MSI GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X 8 GB Graphics Card Review – Almost RTX 2060 Performance

Keeping their tradition alive of launching a new graphics architecture every two years, NVIDIA introduced its Ampere GPU. The Ampere GPU is built upon the foundation set by Turing. Termed as its biggest generational leap, the NVIDIA Ampere GPUs excel compared to previous generations at everything.

The Ampere lineup offers faster shader performance, faster ray tracing performance, and faster AI performance. Built on a brand new process node and featuring an architecture designed from the ground up, Ampere is a killer product with lots of numbers to talk about. The fundamental of Ampere was to take everything NVIDIA learned with its Turing architecture and not only refine it but to use its DNA to form a product in a completely new performance category.

Today, we will be taking a look at the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB graphics card which is a major launch considering that it is aimed at the mainstream segment and is also the cheapest Ampere card in terms of MSRP.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Gaming Graphics Cards - The Biggest GPU Performance Leap in Recent History

Turing wasn't just any graphics core, it was the graphics core that was to become the foundation of future GPUs. The future is realized now with next-generation consoles going deep in talks about ray tracing and AI-assisted super-sampling techniques. NVIDIA had a head start with Turing and its Ampere generation will only do things infinitely times better.

The Ampere GPU does many traditional things that we would expect from a GPU, but at the same time, also breaks the barrier when it comes to untraditional GPU operations. Just to sum up some features:

• New Streaming Multiprocessor (SM)
• New Turing Tensor Cores
• New Real-Time Ray Tracing Acceleration
• New Shading Enhancements
• New Deep Learning Features For Graphics & Inference
• New GDDR6X High-Performance Memory Subsystem
• New 2nd Generation NVLINK Interconnect
• New HDMI 2.1 Display Engine & Next-Gen NVENC/NVDEC

The technologies mentioned above are some of the main building blocks of the Ampere GPU, but there's more within the graphics core itself which we will talk about in detail so let's get started.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Pricing Per Segment

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 series is made up of a diverse portfolio of graphics cards. Starting today, the lineup starts at the GeForce RTX 3050 with an MSRP of $249 US and goes all the way up to higher-end configurations starting at $499 US for the GeForce RTX 3070, $599 US for the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, $699 US for the GeForce RTX 3080, $1199 US for the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and $1499 US for the GeForce RTX 3090. NVIDIA themselves call the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti the flagship graphics card and not the GeForce RTX 3090.

The RTX 3080 & RTX 3070 are both priced well and in line with their predecessors but the GeForce RTX 3090 goes all out with a price of $1499 US. Even the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has seen a price hike compared to the MSRP of the RTX 2080 Ti ($999 US vs $1199 US). NVIDIA calls the GeForce RTX 3090 the "BFGPU" and as per the terminology, it seems like this is a new marketing name for the Titan graphics card. It is likely that we could see a Titan-based card under the Quadro branding with faster specs out of the box but the GeForce RTX 3090 is purely a gaming graphics card first with all the horsepower for intense professional and workstation workloads.

With that said, the GeForce RTX 3080 replaces the RTX 2080 SUPER at the same price point and the GeForce RTX 3070 replaces the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER at the same price point. Given this trend, we might see the more mainstream variants cost just as much as their RTX 20 SUPER series cards but with a higher performance out of the box.

