Nvidia RTX 3050 Review ft. Gigabyte and Palit

1. Introduction2. Gigabyte RTX 3050 Eagle3. Palit RTX 3050 StormX OC4. Testing Methodology5. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy6. Assassin's Creed Valhalla7. Cyberpunk 20778. Death Stranding9. Far Cry 610. Forza Horizon 511. Hitman 312. Horizon Zero Dawn13. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy14. Red Dead Redemption 215. Resident Evil Village16. Total War Saga: Troy17. Watch Dogs: Legion18. PCIe 4.0 vs PCIe 3.0 Investigation19. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)20. Ray Tracing21. The DLSS Difference22. Cost Per Frame Analysis23. Gigabyte Eagle Vs Palit StormX OC24. Clock Speed25. GPU Temperatures26. Acoustics27. Noise-Normalised Temperatures28. Power Draw: 1080p29. Power Draw: 1440p30. Performance per Watt: 1080p31. Performance per Watt: 1440p32. Total System Power Draw33. Overclocking34. Closing Thoughts35. View All Pages

PCIe Testing

Following on from our PCIe testing in our Day 1 review for the RX 6500 XT, we have also tested the RTX 3050 using both PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 3.0. The RTX 3050 offers a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface, so we aren't expecting to see as significant performance variations as we saw with the RX 6500 XT, but it is worth testing nonetheless.

For all of our 1080p and 1440p benchmarks, we therefore tested the RTX 3050 twice – once with PCIe 4.0 and once with PCIe 3.0. This will be reflected in the charts you see on the following pages.

Driver Notes

• All Nvidia GPUs (except RTX 3050) were benchmarked with the 511.23 driver.
• RTX 3050 was benchmarked with the 511.32 driver supplied to press.
• All AMD GPUs (except RX 6500 XT) were benchmarked with the public Adrenalin 22.1.1 driver.
• RX 6500 XT was benchmarked with the Adrenalin 22.1.1 driver supplied to press.

Test System

We test using the a custom built system from Cyberpower, based on Intel's Alder Lake platform. You can buy your own system from Cyberpower HERE.

CPU	Intel Core i9-12900K
Motherboard	MSI MPG Z690 CARBON WIFI
Memory	Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5 5200MHz (2 X 16GB) CL 40-40-40-77
Graphics Card	Varies
SSD	2TB Seagate FireCuda 530
Chassis	Corsair 5000D Airflow
CPU Cooler	Corsair H150i Pro XT
Power Supply	Corsair 1200W HX Series Modular 80 Plus Platinum
Operating System	Windows 11 21H2
Resizable BAR	Enabled for all supported GPUs

Comparison Graphics Cards List

• Gigabyte RX 6600 Eagle 8GB
• Gigabyte RX 6500 XT Eagle 4GB
• ASRock RX 5500 XT Challenger 8GB
• Sapphire RX 5500 XT Pulse 4GB
• Sapphire RX 580 Pulse 8GB
• ASUS ROG RX 570 Strix OC 4GB
• Palit RTX 3060 StormX 12GB
• Nvidia RTX 2060 FE 6GB
• Gigabyte GTX 1660 Super Gaming 6GB
• Palit GTX 1650 Super StormX OC 4GB
• Gigabyte GTX 1650 Gaming OC 4GB
• Nvidia GTX 1060 Founders Edition (FE) 6GB

Software and Games List

• 3DMark Fire Strike & Fire Strike Ultra (DX11 Synthetic)
• 3DMark Time Spy (DX12 Synthetic)
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla (DX12)
• Cyberpunk 2077 (DX12)
• Death Stranding (DX12)
• Far Cry 6 (DX12)
• Forza Horizon 5 (DX12)
• Hitman 3 (DX12)
• Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12)
• Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (DX12)
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (DXR)
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (DX12)
• Resident Evil Village (DX12)
• Total War Saga: Troy (DX11)
• Watch Dogs: Legion (DX12)

We run each benchmark/game three times, and present mean averages in our graphs. We use FrameView to measure average frame rates as well as 1% low values across our three runs.

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