NVIDIA RTX 3050 review: A great $250 GPU (in theory)

The idea of a $250 graphics card seems like a pipe dream today, when demand is so high and prices are so high. Still, that is not stopping the company from trying out the new product. It is the company's cheapest graphics card yet with ray tracing, and it is meant to take on the cheaper Radeon RX 6500XT, which has a suggested retail price of $200. It is unclear if the 3050 will sell for $250 once it hits stores, but at least it will be less than the Turing 3060, which went for around $1,000 at Newegg and other.

The 3050 is meant to be an affordable way to play modern games, just like the other 50-class graphics cards. With newer titles like Control demanding more power from our systems, it makes sense for NVIDIA to deliver a budget 30-series entry. The 3050 has 2,560 CUDA cores, a boost speed of 1,777 MHz, and 8GB of GDDR6 RAM, which is less than the 3060, which has 3,584 CUDA cores and 8GB of RAM. As a 30-series graphics card, it also has ray tracing and tensor cores, which allow it to tap into more realistic lighting, as well as the company's DLSS technology to boost performance.

• Great 1080p performance
• Decent 1440p gaming
• Quiet and cool
• Low suggested price

• May be tough to find at its $250 price

The new card is being positioned as a major update to the 1650 card, which only had 896 CUDA cores and no ray tracing or tensor capabilities. The company surprised us all when it announced a laptop version of its desktop graphics card. The RTX 3050 is more compelling on paper than the Radeon 6500XT, which only has 4GB of memory, a much slower memory bus, and only taps into 4 PCIe lanes instead of the typical 16. It is less future-proof than the slightly more expensive RTX 3050 because it was cut as much as it could.

When I tried to play every game I threw at it in1080p, the EVGA RTX It was well-suited for 144Hz refresh rate monitors because it averaged 140 frames per second. The performance was halved when the resolution was bumped up to 1,440p. It is clear that the 3050 is the best monitor for gaming in high definition, especially if you are trying to get enough performance to justify a high refresh rate monitor.

The system tested was powered by a Ryzen 7 5800X, 32GB of RAM and a 970 EVO Plus SSD.

In the game, the 3050 hit an average of 90 frames per second with the highest settings. If you want all of the best visual flourishes, those scores are decent, but I bet many people would go for better settings. Control is one of the more demanding games and the graphics card handled it well. It reached 65 frames per second with maxed out graphics and no ray tracing. When I flipped on the game, it was rendered at 720p and upscaled to1080p, with the framerate jumping to 90 frames per second. It was perfect at 70 frames per second when I turned on medium ray tracing settings. Not bad for a video card.

It is best to ignore the typical benchmarks, like 3DMark's suite. The 3050 is slower than the rest of the lineup, so you should ignore what you are missing. It's important that it's an affordable card that can play demanding games well in1080p, and in some cases it will even get you to 1440p. It doesn't generate much heat or noise thanks to its relatively tame performance. It was at a cool 60 degrees under load.

I didn't have an option to compare it to, but judging from the reviews and its specifications, you'll have a hard time reaching Ultra-level1080p gaming with it. The memory was hampered to make it less appealing. The price of that plan is now between $250 and $300 on Newegg.

It will be interesting to see how far the price of the RTX 3050 goes after its release. It is an absolute steal if you can get it for $250, and it will be worth a lot more for many people. It is the only way to get a 3000-series card without paying over $1,000.