Nvidia RTX 3050 review: Overpriced 1080p GPU could be worse

Until something changes, we will assume the worst of the supply and demand curves in the current graphics card market. Unfortunately, the most pessimistic signs of things to come come from the GPU manufacturers themselves, as both Nvidia and AMD have begun pricing new products a little more in line with market realities.

There have already been several unsuccessful launches of GPUs in January. The slightly tweaked RTX 3080, now with 12GB of VRAM instead of 10GB, arrived earlier this month for an MSRP of roughly $ 1,200 — a whopping 42% jump from the MSRP of the much-reviewed launch model. On the other side of the price spectrum, last week’s AMD RX 6500XT at $199 MSRP hasn’t impressed in reviews so far. With a 64-bit memory interface, 4GB VRAM, and PCIe 3.0 system penalties, the card’s performance pales even when compared to the $199 RX 5500XT released in 2019.

Not wanting to be left out of the latest budget headlines, Nvidia is introducing the RTX 3050 this week, which continues the GPU manufacturers’ longstanding practice of repurposing “binary”GPUs. The card’s MSRP of $249 is the lowest in the RTX desktop series, below the $329 MSRP for the almost year-old RTX 3060, but above the $229 MSRP of the 2019 GTX 1660 Super. I have a feeling that this GPU is the monkey paw offering that PC gamers get when we yell things like “Please make more graphics cards!”

Let’s start with the verdict: it’s a 1080p card

Will you find RTX 3050 cards in the wild, not to mention prices 25 percent lower than the 3060? We are not optimistic. But if you do, be warned: even with proprietary tricks like Nvidia’s DLSS, the RTX 3050 will still force you to fiddle with the settings menu to keep modern games running at 60fps at 1080p. This is a card that, for the most part, delivers a maximum 1080p resolution for reasonable PC performance, not just for the latest games, but for some of the best games from the past seven years.

If your PC’s GPU runs particularly long and you’re happy to play your favorite PC games at 1080p, you may – out of desperation – want to head to the brick and mortar store when the RTX 3050 goes on sale. “one GPU per client”and other reasonable measures than online stores.

Also, I recommend setting the price cap somewhere around the $329 mark, as OEMs may choose to increase Nvidia’s MSRP for additional features like ornate fans and overclocking promises, and we know that at least one the overclocked RTX 3050 model will be released for $329. But this recommendation is more about market concerns than that this GPU is a bargain in any sense of the word.

Memories of the GTX 1070

Depending on the game or test in question, the closest equivalent to the RTX 3050 in terms of performance on the market is the Nvidia GTX 1070, which launched for around $379 back in June 2016.

Unlike the RTX 2060 Super, which provided a performance boost across the board over the GTX 1070, the RTX 3050 simply can’t make the same progress many years later. In some rendering scenarios, the disadvantages of the RTX 3050 silicon are very noticeable.

But the charts above and below highlight what is critical in any graphics card performance test: how does the GPU handle over-tuning and higher resolutions so that a given workload is GPU-specific and can be compared across cards. This default scenario, unfortunately, assumes that you have a lot of choice in the market. However, here and now, seeing the RTX 3050 disappoint in 1440p situations at max settings isn’t necessarily helpful; you can’t expect to buy a competing card that’s either cheaper or more likely to be future-proof.

If you’re still reading this review, you probably just want a working graphics card with 1080p performance as your baseline. Will it shrink the RTX 3050? In a word: basically. I’ve found its strengths come through on a case by case basis, but there are a few legitimate 1440p applications.