Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3050 might still be a few days away from launch, but that hasn't stopped online retailers from putting the ray tracing focused "budget" GPU on the presell market already. According to XanxoGaming (via VideoCardz), a Peruvian retailer already has RTX 3050 listings available with incredibly high prices -- well above the cards' MSRP of $250. There's also an RTX 3050 listing on Newegg that shares the same story.
The Peruvian retailer in question is preselling a Palit RTX 3050 Dual OC for a whopping $453. For $53 more, the retailer is also preselling a bundle with the same RTX 3050 model, paired with Geil Orion DDR4-3200 memory for a total of $506. Despite the deal, the bundle won't make the RTX 3050's highly scalped price any sweeter.
Even worse is Newegg's listing showcasing an MSI RTX 3050 Gaming X selling for an absurd $699.98. In fairness to Newegg, this is a marketplace listing from an aftermarket seller, meaning Newegg hasn't assigned the pricing.
Nonetheless, the price is absurd and nearly three times the card's original MSRP value. For $699, you can find more capable cards such as the RTX 3060 for similar prices on sites such as eBay.com.
If these prices mean anything, they are a good indication of future scalper pricing for the RTX 3050. We've already seen AMD's new entry-level Radeon RX 6500 XT going for $500 on eBay, so we wouldn't be surprised to see RTX 3050's going for even more money thanks to the GPUs' beefier specifications.
Speaking of that, Nvidia's RTX 3050 will pack 2,560 CUDA cores paired to 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit memory bus. In preliminary advertising, Nvidia states the RTX 3050 will be nearly twice as fast as its predecessor, the GTX 1650, which, if true, would make the RTX 3050 a sweet upgrade to Nvidia's entry-level lineup. Not to mention the fact it has RT cores and Tensor cores as the cherry on top.
Early benchmarks revealed that the RTX 3050 is a much faster card than the RX 6500 XT, but in turn, this will also increase its value on the "scalper market." So if Nvidia can't keep up supply, you can say goodbye to a sweet $250 performance bargain.