Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3050 desktop graphics card will be released on Thursday, but performance leaks have been scarce so far. Nvidia’s ludicrous official performance comparison graph pitting the GeForce RTX 3050 against the GTX 1650 and GTX 1050 sparked some amusement on Twitter, so VideoCardz sharing some 3DMark findings today was welcome.
After a lengthy wait, leaks come in twos, and a member of the Chinese Bilibili video sharing community has revealed some crypto mining performance results for the GeForce RTX 3050. Please keep in mind that both of the leaks listed below are unconfirmed, so take them with a grain of salt.
The GeForce RTX 3050, Nvidia’s next entry-level Ampere gaming graphics card for desktops, appears to easily outclass AMD’s recently introduced RDNA 2 GPU, the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which is aimed at a similar demographic.
3DMark’s most popular tests, FireStrike 1080p, TimeSpy, and TimeSpy Extreme, are among the benchmarks for the GeForce RTX 3050 that have been leaked. The source also compared the GeForce RTX 3050 test results to stablemates like the GTX 1660 Ti and RTX 3060, as well as AMD’s latest RDNA 2 GPU.
To sum up the performance of a GeForce RTX 3050 in a single line, it’s comparable to a GTX 1660 Ti with DLSS support. The 3DMark scores are uncannily similar to those of the GTX 1660 Ti, but the older card has a little edge of about 5%. However, if a game uses recent Nvidia graphics technology such as DLSS, the newer card will be far superior, as well its better future-proofing with 8GB of VRAM (vs. 6GB).
The RTX 3060 and RX 6500 XT round out and contextualize the tests discovered by VideoCardz. The former is 30 to 50 percent faster than its brother, while the latter is 5 to 20% slower. Given the performance disparities, it’s worth noting that Nvidia developed the RTX 3050 desktop with the same GA106 GPU as the RTX 3060, but with certain spec reductions.
You can learn more about how Nvidia cut the GeForce RTX 3050 in our report. If Nvidia has spare dies and feels the necessity, an RTX 3050 Ti for desktops will be available.
There will surely be a part of the readership interested in the GeForce RTX 3050’s crypto mining capabilities when it is released. Unfortunately, the Bilibili source’s news isn’t good for those people.
According to Hipster, a Bilibili user, the Ethereum hash rate of the new GeForce RTX 3050 is 13.66 MH/s, and the GPU consumes 57W to achieve this performance. It performs poorly when compared to the GeForce RTX 3060 LHR, which can reach around 33 MH/s, and the original unconstrained RTX 3060, which can reach over 50 MH/s (135W).
Of course, because the RTX 3050 is new, there will be potential for optimizations in the mining community, and there will be strategies to recover some of the artificially lost performance, just as there will be with any LHR card.
Before we wrap off this piece, it’s worth noting that Nvidia has set a $249 official launch price for the RTX 3050. It’s difficult to say whether the price/availability action we saw with the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT will be repeated, but we hope not. If supplies are plentiful and cryptocurrencies continue to become more difficult to mine and lose value, we could see a positive trend start next week.
also read:
NVIDIA increases prices for its entire GeForce RTX 30 Founders Edition Graphics Cards in Europe
A 20% price difference on a low budget GPU isn’t something to jam in the last paragraph of an article.
“Before we wrap off this piece, it’s worth noting that Nvidia has set a $249 official launch price for the RTX 3050. It’s difficult to say whether the price/availability action we saw with the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT will be repeated, but we hope not. If supplies are plentiful and cryptocurrencies continue to become more difficult to mine and lose value, we could see a positive trend start next week.”