Question 3050 Reviews

[jpiniero]

Videocardz has a review that was mistakenly posted early: https://videocardz.com/newz/evga-geforce-rtx-3050-review-leaks-out-ahead-of-the-embargo

It doesn't compare it to the 6500 XT but it's definitely slower than the 6600.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Maybe, but when they are turning it on at 1080p - or running at lower quality settings to squeeze out 1440p performance at 60 fps - but other wise you could have had a 1070 or 1660 Super this whole time at very similar prices - it makes me shrug. As the headline enhancement, meh.

It gets parroted other places like Ars over and over and over like it's just a feature you can't game without. If then new GPU you bought doesn't do DLSS, throw it away! So it triggers me and that's my fault.

I also think that DLSS is a little bit of gimmick to make use of extra compute hardware that is otherwise a solution looking for a problem. That's just my opinion, I don't need to try to change yours if you disagree

- IMO if you need DLSS on a brand new card you didn't get enough card. It's a feature that should allow you to stretch your card for future demanding titles and one offs.

 

[Oyeve]

Good to see that my 1080 gtx still has some life.

 

[Heartbreaker]

Maybe, but when they are turning it on at 1080p - or running at lower quality settings to squeeze out 1440p performance at 60 fps - but other wise you could have had a 1070 or 1660 Super this whole time at very similar prices - it makes me shrug. As the headline enhancement, meh.

What?

3050 matches 1070/1660 Super performance before DLSS is engaged. So DLSS is a bonus that elevates performance a significant amount, and large number of games support it today. DLSS is a good feature to have.

And sure we could have bought those other cards in the past if you were actually looking in the past. No one is suggesting people who own those cards rush out and buy a 3050 which is a performance side grade with some feature upgrades.

The whole GPU market sucks right now, but the 3050 is a much more reasonably equipped low end GPU than something like the 6500XT. It's a significant upgrade on the 1650 Super which is the last 50 series card from NVidia. While the 6500XT is a regression from the 5500XT.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Yep, my 980Ti essentially performs ~3050 so I'm one generation away from "falling off the edge" in terms of comparable performance in a modern desktop product.

Might actually be the 6500XT's saving grace for me... It keeps my 980Ti firmly in the mid-low end performance category for one more trip around the sun...

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It's interesting to see how much more people are willing to play for NVidia cards.

Was that intentional? I laughed.

 

[blckgrffn]

What?

See the last paragraph of the post you selectively quoted.

I don't care about the numerology system at use here, really. Clearly the marketing teams are quite capable of pulling whatever numbers they want out of their posterior. Ultimately it's their utility that matters.

This doesn't compete with the 6500XT because the street price is like to be 1.5x to 2+x the price of the 6500XT. Maybe rightfully so, but that's like saying a GTX 1650S drubs a RX560, and cost (back in the day) 1.5 to 2x more based on the flavor. That's not really a hot take.

Frankly, I'd take a more cut down card than this for budget builds. Or, in a fantasy land, this actually available at $250 widely - that would be the "perfect" scenario. That's price of a used GTX 1060 6GB right now, which this at least would clearly beat. And be new and shiny.

Like $260+ turns me off on the 6500XT ($200 is the max), $400 shuts me down on this. I've shuffled my way to $429 3060's and a ~$530 3060 Ti and just recently purchased a 6600 which is a clear step up for $470.

My take continues to be scrape the bottom (used cards for less than $200 for me) or get something in the 2060S/5700 range (so 3060/6600 tier) the middle is a tough spot to be.

 

[Jaskalas]

The GTX 1060 (6gb) was roughly $250 six years ago.
From a quick look at the benchmark, in theory that represents a 50% increase in performance over that time period.
If anyone can find an RTX 3050 for $250.

Otherwise we may have to settle for breaking even with the GTX 10xx series. Gaming like it is 2016.

 

[Leeea]

With this card based on failed 3060 chips*, I feel supply is going to be anemic.

Why would nvidia make a 3050 when they could make a 3060? By basing this off failed 3060 chips, the supply is likely to be less then 1/10th that of the 3060.

*https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/nvidia-ga106.g966

 

[jpiniero]

With this card based on failed 3060 chips*, I feel supply is going to be anemic.

Why would nvidia make a 3050 when they could make a 3060? By basing this off failed 3060 chips, the supply is likely to be less then 1/10th that of the 3060.

They will probably use GA107 later. They are just going to burn through their stock of busted GA106 first.

 

[DeathReborn]

They will probably use GA107 later. They are just going to burn through their stock of busted GA106 first.

That's a possibility.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1486340707908341763

 

[Heartbreaker]

This doesn't compete with the 6500XT because the street price is like to be 1.5x to 2+x the price of the 6500XT. Maybe rightfully so, but that's like saying a GTX 1650S drubs a RX560, and cost (back in the day) 1.5 to 2x more based on the flavor. That's not really a hot take.

On MSRP it isn't that much higher, and would be MUCH better value if you could get each at MSRP.

