MSI GeForce RTX 3050 GAMING X 8G Gaming Graphics Card - 8GB GDDR6X, 1845 MHz, PCI Express Gen 4 x 8, 128-bit, 3x DP v 1.4a, HDMI 2.1 (Supports 4K)

Product Information

Last up we have Cyberpunk 2077, and here the RTX 3050 managed to break the 60 fps barrier with the medium quality preset, averaging 66 fps which all things considered is quite a good result. Unfortunately, it was 18% slower than the RTX 2060, but it was also 40% faster than the 6500 XT, or 69% faster when using PCIe 3.0. Those 2,560 CUDA cores in the RTX 3050 are split between 20 SMs which also then delivers 20 RT cores and 80 Tensor cores. It's those last two specs that separate the RTX 3050 from its GTX 1660 Ti brethren and ought to make it a far more tempting choice for the mainstream gamer. The RT cores are what allow for ray tracing and the Tensor Cores then allow you to enable DLSS to make ray tracing actually playable at a decent frame rate, all thanks to the magic of AI-powered super sampling.

Whether that happens remains to be seen. AMD has cut the RX 6500 XT GPU to shreds, so it's less than half the size of the GA106 GPU in the RTX 3050, which means it can theoretically manufacture far more in the same amount of time because it gets more chips out of the same size silicon wafer. Maybe that's why there are more Radeon cards available a week on from launch, maybe AMD's gamble has paid off. The 6500 XT turns in one of its better figures in Far Cry 6 and as a result the 3050 was just 14% faster, though the issue for the 6500 XT is PCIe 3.0 and when compared to that configuration the 3050 was 37% faster. And here's a look at the 12 game average data, which has been calculated using the geomean. The RTX 3050 averaged 108fps at 1080p, which made it just 5% slower than the GTX 1660 Super, 10% slower than the RTX 2060, and 23% slower than the Radeon RX 6600. Next we have Horizon Zero Dawn where the 6500 XT using PCIe 4.0 did well relative to most other games with 72 fps on average. The RTX 3050 was 14% faster, though with both using PCIe 3.0 the GeForce GPU would be a massive 55% faster.Those margins remained at 1440p. Here the RTX 3050 was 37% faster than the 6500 XT, or 58% faster when using PCIe 3.0. It only managed 41 fps on average, so for this game I'd say the RTX 3050 is better suited for 1080p gameplay. Power Consumption Even at 1440p the 6500 XT hangs in there averaging 64 fps against the RTX 3050's 79 fps, which made the GeForce GPU 23% faster and given the price difference, even at MSPR, that's a decent result for AMD. On Cyberpunk 2077 we find that DLSS is most impressive, boosting rasterization performance by an incredible 48%, allowing the RTX 3050 to beat the Radeon RX 6600. Then using ray tracing without DLSS enabled saw the RTX 3060 and RX 6600 delivering comparable performance at 30-40 fps. But of course, enabling DLSS offered a big boost and then the RTX 3050 was good for around 60 fps on average. In Doom Eternal, the RTX 3050 does extremely well matching the RTX 2060 with 178 fps on average. That meant it was 82% faster than the 6500 XT and 287% faster than the PCIe 3.0 configuration. That's all we need to say about that.

Time for the all important cost per frame analysis. We're going to start with the MSRP using the 1080p data, but we'll include 1440p results and other data points (and assumptions) for a more realistic pricing comparison in just a moment. Next up we have Death Stranding, and this is another game that isn't terribly demanding, despite looking quite nice. The GTX 3050 was good for 108 fps using the default quality preset at 1080p and that placed it directly between the 1660 Super and GTX 2060, a great result.

Clock Speeds

The 6500 XT does crumble at 1440p, whereas the RTX 3050 remains strong, turning in over 60 fps on average to make it 42% faster. is an ugly affair for the 6500 XT and it's disappointing to see that while the 4GB RX 570 can hit 60 fps and a very playable experience, the 6500 XT using PCIe 3.0 was reduced to 36 fps. It is also notable that AMD's latest GPU, the Navi 24 silicon inside the RX 6500 XT is a 107mm2 chip, while the GA106 is something in the region of 276mm2. That's something which will likely come into play when it comes to manufacturing and the numbers of GPUs that each company can produce to fulfil the demand for their cards.