Unconsciously, it has been more than a year since the launch of NVIDIA RTX 30 series, but the layout of the whole family product is still not complete enough, and it only covers RTX 3060 for a long time. In recent years, the speed of upgrading graphics cards has indeed slowed down.
For reasons that we all know, the price of mid-to-high-end graphics cards now makes mainstream players sigh, and there is a more urgent demand for entry-level graphics cards.
Today, RTX 3050 is finally here! Look at MSI’s RTX 3050 magic dragon version today.
RTX 3050 product specifications:
First, let’s take a look at the overall specifications of RTX 3050.
The numb of core stream processors is 2,560,Close to between half RTX 3070 and half RTX 3060 Ti., so the positioning is relatively clear is the relatively entry-level graphics card. In addition, it seems that RTX 3050 is not a full blood core, so there will be RTX 3050 Ti in theory.
The memory specification is 8GB GDDR6. Compared with the earlier 30-series graphics cards, RTX 3060 obviously started to enlarge the memory capacity, and RTX 3050 also retained 8GB of memory.
In the column of technical support, NVIDIA official website has listed dozens of technologies, and RTX 3050 is the same as other RTX 30 series graphics cards, so you can make use of the latest graphics card technologies, especially the new version of Optical Chase and DLSS, which is obviously helpful for improving the game experience.
Product appearance and accessories:
The test product used this time is a non-public version, from MSI’s RTX 3050 magic dragon.
RTX 3050 magic dragon adopts double fans, and the length of the graphics card is friendly to the chassis.
The back of the graphics card is a metal backplane, which can completely cover the PCB.
The display output interface is standard DP*3+HDMI*1.
From the wiring, it can be confirmed that RTX 3050 can call all 16 channels of PCI-E, and the compatibility between motherboard and CPU will be better.
The LOGO of MSI on the top of the graphics card has a lighting effect, and the front of PCB can also be seen with ribs to avoid the graphics card from bending.
The power supply socket is a single 8PIN, which reserves a large margin relative to the power consumption demand.
RX 6500XT PGD comes with a warranty sticker, so don’t open the card unless necessary.
The radiator of the graphics card is 3 heat pipes. Reflow welding is adopted between the heat pipe and the radiating fin to ensure a good connection between the heat pipe and the fin.
Magic dragon’s attachments are relatively simple, and they are all paper products.
The overall length of the graphics card is about 28 cm.
The length of the graphics card PCB is shorter than that of the radiator, and the length of the PCB is about 20 cm.
The height of the graphics card is about 14.5 cm, which is higher than the standard height.
The graphics card is 5 cm thick and is a slightly thicker 2.5-slot card.
Product test platform:
The following is a detailed configuration table of the test platform.
Five graphics cards are mainly used in this test, and the comparison groups are RTX 2060, RX 5600XT, GTX 1660S and RX 590. 100% benchmark is RTX 2060.
It should be noted that since most of the tests use non-public graphics cards, the performance of graphics cards needs to be analyzed together with the running frequency.
Introduction of performance test items:
For children’s shoes interested in further understanding the comparative performance, detailed test data will be provided here. The test will be roughly divided into the following parts: GPU theoretical performance, GPU benchmark test, game performance test, hardware acceleration test and power consumption test. As usual, the amount of data will be relatively large. There are some updates on the test items, and the game part will include five parts: DX9, DX11, DX12, VULKAN and DXR.
Performance test and analysis of graphics card;
GPU theoretical performance test, through AIDA 64 to test theoretical computing power.
3D benchmark, mainly running some benchmark software.
In the 3D game test, the games of different generations of DX9~DXR are classified in the table, which will be more clear. Due to the time of performance test, the test items will be different.
In terms of game performance (at approximately 2K resolution), compared with RTX 2060, RTX 3050 performs better in DX12 and VULKAN than DX11 and DX9. The RTX 3050 is obviously better than RTX 2060 in the test of light chasing game, which also plays an obvious role in improving the memory capacity.
