NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Review: An entry-level RTX 30-series card that delivers DLSS to the masses

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 is billed as the company’s most affordable entry-level GPU yet and is targeted at gamers still rocking the by-now ageing GTX 1650 or GTX 1650 Ti graphics cards. Like the GeForce RTX 3060 before it, there's no Founders Edition model however, and NVIDIA has launched the card with a slew of custom offerings right from the outset. With a starting price of US$249, the card sits below the RTX 3060 aims to provide solid 1080p performance with the benefit of ray tracing as well as NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (or DLSS)

Here's an overview of its specifications and how it compares to the GeForce RTX 3060:

First looks

As no Founders Edition card is available, NVIDIA has sent us an entry-level, Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3050 Eagle 8GB card, for review. Unlike its more expensive Aorus siblings, this Gigabyte Eagle is a no-frills card that does not even comes with its own RGB lighting so as to keep cost as close to NVIDIA’s recommended retail pricing. It really does not pretend to be anything else more than a functional graphics card – it’s not even factory overclocked – and that’s actually a good thing for this review, as the card will give us a more accurate assessment of the RTX 3050’s base-level performance.

But that said, it does sports the same technologies featured in the other RTX 30-series GPUs such as RTX IO, and NVIDIA Reflex. We have covered these in separate articles previously, so I highly recommend that you read them to find out how games such as the recently released God of War for PC takes advantage of these features.

If you’re looking to build an entry-tier gaming system with a mini-ITX casing in mind, the Gigabyte Eagle diminutive size (213mm long) and low power draw (a 450W PSU is more than enough) makes it an appealing option – perhaps a little more so than the RTX 3060, which has a higher power draw of 170W. For display outputs, the new card sports a two HDMI 2.1 and two DisplayPort 1.4a outputs. It is also cooled by Gigabyte’s Windforce technology – it being equipped with what Gigabyte says are anti-turbulence inclined fans, ultra-quiet PWM fan and pure copper heat pipe.

But how does it fare, especially in comparison to the RTX 3060? Let’s take a look.

Performance Benchmarks

Test setup

For 2022, we have updated our test rig with the following specifications:

• Intel 12th Gen Core i9 12900K CPU
• ROG Maximus Z690 Hero
• Samsung 980 Pro 1TB SSD
• Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5
• Windows 11 Home 64-bit
• ASUS ROG Swift PG43UQ 4K Gaming Monitor

As with all our graphics cards reviews, we put the cards through a series of both synthetic and real-world gaming benchmark tests designed to push the cards to their limit. Now, I mentioned earlier that the RTX 3050 is also targeted at gamers who are looking to upgrade their two-generations old GTX 1650 or 1650 Ti cards, but unfortunately, we do not have these cards from way back to give you an indication of the performance gains you’ll get from this card upgrade,

So I'll be comparing the RTX 3050 card against the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming OC. It’s the only RTX 3060 we have for comparison and should give you an idea of how the card fits into NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3000 series line-up.

3Dmark benchmark

3DMark is a synthetic benchmark that tests graphics and computational performance at different resolutions, starting at 1080p and going all the way up to 4K. A series of two graphics test, one physics test, and then a combined test stresses your hardware in turn to assess its performance.

For the DirectX 11 Firestrike tests, the RTX 3050 expectedly falls behind the RTX 3060. The same goes in the DirectX 12 TimeSpy tests. But a synthetic benchmark like 3Dmark don’t always quite tell the whole story of a GPU. Especially when they are not of the same class.

Gaming benchmarks

For my gaming tests, I ran a variety of games from shooters, real-time strategy, to open-world ones. The games’ list certainly is not exhaustive, but I believe the variety is broad enough to give you an impression of the card’s performance. And because the RTX 3050 is an entry-level card, it only makes sense to limit the tests to 1080p and 1440p resolutions to see how long the card’s performance runway is (spoiler: playing at 4K with this card is akin to watching a stop-motion film).

At 1080p, the RTX 3050 seems to be able to hold up well with shooter games like the Vulkan-based Wolfenstein: Youngblood and the DirectX-based Guardians of the Galaxy and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. It does, however, wavers a little with more open-world based games such as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Horizon Zero Dawn, and falls completely at resource-intensive strategy games like Total War: Three Kingdoms. It’s also worth noting that the RTX 3060 ran all of these games with utmost ease at 1080p.

With 1440p, the results are not surprising – the RTX 3050 simply isn’t built to run games at QHD. If you have a monitor that supports this resolution, I recommend an RTX 3060 Ti, or if your budget allows, an RTX 3070 card instead.

But what happens if you have a 1440p monitor, a tight budget and the RTX 3050 is your only realistic option? Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that NVIDIA’s superb DLSS pretty much ensures you will still be able to enjoy these games at 60fps and above, but the bad news is that not all games support DLSS out of the box – although that list today is mightily impressive (even God of War for PC has support for it on day one).

What about ray tracing? Unfortunately, this tech still belongs in the realm of the costlier high-end gaming. Even with DLSS turned on, I suspect your ray-tracing experience is likely to be limited to shooter games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Guardians of the Galaxy. And only at 1080p. But if ray tracing isn’t key to your own personal gaming experience, then this consideration is moot anyway.

(Note that the settings used in my benchmarks are in the highest graphical settings to stretch the RTX 3050 as much as possible. Bumping them down will obviously net faster frame rates.)

Final Thoughts

Final thoughts

The GeForce RTX 3050 is a great graphics card for the 1080p masses, even bringing DLSS (and a bit of ray tracing, depending on the games player) and other RTX 30-series tech such as IO and Reflex to gamers looking for a suitable replacement for their GTX 1650/1650 Ti. It helps NVIDIA that there’s no genuine alternative from AMD – its only competition. I haven’t reviewed the red company’s own entry-level Radeon 6500 XT but the consensus on the Internet is that it’s one card to be avoided even with its lower US$199 price.

The real problem, however, is the same every time NVIDIA launches a new RTX 30-series card – it’s impossible to buy these cards at their SRP. That is if you can even find them at all. At US$249, the RTX 3050 is great value for your money in today’s market, but I’d wager that NVIDIA’s board partners like Gigabyte, MSI and ASUS will not be able to keep to SRP prices due to well-known supply issues – as well as hoardings from crypto miners. This hasn’t happened in well over a year, and it’s unlikely that supplies of RTX 3050 cards will fare any better than say, the RTX 3060 or even the RTX 3080 cards.

What gamers really want for 2022 is to be able to buy their graphics cards at sane prices.

But let’s give credit where it’s due. NVIDIA has already owned the high-end gaming market with the GeForce RTX 3070, 3080 and 3090 cards. With the GeForce RTX 3060 and now the RTX 3050, the entry-to-mid segments are theirs to dominate for the next few years to come as well.

Keyword: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Review: An entry-level RTX 30-series card that delivers DLSS to the masses