Nvidia’s rumored RTX 3050 6GB spotted at retailer – and leaked specs may not worry AMD much

New leak suggests this budget GPU challenger could be imminent

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There’s been a fair bit of chatter aboutNvidia’s rumored fresh take on theRTX 3050– with less video RAM, 6GB rather than 8GB – and now we’ve caught sight of this graphics card online.

VideoCardzpicked up on product listings for Palit RTX 3050 6GB models at a Russian retailer, and of course, as with any rumor, take all this with heavy seasoning – though the leak comes complete with product codes and indeed specs.

The listings for the Palit RTX 3050 StormX and StormX OC, plus KalmX, show that there’s 6GB of VRAM on board (though there are inconsistencies here – the box still shows 8GB of memory, but that’s likely just a placeholder). Interestingly, the KalmX variant is a fanless model (for those who like a whisper-quiet PC).

Other specs shared are a base clock of 1042MHz, which is way lower than the current RTX 3050 8GB (at 1,552MHz) – so much so that we feel this could be a mistake. The boost speed remains the same (1,777MHz), and thankfully so does the CUDA Core count (2,560).

Analysis: Specs skepticism

It’s good to see the core configuration is unchanged, as there wererumors that it might just be cut down– and that really would be bad news for the performance levels of the new RTX 3050 6GB. Mind you, these specs from the retailer need to be treated with skepticism as mentioned – they could be placeholders – so we’d be foolish to read too much into this.

Regarding the major drop in base clock speed with the Russian retailer’s specs, previous chatter has indicated it’ll be reduced by more like 20% – not a third slower as indicated here – and we think the former more modest throttling seems a more realistic prospect.

At any rate, shakiness on the aired specs aside, the key point here, really, is the graphics card models (complete with product codes) appearing at this retailer, which is evidence backing up the assertion that the RTX 3050 6GB is coming soon.

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According to the latest from the rumor mill, weshould see this rejigged Nvidia graphics card in February, with a purported asking price of $179 in the US (and price tags in line with that elsewhere, we can presume).

If the specs leaked here are in the right ballpark, more or less, there’s still doubt as to how much impact the RTX 3050 6GB will make at the budget end of the market, if the rumored price is right.

We’re keeping our fingers crossed that this graphics card might be pitched just a tad more affordable. It’d seem that Nvidia would be wise to consider that line of attack, given thatAMD’s RX 6600is a really compelling offering in the budget space, and is one of thebest cheap GPUscurrently on shelves.

Time will tell, but sadly it’s pretty easy to be jaded about Nvidia’s pricing tactics in general, and to believe that a more cheaply pitched product is unlikely.

ViaTom’s Hardware

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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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