Street price is going to be that much higher, because people value it that much more, because it's better.

It's unfortunate, but right now every GPU is settling at the max that many people are willing to pay.

 

[jpiniero]

On MSRP it isn't that much higher, and would be MUCH better value if you could get each at MSRP.

Street price is going to be that much higher, because people value it that much more, because it's better.

It's unfortunate, but right now every GPU is settling at the max that many people are willing to pay.

The question is going to be how close the real price will be to the 6600.

 

[Heartbreaker]

The question is going to be how close the real price will be to the 6600.

6600 will almost certainly remain the best price/performance street price. As I mentioned people are willing to pay more for NVidia, making it's value worse in this post MSRP world.

6600 is what I would go for today.

 

[blckgrffn]

3050 Shuffle day at the Egg! Probably the one shot we will have at MSRP 😂

They top out at $489 for the Asus Strix model - I did not check that box.

I did check the $329 box though - past that my enthusiasm wains.

 

[jpiniero]

3050 Shuffle day at the Egg! Probably the one shot we will have at MSRP 😂

They top out at $489 for the Asus Astrid model - I did not check that box.

I did check the $329 box though - past that my enthusiasm wains.

I'm guessing any below $379 will go straight to eBay.

 

[blckgrffn]

I'm guessing any below $379 will go straight to eBay.

Mine won't, if I can get an "MSRP" unicorn then I've got a buddy that needs a card to upgrade from GTX 770 and this would do the trick for him.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

This launch was the bad joke I surmised it would be. Not readily available, and the street price is derp. Wait they said. It'll be worth it they said. LULZ!

This card is not getting roasted properly. I'll do it myself. It's hot garbage. It is grossly overpriced, even at fairy magic MSRP/RRP for a card that has the performance of 70s series from half a decade ago. The reasons for it are readily evident, but that changes nothing. But I do get a good laugh at how, instead of pitchforks and torches outrage over performance and pricing. It is suddenly an interdasting cause for discussion.

While the 6500xt definitely has a narrow use case i.e. PCIe 4.0/5.0 builds. It is still the best sub $300 card you can buy for those. Why would I risk tarnishing my reputation, and/or have systems I sold, come back for service, because I sold them with a less expensive, old, used card, on the wrong end of the bathtub curve?

 

[jpiniero]

While the 6500xt definitely has a narrow use case i.e. PCIe 4.0/5.0 builds. It is still the best sub $300 card you can buy for those. Why would I risk tarnishing my reputation, and/or have systems I sold, come back for service, because I sold them with a less expensive, old, used card, on the wrong end of the bathtub curve?

The 3050 is a lot faster. The 6600 even more so.

 

[Heartbreaker]

This launch was the bad joke I surmised it would be. Not readily available, and the street price is derp. Wait they said. It'll be worth it they said. LULZ!

This card is not getting roasted properly. I'll do it myself. It's hot garbage. It is grossly overpriced, even at fairy magic MSRP/RRP for a card that has the performance of 70s series from half a decade ago. The reasons for it are readily evident, but that changes nothing. But I do get a good laugh at how, instead of pitchforks and torches outrage over performance and pricing. It is suddenly an interdasting cause for discussion.

While the 6500xt definitely has a narrow use case i.e. PCIe 4.0/5.0 builds. It is still the best sub $300 card you can buy for those. Why would I risk tarnishing my reputation, and/or have systems I sold, come back for service, because I sold them with a less expensive, old, used card, on the wrong end of the bathtub curve?

At MSRP, you would have to be severely biased to defend the 6500xt over the RTX 3050 which is better in every way and easily worth the $50 delta. At best the 6500 should be a $130 card, and the 3050 $180.

Yeah, street price will be much higher than MSRP on the 3050, exactly as predicted.

This has been the case for every card in the last year. So it would be disingenuous to act surprised at the street price. Cards are settling in at what the market will bear based on how desirable they are.

The only reason the 6500XT is closer to it's already inflated MSRP, is because it's so crippled for so many people, that a Lot of us wouldn't even buy it at it's base MSRP.

Edit:
I went to Newegg. There is no stock on 3050. But I do see that each of Asus/MSI/Gigabyte/EVGA/Zotac all did at least one $250 MSRP 3050.

When I check even the out of stock 6500XT, only Asus did a $200 MSRP, they immediately jump to $260 after that one card.

 

[Aikouka]

This card is not getting roasted properly. I'll do it myself. It's hot garbage. It is grossly overpriced, even at fairy magic MSRP/RRP for a card that has the performance of 70s series from half a decade ago. The reasons for it are readily evident, but that changes nothing. But I do get a good laugh at how, instead of pitchforks and torches outrage over performance and pricing. It is suddenly an interdasting cause for discussion.

