At CES this year both AMD and Nvidia announced new GPUs that would be coming soon. Both were focused on a little lower on their product stack which makes sense because that is the biggest market share. Steam hardware survey still has the GTX 1060 with the highest usage with the 1650, 1050 Ti, 2060, and then 1050 rounding out the top five. Most of those cards also haven’t moved up into the RTX range, so the new RTX 3050 may be the first introduction to ray tracing and tensor cores for a lot of people as well. Today I’m going to check out what the RTX 3050 is all about then put it to the test on our freshly updated test bench and test suite to see how it compares. There aren’t Founders Editions of the RTX 3050, so today I am checking out the RTX 3050 XC from EVGA.

Product Name: EVGA RTX 3050 XC Black

Review Sample Provided by: Nvidia/EVGA

Written by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

 

What is the RTX 3050

So at CES, Nvidia’s big theme when announcing the RTX 3050 was “step up to RTX”. The RTX 3050 is Nvidia’s first time bringing out an RTX card in their XX50 range, previously the 3060 and 2060 were their lowest models with RTX features. It makes sense really, while everyone would love to have ray tracing and the tensor cores, ray tracing in games. Especially with the first generation of RTX cards was very demanding. No one would want to use those features on a mid-range card that couldn’t give you playable frame rates at those power levels. Not only that but adding the ray-tracing cores and tensor cores does add to the die size and with that overall cost. But today's market is much different, especially when it comes to costs and Nvidia feels like the 3050 is ready for the RTX treatment. RTX does add a lot of features that you might not consider, it isn’t JUST ray tracing although you do get that. The tensor cores also help with things like Nvidia Reflex, Nvidia Image Scaling, Nvidia Encoder, and their broadcast app as well. I personally think those features will be even more important for the RTX 3050 owners than ray tracing. Especially Reflex which is focused on lowering latency which is especially huge with FPS games and esports titles. Games like Fortnite, Escape from Tarkov, Apex Legends, Overwatch, Rust, and Valorant which are all very popular and don’t typically need ultra-high-end cards to play.

So the RTX 3050 is an Ampere based card, just like the rest of the 3000 series cards. So it does get some of the standard features like HDMI 2.1 support which the 3050 isn’t really a 4K focused card but it does also bring HDR support. It also helped bring AV1 decoding support which has been in the news a lot with AMD removing that from their just launched RX 6500 XT (I’ve got coverage coming soon, DHL/USPS has our card lost in the void right now). The 3050 also gets DLSS which I mentioned before, DLSS is a great way to get additional performance with very little quality difference. It is also a great way to offset some of the ray-tracing performance as well which I will look at in our testing.

As for the specs of the RTX 3050, I’ve put together a few different cards for comparison below. I have the RTX 3060 there so we can see what the next step up on the desktop lineup and the RTX 2060 to see what last year's lowest-end RTX card has. Then for GTX cards, we have the GTX 1650 which would be the last generation of XX50 series card before the 3050, and I also included the older GTX 1060 just for comparison as well. As far as SMs go the RTX 3050 has 8 less than the RTX 3060 and the CUDA core count matches up with that drop as well going down to 2560 from 3584 or 128 CUDA cores per SM on both cards. That also translates to 80 tensor cores from 112 on the 3060 and one ray tracing core per SM as well at 20. Both the RTX 3060 and RTX 3050 also have the same GPU boost clock speed with both set at 1777 MHz. The CUDA cores are also a huge jump when we compare that with the GTX 1650 which had 896 CUDA cores. On the memory side of things, the two cards are a lot farther apart, however. The RTX 3060 has 12 GB of video memory whereas the RTX 3050 has 8 GB, they are both GDDR6 though. Then the RTX 3060 has a 192-bit memory interface whereas the RTX 3050 has a 128-bit interface like the GTX 1650 had. Those two differences make a big difference in overall memory bandwidth with the RTX 3050 at 224 GB/s and the RTX 3060 at 360 GB/s. The memory on the 3060 is also clocked in a little faster as well. As for power, the RTX 3050 has a TGP of 130 watts to the RTX 3060’s 170 watts.

