GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3050 Windforce OC 8G, 8GB GDDR6, DVI, HDMI, DP

Sowohl AMD als auch NVIDIA beginnen das neue Jahr mit je einem Angebot im Einstiegsbereich. Die Radeon RX 6500 XT (Test) konnte diese Hoffnung aber nicht erfüllen, was vor allem an den starken Einschränkungen liegt, die AMD der Karte auferlegt hat. So setzen nun sicherlich viele ihre Hoffnungen auf die GeForce RTX 3050, die als kleinstes Ampere-Modell ab einem Preis von 279 Euro die Hoffnungen all derer weckt, die relativ günstig an eine ansprechend schnelle Grafikkarte kommen wollen. Zumindest ob die Leistung stimmt, können wir uns in diesem Test genauer anschauen. Wie sich der Markt um die GeForce RTX 3050 preislich entwickelt, steht wieder auf einem anderen Blatt.

The GeForce RTX 3050 is NVIDIA's newest entry-level to mainstream performance graphics card series in the company's 3000 Series lineup. Disobedient to AMD's dramatic 200 USD Radeon RX 6500 XT with 4GB/64-bit graphics memory, 1024 shader processors tied to x4 PCIe lanes; the GeForce RTX 3050 is 50 bucks more expensive (MSRP) based on 8GB/128-bit and 2560 shader processors utilizing x8 PCIe lanes. basically we're looking at 1650 Series performance, but with added Raytrracing options and DLSS. The math immediately becomes visible, NVIDIA will win significantly today. With that 2560 shading cores and Ampere architecture, this 3050 series is bound to impress in the 1920x1080 and maybe even 2560x1440 (WQHD) domain. If stock becomes available in plentiful volumes though, as pricing will be everything. The GPU is again fabricated on an 8nm node derived from Samsung. This process further develops Samsung's 10nm process; no EUV is applied in production just yet. Notable is that a change is in effect, the memory runs at 14 Gbps and finally, entry-level receives 8GB GDDR6. The Ampere lineup nearly doubles ray-tracing performance with Gen2 ray-tracing cores and 3rd iteration Tensor cores. These cards will all be PCIe 4.0 interface compatible and offer HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a, but most importantly is that nicer shader processor count (referred to as CUDA cores by NVIDIA). We now meet the NVIDIA GA106 GPU. And despite being a lower segmented card, it still holds a sizable GPU die. In this round, NVIDIA is not seeding Founder edition cards, aka FE GeForce RTX 3050. But of course, they do present the reference specification; a boost clock of 1777 MHz and a base clock of 1552 MHz.