NVIDIA GeForce GPU Segment/Tier Prices

Graphics Segment	2023-2024	2022-2023	2021-2022	2020-2021	2019-2020	2018-2019	2017-2018	2016-2017	2014-2016
Titan Tier	GeForce RTX 4090	GeForce RTX 4090	GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GeForce RTX 3090	GeForce RTX 3090	Titan RTX (Turing)	Titan V (Volta)	Titan Xp (Pascal)	Titan X (Pascal)	Titan X (Maxwell)
Price	$1599 US	$1599 US	$1999 US $1499 US	$1499 US	$2499 US	$2999 US	$1199 US	$1199 US	$999 US
Ultra Enthusiast Tier	GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER	GeForce RTX 4080	GeForce RTX 3080 Ti	GeForce RTX 3080 Ti	GeForce RTX 2080 Ti	GeForce RTX 2080 Ti	GeForce GTX 1080 Ti	GeForce GTX 980 Ti	GeForce GTX 980 Ti
Price	$999 US	$1199 US	$1199 US	$1199 US	$999 US	$999 US	$699 US	$649 US	$649 US
Enthusiast Tier	GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER	GeForce RTX 4070 Ti	GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB	GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB	GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER	GeForce RTX 2080	GeForce GTX 1080	GeForce GTX 1080	GeForce GTX 980
Price	$799 US	$799 US	$799 US	$699 US	$699 US	$699 US	$549 US	$549 US	$549 US
High-End Tier	GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER GeForce RTX 4070	GeForce RTX 4070 GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB	GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GeForce RTX 3070	GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GeForce RTX 3070	GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER	GeForce RTX 2070	GeForce GTX 1070	GeForce GTX 1070	GeForce GTX 970
Price	$599 $549	$599 US $499 US	$599 $499	$599 $499	$499 US	$499 US	$379 US	$379 US	$329 US
Mainstream Tier	GeForce RTX 4060 Ti GeForce RTX 4060	GeForce RTX 4060 Ti GeForce RTX 4060	GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB	GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB	GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER GeForce RTX 2060 GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GeForce GTX 1660	GeForce GTX 1060	GeForce GTX 1060	GeForce GTX 1060	GeForce GTX 960
Price	$449 $299	$399 US $299 US	$399 US $329 US	$399 US $329 US	$399 US $349 US $279 US $229 US $219 US	$249 US	$249 US	$249 US	$199 US
Entry Tier	RTX 3050 8 GB RTX 3050 6 GB	RTX 3050	RTX 3050	GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650	GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650	GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050	GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050	GTX 950	GTX 750 Ti GTX 750
Price	$229 $179	$249 US	$249 US	$159 US $149 US	$159 US $149 US	$139 US $109 US	$139 US $109 US	$149 US	$149 US $119 US

In addition to the specs/price update, NVIDIA's RTX technologies are being widely adopted by major game engines and APIs such as Microsoft's DirectX (DXR), Vulkan, Unreal Engine, Unity, and Frostbite. While there were only three RTX titles around the launch of the RTX 20 series cards, NVIDIA now has at least 28 titles that utilize their RTX feature set to offer real-time ray tracing with more coming soon.

In addition to that, with the upcoming consoles confirmed to feature ray tracing, developers can also make use of the RTX technology to fine-tune future games for the GeForce RTX hardware. Currently, NVIDIA has 13 game engines that are leveraging their RTX technologies for use in their upcoming and existing games while both Vulkan and DirectX 12 Ultimate APIs are part of the RTX ecosystem on the PC platform.

So for this review, I will be taking a look at MSI's latest GeForce RTX 30 Gaming X series graphics card which includes the GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X 8 GB.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB Graphics Card

Just like the GeForce RTX 3060, the GeForce RTX 3050 will also be featuring the GA106 GPU but a cut-down configuration. The card will feature 20 SM units and 2560 CUDA cores with a TGP of 130 Watts. The graphics card will feature a base clock of 1550 MHz and a boost clock of 1780 MHz but do expect custom models to feature higher factory overclocks. At its stock speeds, the card will be able to output 9.11 TFLOPs of FP32 horsepower. That's more than 2x the TFLOPs compared to the GTX 1650 SUPER.

The GeForce RTX 3050 is built with the powerful graphics performance of the NVIDIA Ampere architecture. It offers dedicated 2nd gen RT Cores and 3rd gen Tensor Cores, new streaming multiprocessors, and high-speed G6 memory to tackle the latest games. Step up to GeForce RTX.

via NVIDIA

The entry-level graphics card will also rock 8 GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 14 Gbps and will be running across a 128-bit wide bus interface for a total of 224 GB/s bandwidth. Already, the card is looking like a much better deal for just $50 US over the Radeon RX 6500 XT which has an MSRP of $199 US but packs a 4 GB memory. The card will rock a single 8-pin connector to boot.

As for its feature set, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB graphics card rocks all the modern NV feature set such as the latest NVENC Encoder and NVCDEC Decoder, support for the latest APIs, 2nd Generation ray-tracing cores, 3rd Gen Tensor cores. Considering that this is an entry-level solution aimed at eSports gamers heavily, it packs all the modern features such as DLSS, Reflex, Broadcast, Resizable-BAR, Freestyle, Ansel, Highlights, Shadowplay, and G-SYNC support too.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Graphics Card Specifications

