Although we are not far from the day when Nvidia will reveal the next RTX series, RTX 40, but in the meantime RTX 30 models continue to be sold at a high rate and these days when the prices are a little more accessible even the amateur gamer who does not necessarily need the best and most expensive can afford one One of the more advanced models of the series.
The GeForce RTX 3050 is a graphics card that sits right in the middle. On the one hand it is not very expensive and on the other hand it provides performance for those who are looking to upgrade their outdated video card, being able to support most modern games even at a high speed.
The model that arrived for testing is Gigabyte’s GeForce RTX 3050 GAMING OC 8G, based on the second generation of RT cores and the third generation of Tensor cores. It of course supports ray tracing, DLSS technology and Nvidia artificial intelligence.
GeForce RTX 3050 is a full-sized card, that is, 282 mm long by 117 mm high and 41 mm thick, so it takes up a double slot but not beyond that. Although there are shorter RTX 3050 cards on the market, but in Giga- Bate preferred to go for a larger card for a better cooling system that would also allow for speed, and this is reflected in three fans, the middle one of which rotates in the opposite direction to the other two, to reduce the mixing pressure on the one hand and increase the air flow pressure on the other.
The heatsink is also larger and longer than the short cards as the heat channels go from the central processor to the back where the fan is responsible for bringing cold air into the system. The result is that even during strenuous work, the card works incredibly quietly and is not heard at all, when the company states that the 3D Active Fan technology even allows them to be turned off when the card is not working at maximum power.
There is also colorful RGB lighting and this is located on the side of the card and illuminates the company logo prominently. You can adjust and change the effect or turn it off completely through the Fusion 2.0 software that supports a variety of Gigabyte products, and in our case it was actually a nice addition in a case with a transparent window.
The addition ‘OC’ to the model name RTX 3050 GAMING OC 8G indicates some slight advantages. First is Dual BIOS support as a quick recovery option in the extreme case of the card crashing as a result of changing variables manually. The other and more important thing is that it provides a slightly higher frequency at work – it operates at a frequency of 1,822 MHz compared to 1,777 MHz in the normal card. By the way, the memory was not flashed at the factory and the risk is on the user.
Technically, the RTX 3050 has 2,560 CUDA cores alongside 8 GB of GDDR6 display memory with a 128-bit bandwidth and a frequency of 14,000 MHz. It supports a maximum resolution of 7680×4320 pixels and the connectivity includes a pair of DisplayPort 1.4a ports and a pair of HDMI 2.1 connections, which is slightly different from other cards that prefer a DisplayPort connection over HDMI.
Electrically, the card has a total power of 130 watts, with the recommendation being to provide a minimum power of 450 watts. It requires a single 8 pin electrical connection. These are among the things that make it more accessible when it requires a basic system and can be satisfied with a smaller case so that it is less cumbersome than the big and expensive cards.
For those interested, Gigabyte’s AORUS Graphics Engine software allows you to change advanced variables of the video card and especially of the processor for the purposes of speed. Among other things, you can choose between pre-adjusted profiles that have a faster frequency and memory, or adjust in a dedicated and defined way. You can also view the temperature, load and electricity status in real time as well as control the lighting.
Performence
We performed the Gigabyte RTX 3050 Gaming OC 8G tests on a computer based on an Asus ROG Strix B550-F board with an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X processor and 16 GB of DDR4 3600 memory in a Windows 11 environment and without any changes to the card’s parameters from the factory.
The test was performed with the Futuremark 3DMark software in Ultra HD resolution, where the card received a score of 6,420 points. For comparison, the RTX 3060 Gaming OC with 12 GB of memory already received about 9,300 points, while the RX650 XT received about 5,500 points.
In the Rocket League game in Quad HD at 60 frames per second, it seems that the card did not exert itself at all, with a load of only about 40% and provided an average of 59 frames per second. When I switched to Ultra HD at 120 frames per second, then the card reached about 97% load, when it is already noticeable and there is a drop to 90 frames per second.
On the other hand, in Battlefiled V, which is a more graphically loaded game, it displayed data accordingly. Thus, in Quad HD a figure of 78 frames per second was obtained, while in Ultra HD the number dropped to 44 frames per second.
the lower minister
The GeForce RTX 3050 is a powerful graphics card that will satisfy most needs of the average gamer. It combines the modern Ampere architecture alongside support for ray tracing and DLSS as is customary today. The Gaming OC model offers slightly more performance compared to other competitors’ cards, and its cooling system also allows those who are thirsty and want to squeeze a little more juice from their card and hurry.
Although for those who are looking for support in high 4K resolutions it is not really suitable, but for everyone else and especially those who are willing to settle for Full HD, they will find a good video card at a relatively affordable price. Thus it is sold for NIS 1,700, but different versions of it are also offered for less. Those who are still looking for a little more performance and are ready to invest a few hundred shekels more, the RTX 3060 Gaming OC starts at 1,900 shekels.