In September 2018, GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti/GEFORCE RTX 2080 was officially released;
In October 2018, GEFORCE RTX 2070 was officially released;
In January 2019, GEFORCE RTX 2060 was officially released;
In July 2019, GEFORCE RTX 2070 Super/GEFORCE RTX 2060 Super was officially released;
In July 2019, the GEFORCE RTX 2080 Super was officially released
In September 2020, the GEFORCE RTX 3090 / GEFORCE RTX 3080 was officially released
In October 2020, the GEFORCE RTX 3070 was officially released
In December 2020, the GEFORCE RTX 3060 Ti was officially released
In February 2021, the GEFORCE RTX 3060 was officially released
In June 2021, the GEFORCE RTX 3080 Ti/GEFORCE RTX 3070 Ti was officially released
In January 2022, the GEFORCE RTX 3080 12GB was officially released
In January 2022, the GEFORCE RTX 3050 was officially released
After 41 months, NVIDIA finally brought gaming graphics cards with ray tracing technology to the consumer-grade thousand-dollar market.
In September 2018, NVIDIA officially launched the most revolutionary ray-traced gaming graphics cards – the GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti and the GEFORCE RTX 2080. Subsequently, the GEFORCE RTX 20*0 graphics card based on turing architecture was officially rolled out on the market, but unfortunately, the ray-traced game graphics card was not as popular as expected, and the lowest positioning had to be the GEFORCE RTX 2060 graphics card. At that time, the author was still comforting himself, there were few games with ray tracing technology, and I put up with it!
Until now, the ampere architecture-based RTX 3000 series graphics cards have launched 8 graphics cards, and the mid-range graphics card market has blossomed. And the use of ray tracing, DLSS, Reflex and other NVIDIA unique technology of the game is more and more, if the thousand yuan file is not ordinary ray tracing game graphics card really can not say. So shortly after the start of 2022, NVIDIA finally released its latest generation of entry-level ray-traced gaming graphics card, the GEFORCE RTX 3050.
GEFORCE RTX 3050 graphics card with core number: GA106-150
As the lowest-positioned 30 series ray-traced gaming graphics card, the first GEFORCE RTX 3050 uses the same GA106 core as the GEFORCE RTX 3060 graphics card, with the core number: GA106-150; one of the complete GA106 cores has 30 sets of SM units, while the GEFORCE RTX 3050 is equipped with 20 sets of SM units, the number of CUDADs has reached 2560, and the memory width is 128 bits.
From the specification point of view, GEFORCE RTX 3050 and the big brother GEFORCE RTX 3060 is a certain gap, SM unit difference of 8 groups, memory width reduced by 64bit, the entire specifications seem to be really shrunk a lot. Even the author was worried that the performance of the GEFORCE RTX 3050 would be very tight, and then I got the driver test to know that it was not much different from the performance in the budget, and it was easy to play games and content creation at 1080p resolution.
Compared with the old brother GEFORCE GTX 1650, thanks to the Anta architecture and 8nm process, GEFORCE RTX 3050 is really improved in terms of specifications, but its core area is only a little larger than GEFORCE GTX 1650, and the specifications are not much different from the GEFORCE GTX 1660 Super. If it is for the RX 6500 XT just released by Youshang, the GEFORCE RTX 3050 specification is really good, and there is a sense of immediacy that is fully suppressed.
Rainbow Tomahawk GEFORCERTX 3050 DUO 8G
As with the geforce RTX 3060 when it was first launched, NVIDIA did not provide us with the FE version of the GEFORCE RTX 3050, we could only test the performance of non-public graphics cards with the public frequency provided by AIC. The graphics card used this time is rainbow Tomahawk GEFORCE RTX 3050 DUO 8G [hereinafter referred to as the "Tomahawk RTX 3050"].
The Tomahawk RTX 3050 follows the classic red-and-black color scheme of the Rainbow Tomahawk graphics card, and the design elements of the series are mainly based on tough cutting lines, similar to the gold cutting lines of diamonds.
Coupled with colorful BATTLEAX chrome trim strips to make a dividing line between different colors, the video impact is better.
Even for entry-level ray-traced gaming graphics cards, the Tomahawk RTX 3050 is equipped with a metal backplane that protects the graphics card's PCB back elements while enhancing the fixed PCB board.
Similarly, the Tomahawk RTX 3050 still offers a relatively rich output interface, three DP 1.4a, and one HDMI 2.1.
The graphics card occupies two PCIe slots, and the detailed size is 253.4*132.5*41mm, which is compatible with most chassis.
NVIDIA official nominal GEFORCE RTX 3050 graphics card TDP of 130W, and according to the specification PCIe slot to provide up to 75W power supply, Tomahawk RTX 3050 equipped with a single 8Pin auxiliary power supply margin is still relatively large.
Rainbow Tomahawk GEFORCERTX 3050 DUO 8G, disassembly
Since GA106 adopts a small core design, from the PCB design, the GA106-150 core has a further reduction in the demand for power supply and PCB materials. You can see that the Tomahawk RTX 3050 graphics card is only required for a 5+1 phase design, and the PCB is welded to the position of the three-phase core and the one-phase video memory.