Graphics Card Name	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 6 GB
GPU Name	Ampere GA102-350?	Ampere GA102-300	Ampere GA102-225	Ampere GA102-220	Ampere GA102-200	Ampere GA104-400	Ampere GA104-300	Ampere GA104	Ampere GA104-200 Ampere GA103-200	Ampere GA106-300	Ampere GA106	Ampere GA106-150	Ampere GA107-325
Process Node	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm
Die Size	628.4mm2	628.4mm2	628.4mm2	628.4mm2	628.4mm2	395.2mm2	395.2mm2	395.2mm2	395.2mm2 (GA104)	276mm2	276mm2	276mm2 (GA106)	200mm2 (GA107)
Transistors	28 Billion	28 Billion	28 Billion	28 Billion	28 Billion	17.4 Billion	17.4 Billion	17.4 Billion	17.4 Billion (GA104)	13.2 Billion	13.2 Billion	13.2 Billion (GA106)	8.7 Billion (GA107)
CUDA Cores	10752	10496	10240	8960	8704	6144	5888	4864	4864	3584	3584	2560	2048
TMUs / ROPs	336 / 112	328 / 112	320 / 112	280 / 104	272 / 96	184 / 96	184 / 96	152 / 80	152 / 80	112 / 64	112 / 64	80 / 32	TBD
Tensor / RT Cores	336 / 84	328 / 82	320 / 80	280 / 70	272 / 68	184 / 46	184 / 46	152 / 38	152 / 38	112 / 28	112 / 28	80 / 20	TBD
Base Clock	1560 MHz	1400 MHz	1365 MHz	TBA	1440 MHz	1575 MHz	1500 MHz	1410 MHz	1410 MHz	1320 MHz	1320 MHz	1552 MHz	TBD
Boost Clock	1860 MHz	1700 MHz	1665 MHz	TBA	1710 MHz	1770 MHz	1730 MHz	1665 MHz	1665 MHz	1780 MHz	1780 MHz	1777 MHz	1470 MHz
FP32 Compute	40 TFLOPs	36 TFLOPs	34 TFLOPs	TBA	30 TFLOPs	22 TFLOPs	20 TFLOPs	16 TFLOPs	16 TFLOPs	13 TFLOPs	13 TFLOPs	9.1 TFLOPs	TBD
RT TFLOPs	74 RFLOPs	69 TFLOPs	67 TFLOPs	TBA	58 TFLOPs	44 TFLOPs	40 TFLOPs	32 TFLOPs	32 TFLOPs	25 TFLOPs	25 TFLOPs	18.2 TFLOPs	TBD
Tensor-TOPs	TBA	285 TOPs	273 TOPs	TBA	238 TOPs	183 TOPs	163 TOPs	192 TOPs	192 TOPs	101 TOPs	101 TOPs	72.8 TOPs	TBD
Memory Capacity	24 GB GDDR6X	24 GB GDDR6X	12 GB GDDR6X	12 GB GDDR6X	10 GB GDDR6X	8 GB GDDR6X	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6X	8 GB GDDR6	12 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	6 GB GDDR6
Memory Bus	384-bit	384-bit	384-bit	384-bit	320-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	128-bit	128-bit	96-bit
Memory Speed	21 Gbps	19.5 Gbps	19 Gbps	19 Gbps	19 Gbps	19 Gbps	14 Gbps	19 Gbps	14 Gbps	16 Gbps	15 Gbps	14 Gbps	14 Gbps
Bandwidth	1008 GB/s	936 GB/s	912 Gbps	912 Gbps	760 GB/s	608 GB/s	448 GB/s	608 GB/s	448 GB/s	384 GB/s	240 GB/s	224 GB/s	168 GB/s
TGP	450W	350W	350W	350W	320W	290W	220W	175W	175W	170W	150W	130W (GA106) 115W (GA107)	70W
Price (MSRP / FE)	TBD	$1499 US	$1199	$999 US?	$699 US	$599 US	$499 US	$399 US	$399 US	$329 US	TBD	$249 US	TBD
Launch (Availability)	29th March 2022?	24th September 2020	3rd June 2021	11th January 2022	17th September 2020	10th June, 2021	29th October 2020	October 2022	2nd December 2020	25th February 2021	October 2022	27th January 2022	2024

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB Graphics Card Performance

In terms of performance, the GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB graphics card will offer over 60 FPS at 1080p in several AAA titles and further extend the performance rating through the use of 2nd Gen RT and new Tensor cores, marking a big leap over the GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card.

