Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 review: A in truth neatly-liked GPU for the masses (expectantly)

A three hundred and sixty five days and a half of into the most neatly-liked technology of graphics playing cards—one littered with chip shortages, logistics woes, tariffs, crypto inquire of, and scalpers—we’re at ideal starting to ask the first GPUs for PC avid gamers on a tighter budget. And since the GeForce RTX 3050 we’re reviewing this day presentations, Nvidia and AMD couldn’t be going about it from now on in another case.

AMD landed the first strike. The Radeon RX 6500 XT arrived actual ideal week, and AMD made some onerous compromises to hit its low $199 stamp level. AMD’s low stamp card strips out diverse points we’ve in total in relation to inquire of, and packs actual 4GB of onboard memory with a scant 64-bit bus. That’ll abet it evade the glory of crypto miners and expectantly unlock offer on the streets, nonetheless AMD’s memory system restricts the 6500 XT to 1080p gaming on Medium or High settings. Push beyond that, and performance stumbles onerous.

Nvidia, nonetheless, takes the different route with the $250 GeForce RTX 3050. It’s in truth a outmoded graphics card, the exercise of a in the reduction of-down RTX 3060 GPU with 8GB of VRAM and an current 128-bit memory bus. This gruesome boy is built to flee video games with ask candy cranked up and those knowing staunch-time rays a-tracin’.

The memory configuration will seemingly win the RTX 3050 more handsome to miners (though it wields Nvidia’s Lite Hash Payment tech) when it launches on January 26, so we’ll wish to ask whether or not it or the Radeon RX 6500 XT in the waste discontinuance up being more extensively accessible on the streets. But there’s no inquire of that the RTX 3050 fully spanks AMD’s GPU in the benchmark sheets. Let’s dig in.

GeForce RTX 3050 specs, points and price

The GeForce RTX 3050 makes exercise of a pared-motivate version of the GA106 GPU show in the RTX 3060. As such, it packs grand beefier specs than the GTX 1650 Nvidia makes exercise of in the spec comparison chart beneath. (It’s also worth noting that the GTX 1650 launched at $150, a plump $100 not as much as the RTX 3050.)

The RTX 3050 tops out at the same 1,777MHz increase clock bustle as a reference spec, matching the RTX 3060’s price. Alternatively it has fewer CUDA cores—2560, versus 3584—alongside with fewer ROPs and texture objects. That clearly impacts performance. The RTX 3050 also wields a plump array of Nvidia’s dedicated second-gen RT cores to enable staunch-time ray tracing, and 80 third-gen tensor cores to abet with DLSS, Nvidia Broadcast, and other AI-infused projects. The Radeon RX 6500 XT ostensibly comprises ray tracing hardware of its be pleased, nonetheless that GPU is so stripped-down, that you just might’t practically enable the reducing-edge lighting fixtures feature in video games. The RTX 3050, nonetheless, handles ray tracing devour a champ, namely in video games that also reinforce Nvidia’s Deep Discovering out Dazzling Sampling (DLSS) tech.

Nvidia also gave the RTX 3050 an current memory configuration that will develop not maintain any topic taking part in video games at 1080p this day or sooner or later. It comes with 8GB of GDDR running at 14Gbps, all the intention in which thru a 128-bit bus. That’s moral for 224GB per second of memory bandwidth—slower than the RTX 3060’s 360GB/s over its wider bus, nonetheless still a-ample for the 1080p gaming this card is supposed for. The extra memory ability also helps with ray tracing, since flipping on that feature locations grand more stress on a graphics card’s VRAM.

AMD stripped out diverse decoding and encoding functions from its budget GPU, while reducing the show outputs on the Radeon RX 6500 XT all the intention in which down to actual singular HDMI and DisplayPort connections. That’s not the case with the RTX 3050, which comes with your total neatly-liked encode/decode functionality of other RTX 30-sequence GPUs (including AV1 reinforce) and a plump complement of visible outputs. The EVGA RTX 3050 XC Dim model we’re reviewing this day comes with a single HDMI 2.1 port and a trio of DisplayPorts, alongside with a 8-pin energy connector.

