Final Thoughts
With the RTX 3050 NVIDIA has another 1080p graphics card. You are going to be able to play pretty much all new titles with the settings turned all the way up at 1080p and get at least 60 FPS and eSports titles will do a little better. In terms of pure performance you are looking at around the same performance of the GTX 1660 series.
The big difference this time is that NVIDIA did not separate their lower-end card by feature-set. So you are getting those RT and Tensor cores. This of course enables real-time ray tracing, but more importantly DLSS. With DLSS you can push performance even further and possibly pump up to gaming at 1440p. On top of that you can use things like NVIDIA broadcast which will dramatically improve your livestream or podcast with its AI noise cancelling and video effects. We use NVIDIA Broadcast on our weekly podcast and our audience has noticed how there isn’t any background noise anymore! So like all of the other cards in the RTX series you are getting more than just pure performance. It has been really great to see NVIDIA work with game developers over the past few years to get RTX and DLSS in games as well as the development of NVIDIA Broadcast.
MSI’s Gaming X 8G version of the card sits currently as MSI’s flagship RTX 3050 and is what you would expect from MSI. A beautiful card with MSI’s Twin Frozr cooling solution, full-cover aluminum backplate, and even RGB lighting on the MSI logo on the side of the card. On top of that there is a GPU Boost overclock up to 1845 MHz.
So is the RTX 3050 for you? Well it all depends on what card you are currently using. If you are in the GTX 16 series the only way I would be upgrading would be if the game / games you play support DLSS. That will give you a nice performance boost and like I said you can take advantage of other things like NVIDIA broadcast. It also comes down to price, which NVIDIA says is starting at $249. It is interesting a day before this review is set to go live we do not have an official price from MSI on the card. Being that this is their flagship we could see at least a $100 – $150 premium over the MSRP which would put this card in RTX 3060 reference card pricing. We’ll hold off on judgement till we see actual pricing on the card. Like any new graphics card these days we’ll see if the scalpers grab these up and make it so gamers can’t get their hands on them at a decent price.
Pros:
– RT and Tensor cores in this performance segment
– 1080p and eSports gaming at over 60 FPS
– Great cooling solution from MSI
– Full cover aluminum backplate
– 8GB of VRAM
Cons:
– Availability with scalpers etc
– Pricing on the MSI card is unknown