Surely DLSS and RT cores will prove to be a major uplift in titles that support them so we can expect the card to easily be faster than the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER though the numbers provided by NVIDIA so far don't showcase that exactly. So we have to wait for independent reviews that are expected to go live one day early prior to launch day.

Something that's easy to overlook within these benchmarks is the fact that only one game in the bar chart above has numbers for the older generation cards while the other two games are tested with RTX On, a feature that isn't available on the former options.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB Graphics Card Price & Availability

As for price, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB graphics card is said to feature an MSRP of $249 US which looks very attractive over the $199 US of the Radeon RX 6500 XT 4 GB if you take into account all the extra features available on the GeForce RTX 30 series cards. With that said, you have to keep in mind that the current market situation won't allow the card to ever hit MSRP prices so we are realistically expecting the 3050 8 GB to land in around $350-$450 US. That's $50 US more than the retail prices for the RX 6500 XT which is in line with the MSRP difference of both cards.

In case you want to read our full NVIDIA Ampere GPU architecture deep dive and GeForce RTX 30 Founders Edition review, head over to this link.

The MSI GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X is the flagship variant in the RTX 3050 family. It is a very mainstream graphics card, rocking the 2nd generation Twin-Frozr cooling for MSI's Gaming graphics cards. In overall size and weight, this thing is just tons of massive performance packed in a dual-slot form factor.

In addition to the custom design, the GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X comes with a non-reference PCB, featuring a 6 phase design that features higher quality components than the reference variant which is already a really good design by itself. In terms of clock speeds, the graphics card features the same base frequency of 1552 MHz but the boost clock is rated at 1845 MHz which is an 68 MHz clock bump over the reference model. The card features a TDP of 130W which is the same as the reference model though MSI has increased the voltages on this card for its overclock which would increase the power consumption slightly.

Following are some of the features of the MSI GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X before we go into detail:

Boost Clock / Memory Speed

• 1845 MHz / 14 Gbps
• 8GB GDDR6
• DisplayPort x 3
  HDMI x 1 (Supports 4K@120Hz as specified in HDMI 2.1)

TWIN FROZR 8 Thermal Design

• TORX Fan 4.0: A masterpiece of teamwork, fan blades work in pairs to create unprecedented levels of focused air pressure.
• Core Pipe: Precision-crafted heat pipes ensure max contact to the GPU and spread heat along the full length of the heatsink.
• Airflow Control: Don't sweat it, Airflow Control guides the air to exactly where it needs to be for maximum cooling.

RGB Mystic Light

• Mystic Light gives you complete control of the RGB lighting for MSI devices and compatible RGB products.

MSI Center

• The exclusive MSI Center software lets you monitor, tweak, and optimize MSI products in real-time.

MSI GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X Graphics Card Gallery:

The MSI Gaming X Graphics Cards With Twin-Frozr 8S Cooling

With the differences out of the way, now let's talk about the similarities and the main highlights of the Gaming X design. The Gaming X is a toned-down variant of the much higher-end card, the MSI Gaming X Trio. The Gaming X series features the MSI Twin Frozr series which has been widely used in current and last-generation graphics cards from MSI.

The MSI GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X graphics card comes inside a standard cardboard box. The front of both packages has a large "AMD Radeon" brand logo along with the "MSI" logo on the top left corner and the "Gaming X" series branding on the lower-left corner. A large picture of the graphics card itself is depicted on the front which gives a nice preview of the Gaming X design.

The packaging has put a large emphasis on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture as the first feature enlisted by AIBs. There's also a mention of Ray tracing and DLSS functionality for the card.

The back of the box is very typical, highlighting the main features and specifications of the cards. The three key aspects of MSI's top-tier custom cards are its blazing performance which is achieved by fully custom design, the new Twin-Frozr 8 cooling system, and a new wave-curved 2.0 heatsink which will offer better cooling performance compared to the traditional flat-surfaced fin heatsinks.

There's also a focus towards Geforce.com on each AIB card through which users can download the latest drivers and the Radeon Software applications which are a must for gamers to access all feature sets of the new cards.

The sides of the box once again greet us with the large GeForce RTX branding. There's also the mention of 8 GB GDDR6 (RTX 3050) memory available on the card. The higher memory bandwidth delivered through the new GDDR6 interface would help improve performance in gaming titles at higher resolution over GDDR6 and GDDR5X based graphics cards.

Outside of the box, the graphics card and the accessory package are held firmly by foam packaging. The graphics card comes with a few accessories and manuals which might not be of much use for hardcore enthusiasts but can be useful for the mainstream gaming audience.

