Nvidia RTX 3050 Review ft. Gigabyte and Palit

Almost a year on from the release of the RTX 3060, Nvidia has finally brought the RTX 3050 to the desktop market. We know graphics card pricing is a mess right now – though we are cautiously optimistic – but even so, this is the first sub-£300/$300 RTX dGPU to hit the market, three and a half years on from the technology's introduction.

Putting RTX to one side for now, many gamers will be eager to see how the RTX 3050 performs in rasterised titles, especially after the disappointment of last week's RX 6500 XT launch. Well, the RTX 3050 is the faster card – but that's not saying much. Compared to the GTX 1660 Super, it is 5% faster on average, while it's 14% slower than the RTX 2060. It's solid enough performance for a 1080p card, and in fact 1440p gaming isn't out of the question. You won't be hitting 60 FPS at max settings in titles like Cyberpunk 2077 or Red Dead Redemption 2, but plenty of games we tested saw average frame rates in the 40-50 FPS region when using High settings.

Those with PCIe 3.0 systems will also be glad to know that Nvidia's decision to use a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface is of little consequence for gaming. Three of the twelve games we tested saw performance decrease by 5% or more when using PCIe 3.0, with Total War Saga: Troy being the biggest offender, but by and large it doesn't really matter, particularly with 8GB GDDR6 memory on board which we feel should be the new standard for this class of GPU.

I am not so sure many people will bother with the card's ray tracing features though. RT performance is really just ‘OK', but it is always slower than the RTX 2060 in the titles we tested, so you won't be enabling the most taxing ray tracing features anyway. DLSS on the other hand really is a big inclusion as it can make a massive difference to your frame rates, even when sticking with the Quality mode. In fact, DLSS in many cases could get this card up to a solid 60 FPS at 1440p which just isn't possible at native resolution.

With no Founders Edition released for either the RTX 3060 or RTX 3050, today we have tested both the Gigabyte RTX 3050 Eagle and the Palit RTX 3050 StormX OC. Both are solid options, offering low noise levels and sub-70C GPU temperatures. In fact, the StormX OC did prove slightly more efficient in its heatsink design, thanks to its use of three heatpipes, instead of just the one in the Eagle. Neither will let you down but we do like just how compact the StormX OC really is.

We were also able to extract a decent chunk of extra performance via overclocking, with the Eagle hitting clock speeds of over 2100MHz, while the StormX OC averaging just under that. That resulted in performance increases of 8-11% in the games we re-tested, so overclocking the card is well worth doing.

On the whole, the RTX 3050 isn't a bad product – certainly not in the same way as the RX 6500 XT – but I couldn't really be more generous than that. I'd put it in the same category as the RX 6600 and RX 6600 XT, cards that I would describe as ‘pandemic GPUs' – meaning both AMD and Nvidia know pretty much anything will sell in this market, so there's no real incentive to push things forward.

That's illustrated by the comparison to the GTX 1660 Super. In a fiercely competitive market, we would certainly have seen more than a 5% improvement to average frame rates, and while DLSS is a great addition for the RTX 3050, rasterisation performance in this price class hasn't moved forward since October 2019.

We're also hearing that supply is going to be very limited in the UK, with just a handful of cards expected to hit the £239 MSRP – and once they're gone, prices will increase significantly. I wouldn't be surprised to see street pricing of £350 in a few weeks, maybe even higher. Considering second-hand GTX 1660 Supers sell for around £290-350, the real-world cost is worth keeping a close eye on. Even the RX 6600 at £440 could be worth a look if 3050s get too expensive, considering the Radeon GPU is over 30% faster.

The RTX 3050 goes on sale tomorrow, January 27th, at 2PM GMT. You can view a range of cards from Overclockers UK HERE. We've been told both Palit and Gigabyte are aiming to have cards at MSRP for launch, but they are not expected to last long.

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Gigabyte RTX 3050 Eagle

Pros

• Decent 1080p performance.
• DLSS is a great addition.
• Overclocked well.
• Cool and quiet.

Cons

• Hardly faster than GTX 1660 Super from October 2019.
• Significantly less power efficient than RX 6600.

Palit RTX 3050 StormX OC

Pros

• Decent 1080p performance.
• DLSS is a great addition.
• Overclocked well.
• Cool and quiet.
• Very compact.

Cons

• Hardly faster than GTX 1660 Super from October 2019.
• Significantly less power efficient than RX 6600.

KitGuru says: RTX 3050 isn't a bad product, but it's not great either.

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