The GeForce RTX 3050 is not a high-end graphics card, and it may not be suitable for 4K gaming. It is designed for more modest gaming systems and is intended for use at resolutions up to 1080p or 1440p.
Overall, the RTX 3050 Ti is a sound graphics card for gaming at 1080p resolution with moderate in-game settings. However, most video games see frame rates that drop below 60 fps when you increase the resolution to 1440p. Therefore, you should refrain from using it to play games at 1440p or 4K resolution.
The RTX 3050 disappointingly failed to fit the 60fps mark here, achieving 52.8fps. That's still very much playable, mind, it's just not as smooth as you'd want for a card that specialises in 1080p gaming. Crank the resolution up to 4K, and you'll see the performance fall to 20.73, which is virtually unplayable.
ASUS RTX 3050 ROG Strix OC Edition
HDMI 2.1 supports up to 48 Gb/s bandwidth and a range of higher resolutions and refresh rates, including 8K @ 60fps, 4K @ 120fps, and even up to 10K. The RTX 3050 is not just about high-resolution gaming.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 is the RTX 30-series entry-level card. Although it's better than almost any older Nvidia GPU, it's not worth buying. The main reason for this is the pricing. At the $300 price range, it is possible to find better-suited GPUs from AMD.
The GeForce RTX 3050 is a great 1080p graphics card in these trying times, capable of chewing through games at 60-plus frames per second or higher at 1080p resolution even with all visual bells and whistles usually enabled. (You may need to bump some settings down to High in especially strenuous games.)
If you plan on playing games at 1080p high settings you won't be disappointed. The RTX 3050 can consistently hit high frames with very few frame drops in some of the most popular titles available. The only major downside to this card is its lack of performance in both 1440p settings and with Ray Tracing turned on.
Best GPU for 4K Gaming – Excellent for (Ultrawide) 1440p Too! Currently, there are three GPUs that are excellent for 4K gaming. These are the GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 from NVIDIA and the Radeon RX 7900 XTX from AMD. These three GPUs can comfortably play games at 4K without any issues.
You're still getting Ampere-flavoured benefits here though, such as an HDMI 2.1 connection, ensuring the GPU is compatible with 8K TVs – the RTX 3050 won't be able to hit those resolution heights, but it's still good to have.
If you bought something like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, which is the fastest single graphics card on the market in 2023, you will be able to reliably run current games at 4K with maxed settings and maintain a steady 60fps. In some games you will even be able to achieve 120fps under these conditions.
It features the latest NVIDIA architecture and offers impressive performance for its price range. With its 12 GB of GDDR6 memory and 3584 CUDA cores, the RTX 3060 can easily handle demanding games and applications. Without a doubt, the RTX 3060 can run games at 4k, with a medium graphics setting.
As a mainstream card, the RTX 3060 primarily targets 1080p and 1440p gaming. Some lighter games may also run fine at 4K, or in some cases, you could shoot for 4K at medium settings. But despite having more VRAM than even the RTX 3080, frame rates definitely take a hit at the highest resolutions.
It offers 2,560 cores and supports PCIe 4.0. The performance is similar to the older GeForce RTX 2060 and therefore best suited for 1080p gaming of modern and demanding games in high settings. The GA106 chip offers 3,840 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 1,920 INT32 ALUs).
Best CPU for Streaming and Gaming on a Budget
At the bare minimum, the RTX 3050 is an ideal starting point for the budget-focused, as it offers NVENC encoding and acceptable framerates in variety games.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 is a mid-range graphics card that is capable of running many modern games, but it may not be able to run all games at the highest settings or resolutions. In general, the RTX 3050 is well-suited for playing games at 1080p resolution (1920×1080) with high or medium graphics settings.
Every GPU will be different, but the vast majority of 4K capable cards will likely need 750W as a minimum.
4K is an extremely taxing resolution to play games at, even in older AAA games and while you may be able to get reasonable frame rates with mid-tier graphics cards, the best graphics cards for 4K gaming are at the top end of the pile.
For users who prioritize performance and are looking for a card that can handle demanding workloads, the GTX 1080 may be a better option. For those who want a more efficient card with newer features and lower power consumption, the RTX 3050 would be the better choice.
On average, the RTX 3050 gets 115 FPS at 1080p and 79 FPS at 1440p. On the other hand, the 2060 averages 127 FPS for 1080p and 87 FPS for 1440p gaming. So, whether you're gaming at 1080p or 1440p, the older card has a 10% performance advantage over the newer GPU.
RTX 3050 also performs much better than the GTX 1650 as it has faster core clocks and more VRAM. The RTX 3050 outperforms the GTX 1650 by a substantial gap in all the games it can run. However, both GPUs run at comparable temperatures while gaming. For sure, RTX 3050 is the better one!
The RTX 3060 has 3584 CUDA cores, while the RTX 3050 is limited to 2,560/2304 CUDA cores. Given the difference in cores, the RTX 3060 offers about 43% more performance than the RTX 3050. The boost clock speed of the RTX 3060 is also higher, with 1.78 GHz compared to 1.78/1.76 GHz on the RTX 3050.
It's a no-brainer to call Nvidia's RTX 3050 the better all-around, entry-level GPU compared to AMD's RX 6500 XT. Standard and ray tracing performance are significantly higher, and the RTX 3050 supports both encoding and decoding for AV1 and H265/HEVC.
If you're targeting entry-level 1440p gaming, the RTX 3050 is without question the superior product, vastly superior in my opinion. Not only are you likely to be pushing well over 60 fps with the GeForce GPU, but it's also just 8% more expensive per frame when compared to the 6500 XT in the PCIe 4.0 mode.
The RTX 3050 had previously only had a laptop variant that was launched on May 11, 2021 along with the laptop variant of the RTX 3050 Ti that currently still has no desktop variant. Nvidia officially released the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti on March 29, 2022.