The card is nicely wrapped within an anti-static cover which is useful to prevent any unwanted static discharges on various surfaces that might harm the graphics card. The card accessories include a Molex power connector which isn't of much use in high-end systems since the PSUs already have the required cables.

Useful manuals and installation guides are packed within an MSI-labeled letter case. There is an MSI Quick Users Guide, an installation guide, a sticker letter, the MSI DIY comic, and a single driver's disk. It's best to ignore the driver disk and install the latest software and graphics drivers directly from the AMD and MSI official web pages as the ones shipped in the disks could be older versions and not deliver optimal performance for your graphics cards.

After the package is taken care of, I can finally start talking about the card itself. The GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X is a very compact graphics card but doesn't let its size fool you, it packs a lot of punch which we will be getting to in a bit.

MSI’s Twin Frozr is a very iconic design that was introduced much earlier than the Tri-Frozr. The first Twin Frozr cards were actually introduced all the way back with the GeForce 200 series cards and have seen various design upgrades over the years. MSI has further refined the Gaming X Twin Frozr design. The card measures the same at 278 x 130 x 49 mm and weighs in at 870 grams.

The MSI GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X isn't a bulky card at all and would fit in nicely in standard ATX and even Mini-ITX cases with ease. The cooling shroud extends all the way to the back of the PCB and it requires a casing with good airflow so do keep that in mind.

The back of the card features a solid backplate that looks stunning. The backplate offers a lot more functionality than just looks which I will get back to in a bit.

In terms of design, we are looking at an updated version of the Twin-Frozr heatsink which is now in its eighth variation The design has seen various changes and now comes in a fully loaded graphics card design.

The new heatsink looks like a toned-down version of the Gaming X Trio with the main changes being the shroud and heatsink design which retains an aggressive shroud design on the front but with two fans instead of three, absorbing the black and silver color platelets while featuring the RGB emitting acrylic cutouts at the front. The sides also come with a large RGB accent bar which lights up when the card is powered on.

Coming to the fans, the card actually features the brand new Torx 4.0 system. Both fans feature a ring-based design to allow for higher airflow to be channeled within the main heatsink. All fans deploy a double ball bearing design and can last a long time while operating silently.

MSI also features its Zero Frozr technology on the Twin Frozr 8 heatsink. This feature won’t spin the fans on the card unless they reach a certain threshold.

In the case of the Twin Frozr heatsink, that limit is set to 60C. If the card is operating under 60C, the fans won’t spin which means no extra noise would be generated.

I am back at talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate that the card uses. The whole plate is made of solid metal with rounded edges that add to the durability of this card. The brushed matte-black finish on the backplate gives a unique aesthetic.

There are cutouts in screw placements to easily reach the points on the graphics card. We can also see the MSI Dragon logo on the back which looks stunning. MSI is also using heat pads beneath the backplate which offer more cooling to the electrical circuitry on the PCB.

With the outsides of the card done, I will now start taking a glance at what's beneath the hood of these monster graphics cards. The first thing to catch my eye is the humungous fin stack that's part of the beefy heatsink that the cards utilize.

The large fin stack runs all the way from the front and to the back of the PCB and is so thick that you can barely see through it. It also comes with the wave-curved 2.0 fin stack design which I want to shed some light on as it is a turn away from traditional fin design.

The heatsink has been designed to be denser by using a wave curved fin design. It allows more air to pass through the fins smoothly, without causing any turbulence that would result in unwanted noise. Airflow Control Technology guides the airflow directly onto the heat pipes, while simultaneously creating more surface area for the air to absorb more heat before leaving the heatsink.

Talking about the heatsink, the massive block is comprised of six copper squared-shaped heat pipes with a more concentrated design to transfer heat from the copper base to the heatsink more effectively. The base itself is a solid nickel-plated base plate, transferring heat to the heat pipes in a very effective manner. One big change this time is that MSI has gone with a thermal pad that covers the GPU rather than their Thermal Compound X TIM paste. This ensures better contact with the GPU die and the heatsink.

MSI adds extra protection to its impressive PCB by including a rugged anti-bending plate. This also acts as a memory and MOSFET cooling plate while the PWM heatsink with micro fins keeps the VRM cool under stressful conditions.

I/O on the graphics card sticks with the reference scheme which includes three Display Port 1.4a & a single HDMI 2.1 port.