I mentioned this in the Ars comments on the 3050, but I think this 3000/Ampere generation has two alarming trends that I'm not terribly fond of: power and price. In regard to power, I don't know if Nvidia just wasn't happy with the performance at prior power levels (e.g. 250W at the high end), but having to consume an extra 100W just to hit what should be a generational performance gap isn't terribly impressive. What's worse is that I've always heard that you can sacrifice a relatively small amount of performance if you drop your voltage (and the resulting wattage) a bit. Doing that puts it close to the previous power targets, and it's still a higher performer. It also doesn't help that Ampere also had the benefit of a smaller node in addition to its upgraded architecture and still failed to hit good power targets.

Pricing is a hard thing to really talk about in some respects. The market is such a mess right now that it's hard to say how the 3000-series cards would've been priced if things were comparable to what we had 2-3 years ago. However, we can pick up on pricing trends that are arguably still getting worse. The 2000-series cards were the first to introduce the hefty $1200 pricing with the 2080 Ti, and we've seen the same with the 3080 Ti. The three cards that I've been mostly fine with this generation are the 3060 Ti, 3070, and 3080 (10GB) as they've had decent pricing overall. Albeit, I think it'd be far better if the 3060 didn't exist and the 3060 Ti was at the 3060's price point.

I think it's also worth mentioning that Nvidia branching out from simply graphics is also adding extra complexity and cost to cards, but I wonder how worthwhile it is to gamers in the end? For example, do we think that ray tracing has been worth the extra cost? Removing the RT cores would produce smaller dies and help ditch the RT tax related to all the R&D that it takes to handle it. On the other hand, it seems like the Tensor cores have been fairly useful for the AI processing with things like DLSS. It even gives us things like RTX Voice, which, to be fair, has been shown to work fine outside of RTX-based GPUs too.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

The 3050 is a lot faster. The 6600 even more so.

Uh huh. How much do those cost right now, add to cart?

BTW - I AM an idiot, so I will let the penchant members here have, for stating the obvious to me, slide.

 

[blckgrffn]

I really think that the 3050 should have been 4GB (I think this is an issue with dram density?) and the mobile die and the 3050ti the 8GB cutdown 3060 die.

Even at $249 it would have been solidly better than the 6500xt and the $299 ti would have been MSRP priced closer to reality.

Oh well.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I mentioned this in the Ars comments on the 3050, but I think this 3000/Ampere generation has two alarming trends that I'm not terribly fond of: power and price. In regard to power, I don't know if Nvidia just wasn't happy with the performance at prior power levels (e.g. 250W at the high end), but having to consume an extra 100W just to hit what should be a generational performance gap isn't terribly impressive. What's worse is that I've always heard that you can sacrifice a relatively small amount of performance if you drop your voltage (and the resulting wattage) a bit. Doing that puts it close to the previous power targets, and it's still a higher performer. It also doesn't help that Ampere also had the benefit of a smaller node in addition to its upgraded architecture and still failed to hit good power targets.

Pricing is a hard thing to really talk about in some respects. The market is such a mess right now that it's hard to say how the 3000-series cards would've been priced if things were comparable to what we had 2-3 years ago. However, we can pick up on pricing trends that are arguably still getting worse. The 2000-series cards were the first to introduce the hefty $1200 pricing with the 2080 Ti, and we've seen the same with the 3080 Ti. The three cards that I've been mostly fine with this generation are the 3060 Ti, 3070, and 3080 (10GB) as they've had decent pricing overall. Albeit, I think it'd be far better if the 3060 didn't exist and the 3060 Ti was at the 3060's price point.

I think it's also worth mentioning that Nvidia branching out from simply graphics is also adding extra complexity and cost to cards, but I wonder how worthwhile it is to gamers in the end? For example, do we think that ray tracing has been worth the extra cost? Removing the RT cores would produce smaller dies and help ditch the RT tax related to all the R&D that it takes to handle it. On the other hand, it seems like the Tensor cores have been fairly useful for the AI processing with things like DLSS. It even gives us things like RTX Voice, which, to be fair, has been shown to work fine outside of RTX-based GPUs too.

Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful post.

RTX is a selling point. Low cost cards (even though they are still relatively poorly suited for the feature) with RTX is a good box to have a checkmark in, whether it be OEM/S.I. pre-builts or retail boxes.

The rest are all incredibly ancillary concerns for me. Performance per watt, engineering decisions, all went by the wayside, quite a ways back for me. What is the add to cart price, and can I add it to cart? THAT is what matters to me now.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So, can you even get these today, or what? At least the RX 6500 XT was (spottily) available, if $79 over MSRP. At lease you didn't need to do the shuffle.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I really think that the 3050 should have been 4GB (I think this is an issue with dram density?) and the mobile die and the 3050ti the 8GB cutdown 3060 die.

Even at $249 it would have been solidly better than the 6500xt and the $299 ti would have been MSRP priced closer to reality.

Oh well.

Once again, fantasy stats, and woulda coulda shoulda, are all fine and well. They keep the discussion alive and lively. But reality is a harsh mistress, as the saying goes. Reality is, the 3050 is nigh impossible to buy, and its over $400 if you can. The rest is everyone wittingly or unwittingly, doing Nvidia's marketing and advertising department's job for them.