Throughout 2020, graphics cards were a hot ticket item, unable to stay on store shelves with demand through the roof. Scalpers have been walking away with huge profits on Nvidia's RTX 3060, 3080, and 3090 cards, while regular consumers are being forced to pay the secondary market prices or go without. It makes upgrading a PC a challenge when the components are unavailable, so a workaround might be to find a PC that comes with a new Nvidia card already inside.

With reports indicating that both Nvidia and AMD cards will likely remain in short supply through 2021 and into 2022, there doesn't seem to be much relief for gamers looking to upgrade their system. People in the laptop market might have a way to get their hands on a new graphics card, however, as ASUS is offering a new card that has yet to be announced by Nvidia in its TUF Dash F15 laptop.

RELATED: Nvidia GPU Shortage Not Due to Crypto Mining, Says CFO

The graphics card, the RTX 3050 Ti, appears as an option on the TUF Dash F15 gaming laptop and offers 4GB GDDR6 memory, which is less powerful than the other 3000 series cards, but is still likely to be an upgrade over most older cards. There's been no official word from Nvidia and no stat sheet exists, so there is only speculation as to what the full performance numbers will be for the card. As the card is part of the 3000 series, it should be able to support Nvidia's DLSS tools that enhance select games by offering greater frame rates and resolution through "deep learning" real-time adjustments.

Scalping has made the whole process of purchasing the latest and greatest an utter pain for most consumers. Unless people are tuned to specific Twitter feeds or have notifications set up, most people are missing out. PS5 consoles get restocked at Walmart, and by the time an article can be written about them, they have already been snapped up. If it was just customers who needed or wanted these items picking them up, that's one thing, but to see listings immediately pop up on eBay is disheartening.

Some have even resorted to creating fake listings for RTX 3080 cards in an attempt to catch would-be scalpers and their bots, but have found they are catching more human targets. The high demand for gaming tech has reached a fever pitch of late, but with more new cards, like this RTX 3050 Ti, being produced, hopefully, folks can get a graphics card that will work for them.

MORE: Resident Evil Village Supports AMD Ray-Tracing on PC