Gigabyte
Nvidia launched three new GPUs final month, half of a Super overhaul of the RTX 40-series designed to enhance the worth of the firm’s $600-and-up graphics playing cards.
But right now, the firm is quietly doing one thing that it hasn’t achieved in over 4 years: launching a sub-$200 graphics card. As noticed by TechPowerUp, Nvidia companions like Gigabyte have begun formally saying a 6GB version of the outdated RTX 3050 graphics card, albeit with much less reminiscence and reminiscence bandwidth, fewer CUDA cores, and decrease energy necessities.
The announcement follows a number of days of leaked retail listings, which usually level to an MSRP of roughly $179 for the new-old card. This would make it Nvidia’s first sub-$200 graphics card launch since the GeForce GTX 1650 Super got here out in late 2019, a four-year hole brought on partially by a cryptocurrency- and pandemic-fueled GPU scarcity that lasted from late 2020 into mid-to-late 2022.
| RTX 3050 6GB | RTX 3050 8GB | GTX 1650 Super | GTX 1650 | RTX 2060 6GB | RTX 3060 12GB | RTX 4060 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CUDA Cores | 2,048 or 2,304? | 2,560 | 1,280 | 896 | 1,920 | 3,584 | 3,072 |
| Boost Clock | 1,470 MHz | 1,777 MHz | 1,725 MHz | 1,665 MHz | 1,680 MHz | 1,777 MHz | 2,460 MHz |
| Memory Bus Width | 96-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 192-bit | 128-bit |
| Memory Clock | 1,750 MHz | 1,750 MHz | 1,500 MHz | 2,000 MHz | 1,750 MHz | 1,875 MHz | 2,125MHz |
| Memory measurement | 6GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 4GB GDDR6 | 4GB GDDR5 | 6GB GDDR6 | 12GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| TGP | 70 W | 130 W | 100 W | 75 W | 160 W | 170 W | 115 W |
We weren’t in love with the authentic 8GB version of the 3050—”bizarre,” “overpriced,” and “might’ve been worse,” we wrote of it throughout the depths of the GPU scarcity in early 2022—and the 6GB version is minimize down even additional. Its 6GB of reminiscence is hooked up to a slim 96-bit reminiscence bus. And whereas studies differ on precisely what number of CUDA cores we will count on—TechPowerUp and Tom’s Hardware say 2,048, whereas Gigabyte’s 6GB 3050 product pages listing 2,304—it is clear that there are fewer than in the authentic RTX 3050, and their clock pace is decrease besides.
These specs ought to make it an OK card for 1080p gaming at medium to excessive settings, relying on the recreation. It must also be an honest match for small-form-factor methods—one of Gigabyte’s variations is a low-profile card appropriate for a lot of workplace desktops—and its 70 W energy requirement ought to imply that the playing cards can draw all the energy they want from the PCI Express slot, with out the want for an exterior energy connector.
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As a cut-down version of a 2-year-old card primarily based on a 3.5-year-old last-generation GPU structure, the RTX 3050 is not very thrilling. But it will get extra fascinating when you contemplate that Nvidia’s companions are at present promoting the outdated non-Super version of the GTX 1650 for round the similar worth. It’s tough to foretell how a lot the narrower reminiscence bus will influence the 6GB 3050’s efficiency, however in comparison with the 1650, it has a considerably larger quantity of newer CUDA cores, ray-tracing help, one other 2GB of RAM, GDDR6 as a substitute of GDDR5, and help for Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling expertise (albeit not DLSS Frame Generation, which stays unique to the 40-series).
The new card additionally complicates one of AMD’s promoting factors for its new Ryzen 8000G processors, which embody moderately succesful 1080p built-in GPUs. AMD in contrast the value of a $329 Ryzen 7 8700G favorably to the value of a Core i5 CPU and a GTX 1650 GPU, which ship comparable efficiency for extra money. But the RTX 3050 ought to decisively outrun the 8700G, and AMD’s pricing argument was already being undercut by the additional expense of socket AM5 motherboards and DDR5 reminiscence.
Nice as it’s to see no less than some twitch of life in the entry-level GPU market, we’re nonetheless a great distance from the place we have been in the mid- to late-2010s, when sub-$200 playing cards like the GTX 1050 Ti and the 1650 launched not lengthy after the different playing cards in the similar collection and used the latest GPU architectures out there at the time. There’s a laptop computer GPU in the RTX 4050 collection, however a desktop version seems to be extremely unlikely at this level—to say nothing of a desktop version at or beneath $200. But a belated, uninspiring enchancment is an enchancment nonetheless.