Tomahawk RTX 3050 graphics card is equipped with a 128-bit memory width, so only 4 GDDR6 memory particles can meet the bit width requirements, and the Micron GDDR6 memory particles numbered "D9ZPM" have a single 2GB capacity, and 4 can form 8GB of large memory capacity.
The core power supply is a 5-phase power supply design, the main control is ON Semiconductor's NCP81610 8-phase PWM control chip; each phase core power supply is equipped with DrMos chip number NCP302150, and the maximum continuous output current of a single single is 50A.
The core power supply back and the metal back plate are also equipped with thermal pads to assist the core power supply module to dissipate heat
The main body of the radiator adopts a combination of a large area of heat dissipation fins and two 6mm heat pipes; the two heat pipes are U-shaped design, which directly runs through the two sections of heat dissipation fins; at the same time, the heat pipe and the heat dissipation fins are fixed by reflow welding technology before, and the heat dissipation effect is well guaranteed.
The bottom is a pure copper base, with the overall nickel plating treatment, to strengthen the heat dissipation effect, oxidation resistance is also better.
The fin fin is fixed with a metal bracket directly to the heat dissipation fins
The cooling fan is two 9cm silent fans, which are combined with the PWM function to achieve a good balance between the heat dissipation efficiency and the mute effect.
Test Platform Introduction:
In order to reflect the most realistic application performance of GEFORCE RTX 3050, we did not use lntel's flagship i9-12900K processor in this test, but chose the i5-12600K processor that is more close to the people, although it is not as strong as the i9 in multi-threaded co-processing, it is still a hybrid architecture processor, with a built-in 6 performance core + 4 energy efficiency core configuration, and the game performance is still strong.
After all, GEFORCE RTX 3050 has a big brother GEFORCE RTX 3060, there are a bunch of old brothers under it, and the god card GTX 1060 6GB FE We also asked us to come out, and joined the friendly business to enter the ray tracing game graphics card. Just said that due to the lack of FE public version, our GEFORCE RTX 3050 graphics card uses a graphics card for the Rainbow Tomahawk GEFORCE RTX RTX 3050 DUO 8G, from the latest version of gpu-Z software can be viewed to the frequency of this graphics card is the same as the public version, TDP is also limited to 130W.
Theoretical performance comparison
* GEFORCE RTX 3050 is 100% performance indicator, if other graphics cards can not run items are not counted in the comparison
3DMARK theoretical performance testing is a growing number of projects, including not only the traditional DX11 Fire Strike series tests, but also the latest DX12 Time Spy series tests, and the addition of DLSS functional tests exclusive to Port Royal and NVIDIA graphics cards for ray tracing technology.
Judging from the test results, the performance improvement of GEFORCE RTX 3050 graphics card compared with the previous positioning OF GTX 1650 is huge, and the simple Fire Strike and Time Spy series tests have increased by a full 47%; in the face of Steam God Card GTX 1060 6GB, there is also a significant improvement, about 23%.
Of course, if compared with the big brother GEFORCE RTX 3060, geFORCE RTX 3050 performance is a certain gap. Not counting the PCIe project results, GEFORCE RTX 3060 is 42% higher than GEFORCE RTX 3050, can only blame Lao Huang's knife is too fierce, SM unit and memory bandwidth difference caused such a gap. At the same time, I believe that this gap is also for the future of a certain RTX 3050 Ti to make way.
GeFORCE RTX 3050 and GEFORCE RTX 2060 FE are both the lowest ray-traced gaming graphics cards in the series, with the RTX 2060 FE having better specifications, but the GEFORCE RTX 3050 using the latest manufacturing process and ampere architecture; while the RTX 2060 FE is also priced higher, so the GEFORCE RTX 3050 and GEFORCE RTX 2060 FE are 20% behind. Theoretical performance is also understandable. Looking at the GTX 1660 SUPER, which is almost priced, the GEFORCE RTX 3050 seems to be a plus version of its ray tracing technology.
Comparing the two products of the friendly business, the theoretical performance performance of geforce RTX 3050 is just stuck in the middle, no wonder Aunt Shan will not be able to wait for the RT 6500 XT.
Creator capability performance comparison
In the comparison of creator ability performance, the results are basically consistent with the ranking of the 3DMARK theoretical performance test. At the same time, you can see that even the strongest GEFORCE RTX 3060 is about 10% ahead of the GEFORCE RTX 3050. If it is accidental to do video, then the GEFORCE RTX 3050 graphics card can also be used to do video and picture orientation, the big deal is that the waiting time is longer.
The author is more concerned about the GEFORCE RTX 3050 in the creator test project of the video memory occupancy, 8GB video memory is already the latest equipment of the RTX 30 series graphics card, in the UL Procyon picture test project, the graphics card's video memory occupancy of the highest capacity reached 7620MB, 8G video memory can only be said to be just right.
