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The NVIDIA 3050 was announced at CES, aiming to be the definitive upgrade for the majority of users surveyed by Valve on their Steam platform who still use a GTX 1060 or similar card. While AMD’s recent launch has not been met with the best response, the 3050 already has a bit of hype around it before its launch.
NVIDIA RTX 3050 Release Date and Price
The graphics card will launch on the 27th of January, with an RRP of $250, making NVIDIA’s goal of producing yet another long-lasting budget card for gamers who can’t particularly afford to go for the higher tier cards. It is far and away from the cheapest RTX card available with decent performance behind it and much like AMD’s current push, it will use DLSS – NVIDIA’s supersampling method – to upscale games from lower resolutions to 1080p or beyond, as it can start to take on games not originally intended for it.
NVIDIA RTX 3050 Specs
NVIDIA have released the specs and some benchmarks have leaked out, rendering the new AMD RX 6500 XT almost useless by comparison. NVIDIA has also outfitted this card with their new anti-mining technology, intended to curb the rise in people buying these graphics cards for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency rather than their original purpose. This should halt the number of purchases by scalpers and crypto miners from buying this card, while NVIDIA gets it to the intended consumer.
While this won’t be your top tier card, it’s certainly a decent replacement for those on cards that are due to upgrade after entering PCs in 2016.
| Memory Specs: | Standard Memory Config | 8 GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Interface Width | 128-bit | |
| Technology Support: | Ray Tracing Cores | 2nd Generation |
| Tensor Cores | 3rd Generation | |
| NVIDIA Architecture | Ampere | |
| Microsoft DirectX® 12 Ultimate | Yes | |
| NVIDIA DLSS | Yes | |
| NVIDIA Reflex | Yes | |
| NVIDIA Broadcast | Yes | |
| PCI Express Gen 4 | Yes | |
| Resizable BAR | Yes | |
| NVIDIA® GeForce Experience™ | Yes | |
| NVIDIA Ansel | Yes | |
| NVIDIA FreeStyle | Yes | |
| NVIDIA ShadowPlay | Yes | |
| NVIDIA Highlights | Yes | |
| NVIDIA G-SYNC® | Yes | |
| Game Ready Drivers | Yes | |
| NVIDIA Studio Drivers | Yes | |
| NVIDIA GPU Boost™ | Yes | |
| NVIDIA NVLink™ (SLI-Ready) | – | |
| Vulkan RT API, OpenGL 4.6 | Yes | |
| NVIDIA Encoder (NVENC) | 7th Generation | |
| NVIDIA Decoder (NVDEC) | 5th Generation | |
| VR Ready | – | |
| Display Support: | Maximum Digital Resolution (1) | 7680×4320 |
| Standard Display Connectors | HDMI(2), 2x DisplayPort(3) | |
| Multi-Monitor | 4 | |
| HDCP | 2.3 | |
| Thermal and Power Specs: | Maximum GPU Temperature (in C) | 93 |
| Graphics Card Power (W) | 130 | |
| Required System Power (W) (4) | 550 | |
| Supplementary Power Connectors | 1x PCIe 8-pin |
Where to buy the RTX 3050
| UK | US |
|---|---|
| Scan | Best Buy |
| Amazon | Amazon |
| Overclockers | Newegg |
| eBuyer | B&H |
| Novatech | |
| Stormforce |