For the reason that RTX 3050 comes with your total hardware and strength as its other Nvidia siblings, actual in pared-down develop, which system it also helps Nvidia’s wide ecosystem of killer tool points. Nvidia Broadcast, latency-reducing Nvidia Reflex, ShadowPlay, NVENC encoding, DLSS, Nvidia Image Scaling, it all works. Hallelujah.

As with the RTX 3060, Nvidia isn’t rolling out regarded as one of its snazzy Founders Version fashions for the RTX 3050. In its build, it’s relying on custom playing cards from companions to elevate the load in this day’s hot-sizzling graphics card market. The EVGA GeForce RTX 3050 XC Dim sent over for attempting out largely mirrors the form of the RTX 3060 XC Dim we benchmarked before. This twin-slot graphics card sticks to reference specs and eschews stamp-adding extras devour a twin-BIOS change or a backplate to abet it land at Nvidia’s $249 stamp level for the RTX 3050. The dearth of a backplate makes the EVGA XC Dim pretty of an eyesore in an period when backplates maintain largely change into the norm, nonetheless it undoubtedly’s in another case inoffensive aesthetically, with a blacked-out kind.

EVGA mistakenly loaded review samples with a pretty faster BIOS supposed for a step-up overclock model. Our unit is rated for a 1845MHz increase clock, antagonistic to the 1777MHz reference spec. That ought to still easiest circulate the performance needle by a couple percentage points, EVGA says, nonetheless manufacturing objects being shipped to retailer cupboards maintain the real BIOS assign in, with the real speeds.

Whenever you happen to desire to wish to assign the twin-axial fans to more work in a describe to squeeze even more performance out of the EVGA RTX 3050 XC Dim, the company’s trim Precision X1 GPU management tool incorporates every little thing you’ve to show screen and overclock the cardboard. The slickly designed program is even handed one of our favorites.

And now the stage is determined. Let’s win to the benchmarks.

Our check system

We check graphics playing cards on an AMD Ryzen 5000-sequence check rig in describe to benchmark the enact of PCIe 4.0 reinforce on neatly-liked GPUs, moreover to the performance-boosting AMD Dazzling Salvage admission to Memory and Nvidia Resizable BAR points (that are each and every primarily primarily based on the same underlying PCIe current). Within the meanwhile, we’re attempting out it on an commence bench with AMD’s Wraith Max air cooler. Most of the hardware modified into provided by the producers, nonetheless we purchased the storage ourselves.

• AMD Ryzen 5900X, stock settings
• AMD Wraith Max cooler
• MSI Godlike X570 motherboard
• 32GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 3800 memory
• EVGA 1200W SuperNova P2 energy offer
• 1TB SK Hynix Gold S31 SSD

We’re comparing the $250 EVGA GeForce RTX 3050 XC Dim in opposition to its EVGA RTX 3060 XC Dim cousin, and yesteryear’s RTX 2060 Founders Version. On the AMD facet of things, we’ve integrated the RTX 3050’s sigh competitor, the $199 XFX Radeon RX 6500 XT Qick 210, alongside with the step-up XFX Radeon RX 6600 Swft 210 and Asus ROG Strix Radeon RX 6600 XT, plus the Radeon RX 5600 XT and 5700 from ideal technology.

Again, EVGA mistakenly loaded review samples of the RTX 3050 XC Dim with a pretty faster BIOS supposed for a step-up overclock model. Our unit is rated for a 1845MHz increase clock, antagonistic to the 1777MHz reference spec. Manufacturing objects being shipped to retail cupboards maintain the real BIOS assign in, with the real speeds. The performance outcomes shown beneath would possibly per chance very properly be a physique or three faster than what you’d win from this card in staunch existence as a end result, nonetheless there ought to still be nothing tangibly diversified in the gaming skills.

We check a unfold of video games spanning diverse engines, genres, dealer sponsorships (Nvidia, AMD, and Intel), and graphics APIs (DirectX 11, DX12, and Vulkan). Every sport is examined the exercise of its in-sport benchmark at the absolute top that you just might take into accout graphics presets unless in another case current, with VSync, physique price caps, staunch-time ray tracing or describe upsampling outcomes, and FreeSync/G-Sync disabled, alongside with another dealer-particular technologies devour FidelityFX tools or Nvidia Reflex. PCIe Resizable BAR and AMD’s Dazzling Salvage admission to Memory were also disabled for attempting out. We’ve enabled temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) to push these playing cards to their limits. We flee each and every benchmark as a minimal three times and list the frequent end result for each and every check.