MSI GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X Teardown:

MSI makes use of a 6 phase PWM design that includes its Military Class components such as Hi-C Caps, Super Ferrite Chokes, and Japanese Solid Caps. The main VRM controller is a uPI uP9512R which powers the 6 GPU phases. For VRAM, the controller is an uPI uP1666Q controller while the MOSFETs are made up of a combination of Alpha and Omega AOZ5332QI DrMOS, rated at 50A.

The card also uses the GDDR6 memory from Samsung that operates at 14 Gbps alongside a 128-bit wide memory interface.

The MSI GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X features a single 8-pin power connector to boot. The card is rated at a TDP of 130W officially by MSI.

We used the following test system for comparison between the different graphics cards. The latest drivers that were available at the time of testing were used from AMD and NVIDIA on an updated version of Windows 11. All games that were tested were patched to the latest version for better performance optimization for NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.

MSI GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB Test Setup:

CPU	Intel Core i9-12900K
Motherboard	AORUS Z690 Master
Video Cards	MSI GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X MSI Radeon RX 6600 XT Gaming X MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming X MSI Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 3080 SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3070 SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z MSI GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio ASUS GeForce RTX 2070 STRIX OC MSI GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER Gaming Z MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming Z MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT Gaming X MSI Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming Z
Memory	G.SKILL Trident Z5 Series 32GB (2 X 16GB) CL36 6000
Storage	Samsung 980 Pro M.2 (1 TB)
Power Supply	ASUS ROG THOR 1200W PSU
OS	Windows 11 64-bit
Drivers	AMD Radeon Adrenalin Edition 21.12.1 NVIDIA GeForce 511.17 WHQL

• All games were tested on 1920x1080 (HD), 2560×1440 (2K), and 3840×2160 (4K) resolutions.
• The “reference” cards are the stock configs while the “overclock” cards are factory overclocked configs provided to us by various AIB partners.

Doom Eternal

DOOM Eternal brings hell to earth with the Vulkan-powered idTech 7.  We test this game using the Ultra Nightmare Preset and follow our in-game benchmarking to stay as consistent as possible.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Developed by Rockstar San Diego, Red Dead Redemption II is one of the most visually stunning open-world games I've played to date that is backed up by a rich story set around the protagonist, Arthur Morgan. The game is based on the RAGE engine which features an insane amount of graphics fidelity but also requires a lot of power to run maxed out. For the purpose of this test, we set the graphics settings to Ultra with AA turned disabled.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Wolfenstein is back in The New Colossus and features the most fast-paced, gory, and brutal FPS action ever! The game once again puts us back in the Nazi-controlled world as BJ Blazkowicz. Set during an alternate future where Nazis won the World War, the game shows that it can be fun and can be brutal to the player and to the enemy too. Powering the new title is once again, id Tech 6 which is much acclaimed after the success that DOOM has become. In a way, ID has regained their glorious FPS roots and are slaying with every new title.

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Battlefield V

Battlefield V brings back the action of the World War 2 shooter genre. Using the latest Frostbite tech, the game does a good job of looking gorgeous in all ways possible. From the open-world environments to the intense and gun-blazing action, this multiplayer and single-player FPS title is one of the best-looking Battlefields to date.

Death Stranding

Sam Porter Bridges has delivered one of PS4's most anticipated games to the PC community and opened a whole new world of possibilities. This was the first game to feature the Decima Engine on PC and unarguably did it the best. Death Stranding may not feature ray tracing effects but it does showcase that DLSS can be used effectively even when RT isn't around. We tested this one just like we did in our launch coverage with DLSS enabled.

Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 5 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series.  The latest DX12 powered entry is beautifully crafted and amazingly well executed and is a great showcase of DX12 games.  We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.

Hitman 2 (DX12 Highest Settings)

Hitman 2 is the highly acclaimed sequel to 2016 Hitman which was a redesign and reimaging of the game from the ground up. With a focus on stealth gameplay through various missions, the game once again lets you play as Agent 47 who embarks on a mission to hunt down the mysterious Shadow Client. The game runs on the IO Interactive Glacier 2 engine which has been updated to deliver amazing visuals and environments on each level while making use of DirectX 12 API.

Shadow of The Tomb Raider

Sequel to The Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of The Tomb Raider is visually enhanced with an updated Foundation Engine that delivers realistic facial animations and the most gorgeous environments ever seen in a Tomb Raider Game. The game is a technical marvel and really shows the power of its graphics engine in the latest title.

