RTX 3050 – Inno3D Twin X2 OC & MSI Gaming X

1. Introduction2. Inno3D RTX 3050 Twin X2 OC3. MSI RTX 3050 Gaming X4. Testing Methodology5. 3DMark Fire Strike6. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing7. 1080p Game Benchmarks8. Clock Speed9. GPU Temperatures10. Acoustics11. Noise-Normalised Temperatures12. Power Consumption13. Overclocking14. Closing Thoughts15. View All Pages

Following on from our launch-day RTX 3050 review, today we are supplementing that initial coverage with a look at two more custom cards. The first comes from Inno3D in the form of the RTX 3050 Twin X2 OC, while we also have MSI's RTX 3050 Gaming X to test. We find out how they perform, while also comparing the cards to Gigabyte's Eagle and Palit's StormX OC models.

We have two more AIB RTX 3050 cards to review today. The Inno3D RTX 3050 Twin X2 OC is, as the name suggests, a dual-fan model that ships with a 45MHz factory overclock. It also sports a metal backplate and grey shroud, though there is no RGB lighting.

Alongside that, we also assess the MSI RTX 3050 Gaming X. This is MSI's flagship RTX 3050 offering, with an eye-watering £369.99 MSRP. For that money we get a 67MHz factory overclock, metal backplate and a single RGB zone. As we will see, MSI has also beefed-up the VRM slightly compared to the other RTX 3050s we have reviewed so far.

GPU	RTX 3080	RTX 3070	RTX 3060 Ti	RTX 3060	RTX 3050
SMs	68	46	38	28	20
CUDA Cores	8704	5888	4864	3584	2560
Tensor Cores	272	184	152	112	80
RT Cores	68	46	38	28	20
Texture Units	272	184	152	112	80
ROPs	96	96	80	48	32
GPU Boost Clock	1710 MHz	1725 MHz	1665 MHz	1777 MHz	1777 MHz
Memory Data Rate	19 Gbps	14 Gbps	14 Gbps	15 Gbps	14 Gbps
Total Video Memory	10GB GDDR6X	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	12GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6
Memory Interface	320-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	128-bit
Memory Bandwidth	760 GB/Sec	448 GB/Sec	448 GB/Sec	360 GB/sec	224 GB/sec
PCIe Interface	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x8
TGP	320W	220W	200W	170W	130W

GPU-Z: Inno3D Twin X2 OC (left), MSI Gaming X (right)

As a cut-down GA106 GPU, the RTX 3050 sports a total of 20 streaming multiprocessors (SMs).Thanks to Ampere’s new SM structure with its two FP32 datapaths, each SM houses 128 CUDA cores, giving a total of 2560.

Ampere also places one RT core, and four Tensor cores, in each SM, giving a total of 20 RT cores and180 Tensor cores. This is accompanied by 80 texture units, and 32 ROPs which are now housed directly within each graphics processing cluster (GPC), with 16 ROPs per GPC, and 2 GPCs in total for RTX 3050.

Rated clock speed is carried over from the RTX 3060, as we find the same 1777MHz boost clock. Of the two cards we are looking at today, both are factory overclocked, with the Inno3D shipping with a 1822MHz boost clock, while the MSI has a 1845MHz boost clock.

Memory is provided by 8GB of GDDR6, clocked at 14Gbps. Over the narrower 128-bit memory interface, we see total memory bandwidth hit 224 GB/s, a reduction of 38% against the RTX 3060. The PCIe interface has also been shaved down, with a PCIe 4.0 x8 connection, instead of the full x16 allocation.

Lastly, for total graphics power, Nvidia rates the RTX 3050 for 130W, a 40W (24%) decrease compared to the RTX 3060 that seems broadly in line with the reduction in core-count.

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