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$249 sounds great, if supply can keep up (it won't)

Our Verdict

Nvidia's RTX 3050 delivers good performance for its theoretical $249 starting price. Unfortunately, that also means there's not a snowball's chance in hell that it won't sell for radically inflated prices. It lands between the previous-gen RTX 2060 and GTX 1660 Super, both of which currently sell for far more than Nvidia's asking price.

For

• + Theoretically good price
  
• + Much better than AMD RX 6500 XT
  
• + Comes with plenty of VRAM
  
• + Full PCIe 4.0 x16 connection
  

Against

• - Little chance it will sell for MSRP
  
• - Slower than RTX 2060 and RX 5600 XT
  
• - 8GB means it can mine crypto
  

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 feels a bit like a breath of fresh air after last week's rather unimpressive launch of the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT. On paper, there aren't any major compromises to speak of, and the launch price falls squarely into the mainstream market at $249. Unfortunately, GPU prices are still extremely inflated, and while cryptocurrency prices have plummeted, that doesn't mean we'll see reasonable prices on the best graphics cards any time soon. But setting aside real-world pricing and supply, how does the RTX 3050 stack up to the competition?

Thankfully, Nvidia hasn't put the Ampere architecture on the chopping block to create the desktop RTX 3050. While the GA107 used in mobile RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3050 only uses an x8 PCIe interface, the desktop RTX 3050 uses the larger GA106 chip and includes full PCIe 4.0 x16 connectivity, along with full support for all the latest video codecs. It also includes 8GB of GDDR6 memory, though on a narrower 128-bit interface than the RTX 3060. Here's the full specs overview of Nvidia's RTX 3050, along with some competing GPUs.

Along with the RTX 3050, we've included the RTX 2060, GTX 1650 Super, and RX 6500 XT as points of reference. The official launch prices are obviously a bit of a joke right now, with most of these cards costing 50–100% more than the suggested values, but that's not likely to change any time soon. A key difference between the RTX 3050 and its nominal predecessors, the GTX 1650 and GTX 1650 Super, is that the 3050 adds RT and Tensor cores to the mix. That brings Nvidia's ray tracing and DLSS support to a new tier of hardware, and like all Ampere GPUs, these are second-gen RT and third-gen Tensor cores.

Of course, that makes performance comparisons between the old and new GPUs sort of pointless in some cases. For example, Nvidia showed how RTX 3050 with RT and DLSS delivered performance compared to the GTX 1650, GTX 1050 Ti, and GTX 1050. So naturally, those GPUs all scored zero in RT and DLSS tests since they can't run either one. Meanwhile, the GTX 1660 series can support ray tracing (in some games) but still lacks Tensor hardware. So, in effect, every GTX GPU scores zero on RT + DLSS performance, and the same applies to all AMD GPUs. That's not a particularly helpful comparison.

One interesting item to note is the die size for the various chips. Nvidia hasn't revealed a die size for the (currently) laptop-only GA107, but GA106 ends up roughly the same size as the TU116 chip used in the GTX 16-series cards, and 150% larger than AMD's tiny Navi 24. Some of that is thanks to TSMC's N6 process, and the cost per square mm for TSMC N6 is certainly higher than Samsung 8N, but die size definitely favors AMD.

At the same time, we've already said we think AMD went too far in cutting features and specs to keep the Navi 24 chip as small as possible. Look at all the other specs and RTX 3050 should easily dominate over AMD's RX 6500 XT, and it might even give the RX 6600 some competition at times. We'll have the RX 6600 in our performance charts, along with some other current and previous-gen GPUs. One thing to keep an eye on is how the RTX 3050 compares to the RTX 2060. It has quite a bit less bandwidth but also more compute performance. RTX 2060 will be faster for mining purposes (not necessarily a good thing) as well, which means the RTX 3050 will likely end up in the hands of more gamers going forward.

Obviously, real-world pricing and availability will be the deciding factors for any current graphics card purchase. Nvidia told us it has been working to build up inventory before launching its new GPUs, and it knows the RTX 3050 will be in very high demand thanks to its lower price. It's still going to sell out, but hopefully we'll see a decent number of cards available at reasonable prices with tomorrow's launch. However, once the initial supply gets cleared out, we'll have to wait and see how things develop going forward.
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