Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Those 2,560 CUDA cores in the RTX 3050 are split between 20 SMs which also then delivers 20 RT cores and 80 Tensor cores. It's those last two specs that separate the RTX 3050 from its GTX 1660 Ti brethren and ought to make it a far more tempting choice for the mainstream gamer. The RT cores are what allow for ray tracing and the Tensor Cores then allow you to enable DLSS to make ray tracing actually playable at a decent frame rate, all thanks to the magic of AI-powered super sampling.
Time for the all important cost per frame analysis. We're going to start with the MSRP using the 1080p data, but we'll include 1440p results and other data points (and assumptions) for a more realistic pricing comparison in just a moment. An advantage of this however is a 24% drop in power use to just 130 watts, meaning a basic 550-watt power supply will be more than sufficient to power an RTX 3050 gaming system.That said, it would also be much worse value than the GTX 1650 Super and slightly worse than the RX 5600 XT, but that's to be expected given the current market, so we can accept a little bit of stagnation, even if we don't like it. The same was true of the RX 6500 XT, with FidelityFX Super Resolution, too. But its severely restricted frame buffer means game performance is still pretty weak even with FSR enabled. It's also not as effective a solution as Nvidia's hardware-based DLSS tech. In Doom Eternal, the RTX 3050 does extremely well matching the RTX 2060 with 178 fps on average. That meant it was 82% faster than the 6500 XT and 287% faster than the PCIe 3.0 configuration. That's all we need to say about that. Whether that happens remains to be seen. AMD has cut the RX 6500 XT GPU to shreds, so it's less than half the size of the GA106 GPU in the RTX 3050, which means it can theoretically manufacture far more in the same amount of time because it gets more chips out of the same size silicon wafer. Maybe that's why there are more Radeon cards available a week on from launch, maybe AMD's gamble has paid off.
And here's a look at the 12 game average data, which has been calculated using the geomean. The RTX 3050 averaged 108fps at 1080p, which made it just 5% slower than the GTX 1660 Super, 10% slower than the RTX 2060, and 23% slower than the Radeon RX 6600. It was also 24% faster than the 6500 XT and dropping the Radeon graphics card down to PCIe 3.0 only extended the margin to 27%, so you could argue that this is a good result for the Radeon. The RTX 3050 was 52% faster than the 6500 XT at 1080p using the second highest quality preset with 141 fps on average. PCIe 3.0 completely crippled the 6500 XT and now the RTX 3050 is seen to be 114% faster, and I should note I got the exact same result using PCIe 3.0 with the RTX 3050. As we often saw, the 1440p data is even more brutal for the 6500 XT. Here the RTX 3050 was 54% faster, or 85% faster when comparing PCIe 3.0 performance. The RTX 3050 also averaged 74 fps, meaning it was more often than not good for over 60 fps at 1440p using respectable quality settings in many titles. Ray Tracing Performance Though that is a little unfair because the Ampere architecture at the heart of the RTX 3050 is fundamentally better than that of the Turing GPU at the heart of the GTX 1660 Ti. Again, the same can be said of the RDNA 2 tech beating beneath the RX 6500 XT's oversized coolers, when compared to the Graphics Core Next (GCN) of the RX 480.
Even at 1440p the 6500 XT hangs in there averaging 64 fps against the RTX 3050's 79 fps, which made the GeForce GPU 23% faster and given the price difference, even at MSPR, that's a decent result for AMD. Yes, DLSS taps into the RTX 3050s Tensor Cores AI co-processors found exclusively on RTX 30 Series graphics cards to intelligently reconstruct supported games from a lower input resolution to a higher output resolution, 720p to 1080p for example, with fantastic results. DLSS produces images that are comparable to or sometimes even better than native resolution rendering. DLSS is a game-changer for performance and image quality, and lets the RTX 3050 punch ways above its weight. What PSU do I need for the RTX 3050?
Moving to 1440p increases the margin in favor of the 3050, which is now 66% faster than the 6500 XT when using PCI 4.0 and 128% faster than the PCIe 3.0 configuration. We're also looking at slightly better performance than the GTX 1660 Super. So, while the benchmarks highlight where the RTX 3050 is more or less akin to the GTX 1660 Ti in terms of its straight gaming performance, there is the promise of DLSS working those Tensor Cores to actually make the card a pretty capable 1440p gaming GPU where the technology is enabled. I am a huge fan of DLSS, however, and it does mean that the RTX 3050 isn't just a good 1080p gaming GPU, it's actually capable of running happily on a 1440p display too. Though DLSS isn't in every game and Nvidia's new game-agnostic Nvidia Image Scaling (roughly analogous to FSR) is available to its older GPUs, too.If you are after one of the best budget graphics cards, you are looking in the right place. Even as the cheapest graphics card in the RTX 30 Series, the GeForce RTX 3050 offers up NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) for AI-enhanced image reconstruction in games, real-time raytracing and more. When compared to the 6500 XT, we're looking at a 37% performance boost, or a massive 74% increase when compared to the PCIe 3.0 result. It's worth keeping in mind that at this price point, the RX 6600 is technically better value as it costs just 24% more, but offers 26% more performance. Granted, they are about the same in terms of value, but when spending this much, the RX 6600 does become a viable alternative. What Does It Need to Cost?
Great Deal 
New Comment