Nvidia RTX 3050 6GB spotted at retailer – but the specs don’t calm our fears that this might be a flop of a GPU
The worry is that the new variant won’t compete with rival AMD graphics cards
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Nvidia’s RTX 3050 6GB, arumored new spin on the budget graphics cardfrom Team Green, has been spotted listed online (not for the first time, we might add).
German tech siteComputerbasenoticed that Austrian retailer E-Tec had an RTX 3050 6GB live on its website, but the product listing has since been taken down. (That usually happens when these kinds of leaks – which cynics might argue are sometimes intentional – get reported on).
However, the listing wasn’t ditched before all the details of this graphics card were grabbed byVideoCardz(viaTom’s Hardware), including the all-important specs and price.
TheMSIVentus 2X OC (overclocked) version of the RTX 3050 with 6GB of VRAM (the card normally has 8GB) was shown to run with 2,048 CUDA cores, a major 20% cut compared to the 2,560 cores which the existing (8GB) model sports.
The Ventus 2X is also listed with a base clock of 1,552MHz and a boost of 1,807MHz, along with a TDP of 130W. As for the price, that requires a huge amount of seasoning, more so than the specs – and we’ll discuss that more in a moment…
Analysis: A bewildering soup of rumors
At this point, the rumored specs for the RTX 3050 6GB seem rather all over the place, frankly. We’ve heard it’ll maintain the CUDA core count of the existing RTX 3050, or that it’ll be cut down by around 10%, or that it will suffer a major slash to the tune of 20% as is shown here –we’ve heard the latter theory before(twice, in fact).
We’ve also seen speculation that the clocks will be massively dropped, potentially, although that definitely isn’t the case here. They will always be faster on an overclocked model like this Ventus OC, mind, than an entry-level graphics card.
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Even the rumored TDP widely varies, from 130W here, to 115W, then down to 70W (mind you, that’s for aleaked fanless model from Palit, which will need a lesser power usage due to the lack of active cooling).
Whatever the case, with all the theories around the specs, and the leaks we’ve witnessed, all bouncing around all over the show, we’re inclined to say just forget about the hardware specification, really – and hope that Nvidia isn’t cutting much down aside from the VRAM. (Although the CUDA core count dropping seems to be rather likely, sadly, or at least a more prevalent idea).
The best thing to focus on with all this is that given the weight of rumors, and more than one online retailer jumping the gun now, the RTX 3050 6GB seems to be incoming - and in theory, it’ll arrive as soon as next month, or likely in Q1 (the latter is mentioned by the Austrian retailer). As for the price, the retailer has it pitched too high (costing more than the 8GB model), so we can safely ignore that asking price (it’s a placeholder, no doubt).
The theory is that this graphics card will be priced at $179 or in that ballpark in the US, considerably less than the MSRP of the current RTX 3050 which was $249 at launch. (And the pricing of the new GPU will be in line with that 30% drop in other regions, no doubt, compared to the respective recommended pricing).
The problem is that this doesn’t look competitive (particularly not if this new spin on the RTX 3050 is as cut back as some suggestions make it seem) againstAMD. Team Red has a very competitive offering in the form of theRX 6600, which is undeniably one of thebest cheap GPUsyou can buy.
We’re struggling to see how some incarnations of the purported RTX 3050 6GB are going to compete, frankly, unless Nvidia drops the price below the currently rumored demand on the budget gamer’s wallet.
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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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