Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 review

Our Verdict

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 would make an first-class replacement for the GTX 1650. It provides incredible 1080p gaming performance, even with ray tracing – something the GTX 1650 couldn't even exercise. All the same, its high cost pits it against the RTX 2060, a fight the RTX 3050 just cannot win.

For

Slap-up 1080p gaming operation
Ray tracing and DLSS
Depression temperatures

Against

Expensive for a 'budget' card
Higher power
Loses to RTX 2060

TechRadar Verdict

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 would brand an excellent replacement for the GTX 1650. It provides incredible 1080p gaming performance, even with ray tracing – something the GTX 1650 couldn't fifty-fifty do. Withal, its high toll pits information technology against the RTX 2060, a fight the RTX 3050 just cannot win.

Pros

+
Swell 1080p gaming performance
+
Ray tracing and DLSS
+
Low temperatures

Cons

-
Expensive for a 'budget' menu
-
Higher ability
-
Loses to RTX 2060

Two-minute review

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 arrives at the perfect time – maybe even a fiddling belatedly – as the best graphics cards continue getting more and more than expensive. And because GPUs keep selling out even the few that are reasonably priced oasis't exactly been worth the cost tag – but look at the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT.

However, with the RTX 3050, yous're not getting much lower performance than the adjacent up Nvidia's lineup, the RTX 3060. The RTX 3050 has no trouble hitting 60 fps in whatsoever 1080p game you lot throw at it, though it might showtime to struggle in the most demanding games of the generation – recall Cyberpunk 2077.

While that all sounds good, it'south hard to ignore how much prices have changed generation-on-generation. While a price tag of $249 (about £185, AU$350) might not seem loftier when yous're used to seeing graphics cards at $1,000 or more these days, it's still significantly more expensive than xx50 cards of the by. For case, the GTX 1050 Ti launched at $139 (£139, nearly AU$200), and the GTX 1650 launched at but $149 (£149, about AU$200).

So, probable due to an ongoing silicon shortage that's seeing calculating prices ascent dramatically across the industry, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 is near double the price of its last-generation sibling.

That desperate toll increment does come with a huge increase in performance. However, people that were hoping to see a graphics menu at bodily upkeep prices volition have to keep waiting – or turn to the used market. Nosotros merely promise the RTX 4000 series has something more budget-friendly, bold the shortage lets up whatever time soon.

Cost and availability

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 is available now, starting at $249 (almost £185, AU$350), with prices going upward from in that location for more advanced 3rd-party boards. Nosotros're not certain what the aftermarket state of affairs will look like once the boards go bachelor, but if it'due south anything like the RTX 3060, there may not be many graphics cards available at that starting price – instead prices might start to climb.

For instance, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3050 Ninety Blackness nosotros're reviewing hither costs $249 (near £185, AU$350) and it'due south a pretty basic version of the graphics card. If you lot want something with fancy RGB lighting and overclocking-friendly cooling setups, you're going to have to spend quite a bit more.

Nvidia isn't making a Founders Edition of the GeForce RTX 3050 – merely like it didn't with the RTX 3060 – which is the major reason that graphics cards at the low end of the pricing scale for this GPU will be incredibly rare. Hopefully, as the RTX 3050 isn't going to be very good for crypto mining, it won't see massive price increases after release. Just time volition tell with that one.

Features and chipset

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050, just similar the rest of the RTX 3000 series, is built on Nvidia'due south Ampere core. In previous launches in this lineup, the improvements Nvidia made to this cadre over the last-gen Turing cadre offered a huge gen-on-gen increase in performance – both for ray tracing and regular rasterization.

And the GeForce RTX 3050 is no dissimilar. Because of the smaller manufacturing process of Nvidia Ampere, Squad Green was able to fit more Streaming Multiprocessors without increasing the size of the dice, up to 20 from 14 on the GTX 1650. Nvidia was able to finer double FP32 cores on each SM, giving the RTX 3050 2,560 CUDA cores, up from 892 on the GTX 1650. This ways information technology's way more powerful – at least on paper.

With this increment in SMs, there'southward of course an increase in power required to drive the RTX 3050 – but not as much as we thought. TGP has merely increased to 130W over the 75W TGP of the GTX 1650. That does mean that the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT consumes manner less power, but as we'll see later, information technology results in a major loss in functioning.

This is also the first xx50 card that'south got Nvidia'due south full RTX feature set. This means this GPU gets both RT cores and Tensor cores, and then it's capable of ray tracing and DLSS. Both the GTX 1650 and the GTX 1650 Super got excluded from these features in the final generation, so it's dainty to come across them make their way to a 'budget' graphics card – especially DLSS.