You’ll seek for the Radeon RX 6500 XT lagging onerous in loads of of those tests, nonetheless the actuality is even uglier than it appears. AMD’s budget GPU also suffered from excessive high-tail spikes in loads of video games thanks to its barely-there 4GB of RAM and scant 64-bit bus. It runs knowing at 1080p Medium or High settings, nonetheless the maxed-out graphics alternate choices inclined on this attempting out are merely too grand for it, giving the RTX 3050 the clear edge.

Gaming performance benchmarks

Behold Canines: Legion

Behold Canines: Legion is even handed one of many first video games to debut on subsequent-gen consoles. Ubisoft upgraded its Disrupt engine to encompass reducing-edge points devour staunch-time ray tracing and Nvidia’s DLSS. We disable those outcomes for this attempting out, nonetheless Legion stays a strenuous sport even on excessive-discontinuance hardware with its optional excessive-determination texture pack assign in.

Horizon Zero Damage of day

Yep, PlayStation exclusives are coming to the PC now. Horizon Zero Damage of day runs on Guerrilla Games’ Decima engine, the same engine that powers Dying Stranding.

Gears Techniques

Gears Techniques places it be pleased brutal, fleet-paced jog on the XCOM-devour genre. This Unreal Engine 4-powered sport modified into built from the ground up for DirectX 12, and we devour being in a local to work a ways-model sport into our benchmarking suite. Better yet, the game comes with a plethora of graphics alternate choices for PC snobs. Extra video games ought to still devote such loving care to explaining what flipping all these visible knobs mean.

That you just might’t exercise the presets to benchmark Gears Techniques, as it intelligently scales to work easiest for your assign in hardware, which system that “Extremely” on one graphics card can load diversified settings than “Extremely” on a weaker card. We manually home all alternate choices to their absolute top that you just might take into accout settings.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Wolfenstein: Youngblood is more enjoyable while you happen to can play cooperatively with a buddy, nonetheless it’s a brave experiment—and an absolute technical showcase. Working on the Vulkan API, Youngblood achieves blistering physique rates, and it helps all kinds of reducing-edge technologies devour ray tracing, DLSS 2.0, HDR, GPU culling, asynchronous computing, and Nvidia’s Stutter material Adaptive Shading. The sport comprises a built-in benchmark with two diversified scenes; we examined Riverside.

Metro Exodus

One of the most easy video games of 2019, Metro Exodus stays regarded as one of many most easy-having a success upon video games round, too. The most neatly-liked version of the 4A Engine affords incredibly scrumptious, ultra-detailed visuals, with regarded as one of many most sexy staunch-time ray tracing implementations released yet. The Rude graphics preset we benchmark can soften even the strongest neatly-liked hardware, as you’ll seek for beneath, though the game’s Extremely and High presets still hit upon moral at grand greater physique rates. Bumping the settings all the intention in which down to “actual” Extremely in truth doubles physique rates.

We sign in DirectX 12 mode with ray tracing, Hairworks, and DLSS disabled. The Radeon RX 6500 XT refused to flee at our check settings whatsoever, hence the zero rating.

Borderlands 3

Borderlands is motivate! Gearbox’s sport defaults to DX12, so we enact as properly. It affords us a watch at the ultra-current Unreal Engine 4’s performance in a outmoded shooter. This sport tends to favor AMD hardware.

Queer Brigade

Queer Brigade is a cooperative third-particular person shooter where a team of adventurers blasts thru hordes of mythological enemies. It’s a technological showcase, built across the next-gen Vulkan and DirectX 12 technologies and infused with points devour HDR reinforce and the ability to toggle asynchronous compute on and off. It makes exercise of Revolt’s custom Azure engine. We check the exercise of the Vulkan renderer, which is faster than DX12.

Whole Conflict: Troy

The most neatly-liked sport in the current Whole Conflict saga, Troy modified into given away free for its first 24 hours on the Tale Games Retailer, spirited over 7.5 million copies before it went on actual sale. Whole Conflict: Troy is built the exercise of a modified version of the Whole Conflict: Warhammer 2 engine, and this DX11 title appears sexy for a turn-primarily primarily based technique sport. We check the more intensive battle benchmark.

