvidia initially managed to deliver many 3060s. Queues and sweepstakes aside, today it seemed to have the fewest GPU availability so far, with some accusing Nvidia of a “paper launch” much like AMD’s RX 6800 series in November. PCGamer gave up on posting the launch live after an hour of failure. Best Buy barely had them. At some other retailers, they never showed up. I saw lists of some versions taken directly from the web. The Micro Center had only kept them.

One positive point (at least for US players): Best Buy ended up restocking a variety of other Nvidia GPUs today, with 3060 Ti, 3070 and even the hardest to find 3080 popping up every now and then.

In fact, it may have shown how difficult it is to launch the RTX 3060: I was sitting on Falcodrin’s Twitch channel, a popular hangout where people try to track the cards and share their success, and Falcodrin did a survey where just two people admitted to having captured a 3060:

It is also worth noting that at least two of the four graphics cards allegedly costing $ 329.99 look like token offers to reach that price. EVGA has a second almost identical version of the 3060 with a slightly higher boost clock that sells for $ 390.

And while Newegg may be listing Zotac’s 3060 Twin Edge for $ 329.99, Zotac itself lists it and sold the same card this morning for $ 479.99. (I saw the add to cart button in an update, but the Zotac website broke down and ran 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 coming, as the 3060 Ti is much better. At $ 400 or more, this will double. But you may not have a choice to start. We are asking Nvidia if she has any more ideas and will tell you what we hear. EVGA would only confirm that it is shipping a $ 329.99 GPU and that “we have more supplies on the way.”