According to the resolution, at 1080P, RTX 3050 has obvious advantages in VULKAN, but its overall performance will be lower than the average.
The contrast under 4K, the role of memory capacity will be reflected in this link, especially in the light-chasing game.
The acceleration performance test of OpenGL is just a simple look.
The overall performance of RTX 3050 can obviously be ahead of GTX 1660 SUPER by about 7% due to GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1660 SUPER. However, compared with RTX 2060, it will still fall behind by about 13%.
In terms of power consumption, the energy consumption ratio of RTX 3050 is quite satisfactory. Although it is not particularly prominent, it is enough to hang a number of old cards.
According to the theoretical performance test, RTX 3050 is superior to RTX 2060 and GTX 1660S in computing power to better support optical tracking and DLSS unit performance.
The running performance of RTX 3050 is not particularly good-looking, only slightly higher than GTX 1660S.
Game performance, but the performance of RTX 3050 is obviously better than running score, and the gap with RTX 2060 is only about 9%.
OpenGL performance, RTX 3050 performance is not outstanding, roughly equivalent to GTX 1660S.
Actual operating parameters:
Under the 3DMark Time Spy baking machine, the average core frequency is 1985MHz, and the highest frequency is 2010MHz. The memory frequency is stable at 1750MHz. This frequency is relatively high for the core of the N card.
The room temperature of the test environment is about 22 degrees, the core temperature of the graphics card is about 60 degrees, and the fan speed is less than 1200 rpm. The overall power consumption of the graphics card is about 130W W. The temperature and mute performance are quite good.
The power consumption of RTX 3050 card is about 130W(3DMARK TS test), and the core power consumption is only about 85W, so it is close to RX 6500XT, and the energy consumption ratio is relatively good.
Comparing the platforms of AMD and Intel, we use R9 5900X and i9-12900K to compare them. We can see that the overall gap between AMD and Intel is very small, and RTX 3050 is not very selective about CPU.
Finally, a brief test of DLSS is given. The game tested is Tomb Raider 11. It can be seen that the number of frames is gradually increased from 31 to 71 at 4K resolution.
Therefore, although RTX 3050 is a product with 2K resolution, it relies on DLSS technology to realize the display supporting higher resolution.
Graphics ladder diagram:
It’s time to enjoy the ladder diagram, and compare the graphics cards I’ve tested since this time. Among them, the power consumption is the result of testing with a new platform.
Simple summary:
About the performance of the graphics card:
The overall performance of RTX 3050 will be better than GTX 1660S and GTX 1660 Ti, and the video memory capacity is 2GB more, which can support ray tracing and DLSS more completely, so it is acceptable as an entry choice at 1080p/2K resolution.
About the power consumption of the graphics card:
In terms of energy consumption ratio, the energy consumption ratio of RTX 3050 is not particularly amazing, but it is still the best among graphics cards with the same performance.
About the heat dissipation of the graphics card:
Magic dragon of MSI really didn’t let us down, with the power consumption of RTX 3050, the radiator of a single heat pipe can support it, while magic dragon directly gave three heat pipes, which directly resulted in quite low full-load power consumption and support for fan stall technology.
Generally speaking, the main task of RTX 3050 is to replace a large number of 6G video memory graphics cards headed by GTX 1060 6G, which is also the product with the highest proportion of use in Steam statistics.
It is very interesting to look at the strategies of NVIDIA and AMD, which just complement each other.
AMD’s strategy is to provide RX 6500XT, replace GTX 1060 6G with lower specifications as much as possible, and castrate hardware decoding, so it is basically a very pure 1080P game card.
NVIDIA’s strategy is to provide a graphics card that can be significantly better than the 16 series and previous products, retain all the features of the 30 series, and ensure the ability of 2K resolution games and 4K DLSS games, so that this group can feel improved after updating the graphics card.
So is RTX 3050 really worth buying? It still depends on the specific price on the market.