F1 2020

F1 2020 is a gem to envision, supplying a huge fluctuate of every and every graphical and benchmarking alternate choices, making it a grand more decent (and enjoyable) option that the Forza sequence. It’s built on the most neatly-liked version of Codemasters’ buttery-soft Ego sport engine, full with reinforce for DX12 and Nvidia’s DLSS technology. We check two laps on the Australia route, with clear skies on and DLSS off.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider concludes the reboot trilogy, and it’s still completely knowing. Square Enix optimized this sport for DX12 and recommends DX11 easiest while you’re the exercise of older hardware or Home windows 7, so we seek advice from DX12. Shadow of the Tomb Raider makes exercise of an enhanced version of the Foundation engine that also powered Upward push of the Tomb Raider and comprises optional staunch-time ray tracing and DLSS points.

Rainbow Six Siege

Rainbow Six Siege still dominates the Steam charts years after its commence, and Ubisoft helps it with frequent updates and events. The developers maintain poured a ton of labor into the game’s AnvilNext engine over time, in the end rolling out a Vulkan version of the game that we exercise to envision. By default, the game lowers the render scaling to develop physique rates, nonetheless we home it to 100 percent to benchmark native rendering performance on graphics playing cards. Even still, physique rates soar.

Ray tracing performance

We also benchmarked the GeForce RTX 3050 in a handful of titles that reinforce reducing-edge staunch-time ray tracing outcomes. Whereas the newer Radeon RX 6000-sequence GPUs now reinforce ray tracing, older AMD fashions don’t.

Nvidia holds a key aid in ray-traced video games thanks to its Deep Discovering out Dazzling Sampling technology (DLSS), which leverages AI tensor cores embedded in RTX GPUs to internally render video games at a decrease determination, then up-res them to your desired determination the exercise of machine discovering out to maintain in the gaps. DLSS 2.0 works devour sunless magic and affords Nvidia a bag lead in ray-tracing performance. With out it, you always can’t flee ray-traced video games above 1080p determination.

AMD affords its be pleased FidelityFX Dazzling Decision to contrivance the same frequent aim, nonetheless it undoubtedly makes exercise of diversified underlying technology without a reliance on AI or dedicated hardware. Every DLSS and FSR easiest work in video games that reinforce them, then yet again, so our benchmarks beneath easiest show performance with ray tracing enabled nonetheless no DLSS or FSR. It wouldn’t be shapely to AMD, as these video games all reinforce DLSS by myself. Flip those points on in acceptable video games and you’ll seek for physique rates soar. Testing without upsampling energetic also affords us a watch into the uncooked ray tracing performance chops for these GPUs.

We idea to develop our ray-traced sport suite soon, nonetheless for now we’re giving Behold Canines: Legion, Metro: Exodus, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider a whirl to assign the capabilities to the check, with ray tracing alternate choices home to Extremely in each and every title. Legion packs ray-traced reflections, Tomb Raider comprises ray-traced shadows, and Metro points more strenuous (and mood-enhancing) ray-traced worldwide illumination. Spoiler: It doesn’t trot properly for the $199 Radeon RX 6500 XT and its irregular technical configuration.

Let’s kick things off with Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s ray-traced shadows.

Metro: Exodus makes exercise of ray tracing for worldwide illumination. The Radeon RX 6500 XT refused to flee at our check settings, hence the zero rating. We check at maxed-out settings, nonetheless dropping the visible preset down from “Rude” to “Extremely” and flipping on DLSS would significantly reinforce performance on this sport from a perfect standpoint.

Behold Canines: Legion hammers your system no matter whether or not you’ve ray tracing on, as a minimal with the excessive-determination texture pack assign in. Activating the ray-traced reflections exacerbates the topic. Lovely inquire of the Radeon RX 6500 XT.

Backside line? Whereas the inclusion of ray accelerators in the Radeon RX 6500 XT gave AMD the chance to crow about being the first sub-$200 graphics card to increase ray tracing, our tests show that you just wouldn’t in truth desire to sport on that card with ray tracing on. The GeForce RTX 3050 runs laps round its rival.

