COMPARED TO the relative travesty of the
RX 6500 XT launch (see review on page
80), the RTX 3050 feels like another
great option from Team Green. Nvidia’s
RTX cards previously bottomed out at
$300 with the later RTX 2060 models and
the minimum price for the entry-level
3000-series has now dropped to just
$250—in theory. The problem is that the
base MSRP only applies to GPUs using
Nvidia’s reference clocks. If a graphics
card manufacturer provides even a tiny
one or two percent factory overclock,
MSRPs skyrocket to $330 or more—and
even then, most RTX 3050 cards are
selling for more than their MSRPs.
It’s the same problem with virtually
every other graphics card during the last
18 months, and while we can hope the
situation will improve, that could take
another year or more. At least with the
RTX 3050, most cryptocurrency miners
should give it a pass. With the latest
drivers and LHR locks in place, the card
managed just 14 MH/s in Ethereum, half
of the expected rate as the LHR limiter
was currently fully functional. At that
rate, it would earn less than $0.50 per day
and would take 500 days to break even.
But it’s not just miners buying graphics
cards and, unfortunately, supply of the
RTX 3050 has once again been completelyRTX goes mainstream, sort of
EVGA GeForce RTX 3050
7
VERDICT EVGA GeForce RTX 3050LEAN 8GB VRAM; DLSS;
Good 1080p performance.
SKINNY Slower than the 2060; overpriced
custom models.
$250, http://www.evga.com/SPECIFICATIONS
Architecture GA106
Lithography Samsung 8N
Boost Clock 1,777 MHz
GPU Cores 2,560
Memory 8GB GDDR6
TFLOPS FP32 9.1
Bandwidth 224GBps
TDP 130W
Connectors 1x HDMI 2.1, 3x
DisplayPort 1.4insufficient to satisfy demand. That’s
despite the fact the overall performance
ended up coming in behind the previous
generation RTX 2060 and definitely
behind the newer RTX 3060 as well as
AMD’s RX 6600—you can see the RX 6600
numbers in the 6500 XT review’s table.CHIP CHOPPED
At least Nvidia didn’t completely castrate
its latest GPU, though it’s interesting to
note that it is using a partially disabled
GA106 instead of the GA107 chip used in
the mobile RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti.
Nvidia apparently wanted the full x16
interface that the GA106 provides, so
GA107 remains a mobile-only solution
for the time being. Like all other Ampere
GPUs, the RTX 3050 also has full AV1, AVC,
and HEVC codec support for streamers.
One aspect of Nvidia’s RTX brand that
can’t be understated is the importance
of DLSS. Sure, there are alternative
upscaling algorithms, but it looks better
and is supported in far more games than
FSR right now. For example, it’s used in six
of the ten games in our test suite—even
in the highest quality mode, it still boosts
performance by 20 percent on average,
while the balanced mode provides even
larger gains. Streamers will likely also
appreciate Nvidia Broadcast, whichalso requires the RTX tensor cores and
provides some AI-enhanced filters and
noise removal.
The only real problems with the RTX
3050 are retail availability and actual
street prices. Considering performance
ends up trailing the RTX 2060 and RX
6600, those cards should provide a hard
cap on the prices people will be willing to
pay for an RTX 3050. The average price
for a 2060 on eBay sits at nearly $500
and the same goes for the RX 6600. The
RTX 3050, meanwhile, goes for closer to
$450. Things may improve in the coming
months but the next step up, the Nvidia
RTX 3060, still sells for $675—the price
we’d be paying for factory overclocked
RTX 3070 Ti cards if things were normal.
In the meantime, we can look forward
to the RTX 40-series and AMD’s RDNA 3
cards, and before those arrive, we should
finally get to see what Intel can bring to
the table with its Arc graphics cards.
Performance from the 3050 is low enough
that Intel ought to be able to surpass it,
but we still don’t know what Intel will
charge for its GPUs. As a newcomer to the
discrete graphics card market, Intel will
likely have to deliver better performance
at a lower price to compete. We should
find out in the next month or two where
Intel’s Arc will land. –JARRED WALTONBENCHMARKS
RTX 3050 RTX 2060 RTX 306010 Game Average (fps) 80 / 48 87 / 52 107 / 66
Borderlands 3 (fps) 113 / 54 121 / 59 154 / 73
Control (DXR) 52 / 33 57 / 36 75 / 46
Cyberpunk 2077 (DXR) 27 / 21 27 / 20 38 / 30
Far Cry 6 (fps) 98 / 74 111 / 83 130 / 97
Flight Simulator (fps) 75 / 47 87 / 54 105 / 66
Forza Horizon 5 (fps) 95 / 55 104 / 49 122 / 72
Horizon Zero Dawn (fps) 103 / 72 110 / 79 143 / 100
Minecraft (DXR) 36 / 31 40 / 35 50 / 44
Red Dead Redemption 2 (fps) 103 / 50 111 / 57 136 / 69
Watch Dogs Legion (fps) 94 / 47 103 / 46 119 / 64
Best scores are in bold. All testing conducted with a Core i9-12900K, MSI Pro Z690-A WiFi DDR4, 2x16GB DDR4-
3600 CL16, 2TB Crucial P5 Plus M.2 SSD, Cooler Master MWE 1250 Gold V2. Scores are average framerates at
1920x1080 medium / 1920x1080 ultra, with ray tracing enabled in Control, Cyberpunk, and Minecraft.in the lab
74 MAXIMU MPC APR 2022