Metro Exodus

Metro Exodus continues the journey of Artyom through the nuclear wasteland of Russia and its surroundings. This time, you are set over the Metro, going through various regions and different environments. The game is one of the premier titles to feature NVIDIA’s RTX technology and does well in showcasing the ray-tracing effects in all corners.

Resident Evil Village

Resident Evil Village is the latest in the horror franchise that was wonderfully rekindled with RE7 and onto the RE2 Remake. But now the RE Engine is back and better than ever with Ray Traced Reflections and Lighting that makes the world just come to life, unironically. The game was tested in the center of the village itself with all graphical settings maxed out and with raytracing enabled.

No graphics card review is complete without evaluating its temperatures and thermal load. The MSI Gaming X graphics cards come with a dual-fan cooler with 0db fan technology, a massive heatsink that is composed of several aluminum fins and heat pipes, and an extended backplate that covers the entire PCB.

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Note – We tested load with Kombuster which is known as a ‘power virus’ and can permanently damage the hardware. Use such software at your own risk!

I compiled the power consumption results by testing each card under idle and full stress when the card was running games. Each graphics card manufacturer sets a default TDP for the card which can vary from vendor to vendor depending on the extra clocks or board features they plugin on their custom cards. Default TDP for the MSI GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X is set at 130W.

The MSI GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X features the performance of a last-gen '60' series class card with the addition of superior ray-tracing, DLSS, and several RTX eSports capabilities for an MSRP of $249 US.

MSI Gaming X Cooling, Compact Design + Premium Components

The card comes with the same cooling design and premium PCB components which are outfitted with the premium, Twin Frozr 8S cooling system. The cooler looks great and performs really well to keep the sub-150W TDP of the card in check. The extra power limit for these cards also provides some decent OC capabilities but you can push Ampere all you want but only get minute returns.

The cooler does an incredible job by keeping both cards steady and cool under 50C. The RTX 3050 8 GB saw temps peak around 44C but the memory was always under control with a max temp of 65C during peak gaming load. The card is coupled with the superb silent profile which equals near-zero fan noise. If you want that extra cooling performance, then turning the fans all the way to 100% will lead to sub-60C temps but in return, you'd have to face the louder fan noise which gets a bit noticeable at that point.

The dual-fan solution comes with 0db fan technology which unless or until you're touching 60C won't spin at all. This allows lower noise levels when you're not doing any graphics-intensive tasks. MSI went all the way by including a full metal backplate on the card which comes with dual copper heat pipes to effectively transfer heat from the back. The RGB is not overdone and the Mystic Light lits up the logo on the sides to provide a really good aesthetic of the card itself.

So Is The RTX 3050 A Yay or Nay?

With the GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB graphics card, NVIDIA took takes the complete opposite approach than what AMD did. While AMD cut down the features of its entry-level Radeon RX 6500 XT in a bid to make it less attractive to miners and offer a good price of sub-$200 US, the card also ended up feature-less to gamers. The NVIDIA RTX 3050 on the other hand has all the features you'd expect from an RTX card, more memory, higher performance but the price is $50 US more in terms of MSRP.

While the performance of the card comes close to the RTX 2060 and is slightly faster than the GTX 1660 SUPER graphics card which retailed at the same MSRP, the main takeaway is that the card has more features and more memory. The previous RTX 60 series cards were equipped with just 6 GB of memory compared to 8 GB on the RTX 3050. They also lacked RT/DLSS capabilities or utilized the older Turing architecture. With Ampere, both of these see a significant jump in performance & the overall throughput. So if you're coming from a GTX 1650 or GTX 1660 graphics card, the RTX 3050 would make for a nice budget fit for your PC.

That is unless you can find it on MSRP. See, the card might be available at launch and it might even have decent performance but it all depends upon pricing. At $249 US, the card will be a great buy versus its predecessors, the GTX 1660 or the GTX 1650. Anything between $249-$349 US will still be a better purchase versus the RX 6500 XT custom models which retail in the same price range but anything above $400 US is where the RTX 3050 starts losing its compelling nature. As such, the RTX 3050 definitely could be the first good mainstream gaming graphics card with the proper gaming feature set such as RT/DLSS/NVENC/NDENC support, 8 GB memory which works great for 1080p gaming, and an x8 PCIe link (vs x4) that its red competitor failed to offer but let's see if the pricing can match the MSRP.

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