The Blender project in the Rendering Capability Performance Test is a time system, so the less time there is, the faster the apparent card will render. GEFORCE RTX 3050 thanks to NVIDIA's latest ampere architecture, its rendering ability is still quite good, much faster than the old brothers, even compared with the RX 6600, the difference is not big, let alone the more pulled RX 6500 XT.
Blender has always been one of the author's projects to test the memory usage, just using the GEFORCE RTX 3050 CUDA operation to do rendering, its video memory occupation has reached 7827MB, almost the point is really explosive video memory.
Game performance comparison
In the game test, we directly used the 1080p resolution for the game test, after all, the GEFORCE RTX 3050 graphics card is positioned to play 1080p resolution games.
GeFORCE RTX 3060 and GEFORCE RTX 2060 benefit from specification advantages, and both are also far ahead of THE GEFORCE RTX 3050 graphics card in gaming tests. However, under the same picture quality setting, GEFORCE RTX 3050 also gets a relatively high game frame rate, and the high quality settings in most games can run to more than 70 FPS, which is quite good in the performance of the game, that is, the ray tracing game will definitely not be able to play the two big brothers.
As for the other old brothers, what kind of performance should be performed or what kind of performance should be performed. Compared to the GTX 1650, which really performs much better in any game, and the GTX 1650 really has a burst of video memory at 1080p resolution, the GEFORCE RTX 3050 runs really stress-free.
In the latest Horizon 5 game, the video memory occupation has reached 4268MB; and the ray tracing test project has occupied 6600MB of video memory, but the GEFORCE RTX 3050 graphics card has 8GB of video memory, the pressure is not large, that is, the core performance in the light chasing game is weak.
Temperature vs. power performance
The entire power consumption of the GEFORCE RTX RTX 3050 graphics card is limited to less than 130W, of which the PCIe power is 37.3W, and the 8Pin auxiliary power supply needs to be increased by 91.1W, compared to other graphics cards, the GEFORCE RTX 3050 is still good per W performance ratio.
Tomahawk RTX 3050 graphics card is equipped with two 9cm fans + two heat pipe heat sinks, the temperature performance is still OK. The Furmark roaster takes 18 minutes, the full load temperature is 65 degrees, the fan speed is less than 50% at this time, and the noise control is also very good.
Overclocking test:
Overclocking test we put the graphics card fan speed, TDP limit, voltage are all pulled to the fullest, of course, the graphics card is still limited to 130W TDP. I thought that the small overclocking of the graphics card in this way was still OK, but I did not expect that the core frequency +320 and the memory frequency +300 could still pass the 3DMARK test, and got a score of 17350 (the original frequency score of this item was 15742), and the theoretical performance was directly improved by 10%, which was great.
Of course, you are afraid of such high-frequency instability, then we put the frequency frequency down point, the core frequency +250, or directly passed the stability test of 3DMARK, at this time the core frequency also reached 2197MHz, power consumption directly on the wall 134W.
summary:
Through a series of tests, it has been shown that geforce RTX 3050 even if it is positioned as an entry-level ray-traced game graphics card, but its performance is still relatively good, most of the games at 1080p resolution are easy to play, and the light chase game has to turn on a DLSS function, or even reduce the picture quality to play.
In fact, we can think of the GEFORCE RTX 3050 as a GTX 1660 SUPER graphics card with ray tracing technology, the specifications of the two are similar, and the performance of multiple test projects is really not much different, and the sigh is "the old yellow knife method is really good."
As for the comparison of the author's surprise is the overclocking performance, I did not expect that the GA106 core of the GEFORCE RTX 3050 is so super, the core direct +320MHz can directly pass the test project, and provides an additional 10% theoretical performance improvement, which is simply in vain. And the author then simply tested the 6 GEFORCE RTX 3050 graphics cards on hand, the core of which is easy + 150MHz, the performance is really completely free to improve, it is recommended that when you get to hand, you can feel the GEFORCE RTX 3050 products purchased, pull a pull, performance improvement will come.
Finally, who will buy a GEFORCE RTX 3050 graphics card? At present, the official suggested price of NVIDIA is from 1899 yuan, which is believed that major AIC manufacturers will also launch people-friendly products (such as the Rainbow Tomahawk RTX 3050 we tested). At present, the positioning of this graphics card should be less interested in the miner bit, so do you want to grab it... It really depends on each other's needs. Netizens who are ready to buy graphics cards with pressure money can really consider this GEFORCE RTX 3050, after all, you can start.
After-feeling: Why use GA106 core, in fact, the author is also a little difficult to understand, can only say that GA106 core production is a bit much, refresh is not unusable? You can see that the current GEFORCE RTX 3050 is using GA106 core, PCB and heat dissipation scheme is also GA106, compared to the cost is really a bit high. After all, Lao Huang's ORIGINAL 20 sets of SM's GA107 core, that is really fierce, power supply PCB, including the core can really be very provincial. In the case of poor performance, the cost is more economical, and consumers can buy cheaper graphics cards, and according to the roadside agency, or the future GA107 core GEFORCE RTX 3050 will really come.