Best Buy has listed the Founders Edition version of the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti for an MSRP of $1,200. That's cheaper than third-party cards and much cheaper than cards from smaller retailers profiting from the GPU mining nightmare.

Also, I don't want to go near the prices they sell for on Ebay.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti's $1,200 price tag may seem super high at first glance, when the GeForce RTX 3080 can make a real statement in the frame rate competition for considerably less money, and the RTX 3080 Ti's extreme sticker price, Even if it can practically rival a novelty-sized GeForce RTX 3090 in gaming, it seems painfully expensive. [In the normal GPU world, it would be gleefully spoken of as a Titan-like card.

But even if the full retail version is released tomorrow, June 3, if you want a new graphics card, you'll want to get in line for the MSRP Founders Edition version. Of course, third-party GPUs like Zotac and Asus will also be available at MSRP and may have slightly better cooling, but they will still probably have the same chip chiller as their RTX 3080 predecessors.

And don't you think a shinier FE shroud would look nicer, Jacob?

Okay, but what's the "bang for the buck"?

Despite the recent downturn in the fortunes of the devil's cryptocurrency, the GPU market remains a nightmarishly barren wasteland, inhabited only by mercenary groups struggling to make a buck off of desperate PC gamers and greedy crypto-mining freaks.

Scarcity and unprecedented demand mean that retail western frontier prices are skyrocketing, which makes the RTX 3080 Ti's MSRP frankly depressing.

On Amazon, you can get an AMD RX 6700 XT for $1,200. This is a decent card in its own right, but it's a GPU that doesn't hold a candle to this ultra-enthusiast GeForce silicon; a GeForce RTX 3060 card sells for nearly $1,200. And the AMD RX 6800 XT sells for $2,000 for an overclocked RTX 3080 Ti card.

Even the RX 580 retails for over $700 today. After all, the RX 580 was one of the darlings of the crypto crowd.

Comparative prices in the real world are an indicator of how disintegrated the graphics card market is today, a sign of dire times.