Energy device, thermals, and noise

We check energy device by looping the F1 2020 benchmark at 4K for roughly 20 minutes after we’ve benchmarked every little thing else and noting the absolute top reading on our Watts Up Pro meter, which measures the ability consumption of our total check system. The preliminary share of the flee, where all competing autos are onscreen simultaneously, tends to be the most annoying share. 

This isn’t a worst-case check; here’s a GPU-sure sport running at a GPU-sure determination to gauge performance when the graphics card is sweating onerous. Whenever you happen to’re taking part in a sport that also hammers the CPU, you might per chance per chance seek for greater total system energy attracts. Bewitch into consideration your self warned.

No complaints here. The GeForce RTX 3050 merely doesn’t need heaps of energy to enact work. Nvidia’s Ampere architecture isn’t moderately as atmosphere friendly as AMD’s rival RDNA 2 kind, as peering closely at this outcomes show, nonetheless it undoubtedly doesn’t matter this far down the GPU stack.

We check thermals by leaving GPU-Z commence all thru the F1 2020 energy device check, noting the absolute top maximum temperature at the discontinuance.

Again, no complaints here. EVGA’s XC Dim cooler would possibly per chance lack frills, nonetheless it undoubtedly clear will get the job completed, and it stays good and silent (though not moderately inaudible) doing it.

Whenever you establish the GeForce RTX 3050?

Whenever you happen to would possibly per chance gain the GeForce RTX 3050 for shut to its $250 MSRP, fully. In this day’s market it’d still be a relative engage at $300 to $350 (affirm), although the GTX 1650 launched at $150, and the 3050 is easiest pretty faster than the GTX 1660 Ti that launched at $280 ideal technology (and is for the time being promoting for $400 to $475 inclined on Ebay, double affirm). The GTX playing cards lacked ray tracing or DLSS capabilities, then yet again.

We’re not in 2019 anymore though. The GeForce RTX 3050 is a mammoth 1080p graphics card in these attempting times, in a position to chewing thru video games at 60-plus frames per second or greater at 1080p determination even with all visible bells and whistles veritably enabled. (That you just might wish to bump some settings all the intention in which down to High in namely strenuous video games.) It fully smashes AMD’s $199 rival Radeon RX 6500 XT. That goes doubly so in ray-traced video games, where the AMD card struggles to contrivance physique rates in the one digits without the abet of describe upsampling. Infamous. The GeForce RTX 3050’s huge 8GB memory buffer and reinforce for killer Nvidia points devour Reflex, Broadcast, and DLSS easiest sweeten the pot. The GeForce RTX 3050 delivers every little thing you’d desire from a up-to-the-minute 1080p graphics card, from fleet physique rates to thoroughly loaded points.

But what PC avid gamers in truth desire is to be in a local to decide on out graphics playing cards at sane costs. That hasn’t came about in properly over a three hundred and sixty five days. The jury stays out on whether or not Nvidia would per chance be in a local to set up the RTX 3050 in better offer than its other GPUs over the weeks and months to near motivate, nonetheless I’m much less optimistic here than I’m with AMD’s Radeon RX 6500 XT.

The GeForce RTX 3050 runs laps round AMD’s providing, nonetheless the excessive compromises AMD made while constructing the Radeon RX 6500 XT system it has an opportunity of evading the glory of crypto miners, while its ultra-tiny GPU die also lets AMD pump out heaps of chips. The GeForce RTX 3050, nonetheless, sticks to an current memory configuration that would possibly per chance per chance be at anxiousness of mine Ethereum, and makes exercise of a in the reduction of-down version of the mammoth GA106 die show in the RTX 3060. Yes, crypto costs maintain plummeted in contemporary days and Nvidia geared up the RTX 3050 with anti-mining Lite Hash Payment technology, nonetheless that’s been beaten before. And the RTX 3050’s GPU is over 2.5x greater than the Radeon’s die, which system AMD can squeeze many, many more chips out of a wafer.

We’ll seek for it the intention in which it goes. If the RTX 3050 disappears from retailers and pops up on Ebay for 1.5x to 2x its MSRP devour every other neatly-liked GPU has, it’s a lot much less appealing. But while that you just might rating one for $250 to $300 in this day’s wild market, snatch it up pronto. There’s nothing else on this stamp fluctuate—contemporary or inclined—that can hang with it, namely the Radeon RX 6500 XT.