The GeForce RTX 3050 is based on the NVIDIA GA106 graphics processor, which is used on the RTX 3060, too. Physically, the chip has 3840 cores, out of which 2560 are active on the RTX 3050. NVIDIA is also including 8 GB of GDDR6 over a 128-bit wide memory interface—twice that of the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which is 4 GB GDDR6 with 64-bit. While the RTX 3060 connects to the host system over a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface, the RTX 3050 only uses a x8 link. While that's twice as much as the x4 RX 6500 XT, it's still a surprising, artificial design choice. According to NVIDIA, this improves supply, allowing them "to source a wider variety of chips for the life of the product." We ran a whole round of testing at PCI-Express 3.0 x8 to get a feel for what kind of performance loss you can expect on an older motherboard. With just 1-2% depending on game and resolution, the differences are negligible.

Averaged over our whole game test suite at 1080p resolution, we find the RTX 3050 beating the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti. The card is also considerably faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT and Radeon RX 5500 XT. The gen-over-gen improvement is 25% (compared to GTX 1650). Last generation's GeForce RTX 2060 is 13% faster, just like the aging Vega 64 and RX 5600 XT. Current-generation products that could be considered a step up in performance are the GeForce RTX 3060 (+36%) and Radeon RX 6600 (+30%). MSI has given their Gaming X a sizable factory overclock, up to 1845 MHz from the NVIDIA reference frequency of 1777 MHz—a 3.8% increase that turns into a 2% real-life performance increase, nothing you'd ever notice subjectively.

With those performance results, the GeForce RTX 3050 is a good choice for 1080p Full HD gaming at highest settings. There are a few titles in our games list that don't hit 60 FPS. Sacrificing a few details settings here will get you over 60 easily, though. This is in contrast to the RX 6500 XT, which requires settings to be reduced much more drastically to achieve the same goal. While AMD is executing most of its ray tracing in shaders, NVIDIA has dedicated hardware units for it. These are included on the RTX 3050, too, with impressive results when compared to the RX 6500 XT—it's really night and day. However, that doesn't mean you can get a convincing high-end ray tracing experience from the RTX 3050, not even at Full HD—the hardware capabilities are simply too limited. To achieve 60 FPS at 1080p with RT enabled, you must enable DLSS (or FSR), which brings with it a loss in image quality. Another option could be to reduce certain details, like shadows, tessellation, and textures. Given what ray tracing currently offers, I'm not convinced I'd be willing to make either of those trades. It's not a big deal, though. In my opinion, ray tracing isn't the most important capability to have in this segment; rather, you want to be able to enjoy your games at decent framerates with rasterization settings maxed out, or close to maxed, to justify why you didn't just buy a console instead.

MSI's "Gaming X" lineup has a long heritage of fantastic graphics cards that offer good performance at excellent noise levels. While the RTX 3050 Gaming X lives up to the challenge visually, its thermal properties are a little bit underwhelming. Our apples-to-apples heatsink testing confirms that MSI has the second-strongest heatsink, considerably better than Gigabyte, EVGA, and Palit, only the ASUS STRIX is stronger. However, it seems MSI focused way too much on temperatures instead of a balance between temperatures and noise. With 62°C, the card runs extremely cool, and 35 dBA isn't noisy, but so much better could have been possible. Had they allowed something closer to 70°C, the card could have been as whisper-quiet as the ASUS STRIX, at much better pricing. Other cards tested this week didn't do much better here, so most NVIDIA board partners seem to have dropped the ball a bit—competing AMD Radeon designs we tested recently are usually considerably quieter. Idle fan stop has become a standard capability lately, and I'm happy to report that the MSI RTX 3050 Gaming X turns off its fans completely during idle, desktop work, and media playback.

Energy efficiency is roughly comparable to that of other graphics cards on the market, sitting in the middle of our test group—no surprises here. Overclocking, on the other hand, worked quite well. While AMD keeps artificially limiting overclocking potential, NVIDIA doesn't do such a thing, and it pays off. We achieved a significant overclock within minutes, which turned into a 10% real-life performance gain, an especially welcome improvement in this segment.

Just like other vendors, MSI is operating their card at the NVIDIA default power limit of 130 W despite marketing it as an "OC" SKU. This of course costs a little bit of performance because the card will hit its power limit and NVIDIA Boost will reduce clocks slightly. So far, the ASUS STRIX is the only RTX 3050 with a higher power limit (150 W). What's also surprising is that despite the decent VRM and 8-pin power connector, MSI includes only a small additional range for overclockers to manually adjust the power limit. With 140 W, or +10 W, the setting is the lowest out of our test group except for the Palit StormX, which doesn't allow any power limit increase at all.

NVIDIA has announced a $249 MSRP price point for the GeForce RTX 3050, and the MSI RTX 3050 Gaming X has an MSRP of $380—quite a steep increase. Of course, these price points are a fantasy, just like AMD's $199 price point for the RX 6500 XT. In reality, we're expecting the RTX 3050 to sell for around $500, and the RX 6500 XT sits at around $350 at the moment. If you can find the RTX 3050 at or near its MSRP, up to $400 or so, it'll be a fantastic deal, better than anything on the market currently. At our expected $500 price point, there are several notable alternatives. For example, the Radeon RX 6600 for $570, which is considerably faster with slightly better price/performance. Used RTX 2060 cards are selling for well over $550, but I'd prefer a $500 RTX 3050 any day. Last generation's GTX 1660/1660 Ti could be an option, but be aware that these lack support for DLSS. While we're seeing a lot of titles with AMD FSR these days, which is supported on all hardware from all vendors, I do feel like having support for DLSS and FSR could come in handy, giving you more choice when you have to rely on upscaling to achieve better FPS.

Last but not least, there's still AMD's Radeon RX 6500 XT, which has gotten a lot of bad press lately for its terrible design choices. You still can't deny that the card is more affordable and works relatively well for entry-level 1080p gaming as long as you have support for PCIe 4.0. These are terrible times for the GPU market. Just a few years ago, this same kind of performance was offered for $200, and vendors were happy to make a sale. Today, not much has improved in terms of performance, just pricing has gone way way up, but no amount of moaning or crying will change the situation. It'll be interesting to see what happens with stock levels, whether NVIDIA's mining-limiter on RTX 3050 will hold or miners will snatch up all the inventory. The GeForce RTX 3050 is technically available from stores now, but out of stock in most places despite prices of around $500 and higher.