While all eyes are eagerly glued to the upcoming RTX 50 series, most recently rumored to be released next year, Nvidia might be planning to release a mobile processor with its current-gen architecture. As per the latest rumors, Nvidia is planning a new mobile graphics card for laptops. However, it is an RTX 30 series GPU that will be built on RTX 40-series architecture.
This strange combination poses an important question: will this ’30-series’ GPU offer any 40-series-exclusive features such as DLSS frame generation? Only time will tell, but we’re going to lean towards no if Nvidia has chosen to use the 3050 moniker.
The RTX 30-series laptop GPU will use Ada Lovelace architecture
The rumored RTX 30 series will be an RTX 3050 A built on the Ada Lovelace architecture (AD106). The original RTX 3000 lineup is based on the Ampere architecture (AD107), so a last-gen card based on the current-gen architecture is something new to us. Since a 4050 laptop GPU already exists, we’re not quite sure what Nvidia is up to here.
As per a recent PC-ID database entry, the upcoming RTX 3050 A GPU is a mobile card that would be used for laptops. Nvidia often resorts to mixed SKUs in order to offer better solutions to its partners or get rid of partially broken cards.
One of the key differences between AD106 and AD107, is that the newer architecture allows for more cores, and thus better performance. To be more specific, the recently released RTX 4060 Ti (for desktop) has 4,352 CUDA cores. Meanwhile, the RTX 4060, which is based on the AD107 architecture has 3,072 cores. In any case, the RTX 3050 A won’t be able to beat the other cards in the AD106-based laptop lineup.
At the moment, there is no information available on the release date or technical specifications of this alleged RTX 3050 A graphics card. Nvidia has not officially confirmed this GPU either. Interestingly, if this card does launch, it won’t be the first variant of the RTX 3050 A. We already have RTX 3050 4GB and RTX 3050 6GB variants on the market.
In the meantime, we’re looking forward to the RTX 5000-series GPUs, which, according to a leaker, will debut in early 2025. Plus, there are rumors that Nvidia is gearing up for an RTX 5090D graphics card specifically for China. In addition to that, Nvidia is also rumored to be making an AI-powered “Titan” GPU, which is said to be more powerful than the upcoming RTX 5090.