Luckily, Nvidia also upped the VRAM on the RTX 3050 to 8GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus with 224 GB/s of bandwidth. Information technology's not the fastest memory of this generation, merely it should proceed this graphics card fighting at 1080p for quite a while.

Because while it's cool that an affordable graphics card has ray tracing, that'southward not the main draw here. DLSS is going to be far more valuable for folks buying this graphics carte, equally it will boost performance significantly without impacting visual quality much. It'south not free performance per se – and you volition detect a quality drop on Performance Mode, for example – only it does stretch what the RTX 3050 will be capable of at 1080p.

You too become access to other Nvidia RTX tech, besides. Nvidia Reflex is going to be a big deal for this graphics card in particular, as the performance level it offers is already perfect for esports. Nvidia Reflex will enhance the esports feel further past cut down on input lag. This feature is starting to appear in other games as well – it was announced for God of War at CES 2022, for example – and while information technology may be nice for a single-actor championship, information technology'south especially nice for multiplayer games like Fortnite or Counter-Strike.

Design

We got the EVGA GeForce RTX 3050 XC Black for our review, and it'due south pretty plain as far as graphics cards go. It has a uncomplicated gray and blackness colorway, with two fans and a nameplate on the side featuring the EVGA and GeForce RTX logos.

There's nada in the way of RGB lighting or much visual flair, which will arrive a expert fit for folks that want a depression-profile build.

It's also a very small graphics carte, plumbing equipment in the same seven.94-inch design profile as the EVGA RTX 3060 Xc Black. Combined with the small 130W TGP, this graphics card will take no problem plumbing fixtures in a small grade-factor build.

Because this graphics menu is using the same cooler every bit its RTX 3060 counterpart, temperatures stay extremely low. Throughout all of our testing, temperatures didn't rise above 60C. That was in an open-air examination bench, so you may see slightly higher temperatures in your example, but either way, there'southward going to be plenty of thermal headroom hither. This means in that location should exist enough room to overclock it a bit for extra performance – though nosotros didn't test that for this review.

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RTX 3050 — (Image credit: Infogram; Futurity)

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Performance

Test system specs

This is the organization we used to test the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050

CPU:Intel Cadre i9-12900K (xvi-core, up to v.2GHz)
CPU Cooler:Corsair H150i Elite Capellix
RAM:32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum @ 5,200MHz
Motherboard:MSI MPG Z690 Carbon Wifi
SSD:ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro @ 1TB
Power Supply:Corsair AX1000
Case:Praxis Wetbench

Nvidia is pitching the GeForce RTX 3050 equally a budget 1080p graphics menu, fifty-fifty though information technology costs as much equally a mid-range card from 2018. Generally, the RTX 3050 is virtually 70% faster than the GeForce GTX 1650, which is a pretty massive improvement.

However, if you look a bit college in the Turing pile, the comparison is less favorable. The RTX 3050 is but virtually 10-15% faster than the GTX 1660, which was almost $40 cheaper than the RTX 3050 when it came out. And, if you expect at the RTX 2060, which concluded its lifespan at effectually the same price as the RTX 3050, Nvidia'southward new card is between 10-20% slower.

Again, this is a symptom of the terrible country of the graphics card market right now, simply it's hard to look at the performance of this card, along with its price, and non reminisce near better days.

That being said, if you're looking at the GeForce RTX 3050 in a vacuum, it's actually kind of impressive for what it'south trying to practice. Even in Metro Exodus with ray tracing on and DLSS disabled, it's able to go a solid 46 fps. Plow on DLSS and that's 60 fps, easy.

It's even more impressive in games with no ray tracing, though. We ran our testing suite with all the games on the loftier (or equivalent) preset, and the RTX 3050 stayed well above lx fps in all of them. And, in a game like Terminal Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, it was able to get a solid 143 fps – enough for high-refresh gaming.

With the RTX 3050, y'all should be able to play pretty much any game in your library without having to compromise much on visual quality. Now that it includes DLSS, that functioning is going to be stretched even further.

Nosotros just wish it was a chip cheaper. Because at the end of the twenty-four hours, information technology's sitting between where the GTX 1660 Super and the RTX 2060 sat in price in the last generation, and it doesn't meaningfully improve on that operation. So, while the RTX 3050 is a massive improvement over the GTX 1650, it still feels like stagnation, regardless of what the proper name on the box says.

Purchase information technology if…

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Jackie Thomas (Twitter) is TechRadar'south Us computing editor. She is fat, queer and extremely online. Computers are the devil, but she only happens to be a satanist. If y'all need to know annihilation about calculating components, PC gaming or the best laptop on the market, don't be afraid to drib her a line on Twitter or through email.