Specifications

GTX 1060

GTX 1650

RTX 2060

RTX 3050

RTX 3060

SMs

10

14

30

20

28

CUDA Cores

1280

896

1920

2560

3584

Tensor Cores

N/A

N/A

240 (2nd Gen)

80 (3rd Gen)

112 (3rd Gen)

RT Cores

N/A

N/A

30 (1st Gen)

20 (2nd Gen)

28 (2nd Gen)

Texture Units

80

56

120

80

112

ROPs

48

32

48

32

48

GPU Boost Clock

1709 MHz

1665 MHz

1680 MHz

1777 MHz

1777 MHz

Memory Clock

8000 MHz

8000 MHz

7000 MHz

7000 MHz

7501 MHz

Total Video Memory

6144 or 3072 MB GDDR5

4096 MB GDDR5

6144 MB GDDR6

8192 MB GDDR6

12,288 MB GDDR6

Memory Interface

192-bit

128-bit

192-bit

128-bit

192-bit

Memory Bandwidth

192.2 GB/s

128 GB/s

336 GB/s

224 GB/s

360 GB/s

TGP

120 Watts

75 Watts

160 Watts

130 Watts

170 Watts

Launch MSRP

3GB $199

6GB $249/$299(FE)

$159

$349

$249

$329

 

Before getting into testing I did also run GPUz to double-check that our clock speeds match up with the specifications. The RTX 3050 XC Black is a stock clocked RTX 3050 so its boost clock is 1777 MHz which it did match (after an update for our prelaunch card from EVGA). I tested using the beta driver provided to the press ahead of the launch which is Nvidia 511.31 and the BIOS version is noted as well for future reference.

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Packaging

EVGA’s packaging takes a completely different approach than most other video cards. Rather than the large wide box that most cards have, they use a taller but skinny design. It shrinks the green Nvidia wrap-around size which gets the important information like this being an RTX card and the 3050 model number on without any wasted space. Then above that, they have the card peaking out and letting you see 2/3 of the card. The XC model name and the black are there as well with the EVGA logo being small and up in the corner out of the way next to the memory information. The back of the box just has a basic feature list that covers all of the standard Nvidia RTX features as well as the wrap-around which highlights GeForce platform features and Ampere architecture features. Nothing here is card-specific, which I do think a nice specification listing with the clock speed and card dimensions would be useful to help someone in a brick and mortar store to tell the difference between cards.

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When you get inside of the box, EVGA hasn’t skimped on protecting the card as well although most of this is just to fit the smaller card into a box designed to fit larger cards. The 3050 XC Black comes wrapped in a bubble wrap box then inside there is a thick black foam wrapped around everything. Then under that, the card itself sits in a static protective bag with the EVGA branding all over it. They also block off some of the height of the card with cardboard as well to keep everything inside of the box from moving around.

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Card Layout and Photos

If you have been paying attention to EVGA’s card designs for the last few years the RTX 3050 XC Black isn’t going to be a big surprise at all. This is the same look all of their 3000 series cards have had and in some ways, it is also similar to their 2000 series cards as well. In fact, the RTX 3050 XC Black looks just like the RTX 3060 XC Black that I took a look at last February. It is a dual fan design with a black plastic fan shroud. The shroud has a groove cut down the fan side which even if the fans are tight up against something will help pull in a little extra air. The shroud wraps around onto the top and extends down past the end of the heatsink. This is because the fans run to the end of the heatsink for as much coverage as possible. The shroud has the EVGA logo cut into it near the top between the two fans and the GeForce RTX branding at the bottom which is printed on. Other than the RTX branding and the EVGA E logo on the center of the fans the side view of the card is blacked out.

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Size-wise, the RTX 3050 XC Black isn’t an ITX card but it is compact. It is 201.8 mm or 7.94 inches long and has a height of 110 mm or 4.33 inches tall. That puts the top edge of the card just over the top of the PCI bracket and at that length, the RTX 3050 XC Black shouldn’t have any problems fitting in nearly any case. Then it is officially a 2 slot card, not 2.5/2.8,/2.1 like most cards these days. I wish more cards would try to stick to the standard sizes like EVGA has here.

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The RTX 3050 XC Black has the same 90mm axial fans that the RTX 3060 XC Black has. They have a sticker for the center cap with a silver EVGA E logo and if that wasn’t enough EVGA for you all nine fan blades have tiny E logos embossed all over the place.

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Looking around at the edges of the card gives us a lot more information on the heatsink layout of the RTX 3050 XC Black as well. They are using copper heatpipes to pull heat from on top of the GPU out across the card. Each side has two heatpipes. The heatsink itself wraps around all of the components on the PCB and is close to the PCB in areas where there aren’t any components meaning this isn’t a generic design at all. The heatsink has aluminum sheet metal fins in a vertical layout. The air blowing down from the fans will be pushed up and down on the card meaning most of the heat will be going up out of the top or down against your motherboard. This layout is usually a good performer. The up on the top edge the fan shroud does wrap around, but only halfway down the card to leave room for airflow. That section of fan shroud does at least give them room to slip in the EVGA logo and the RTX branding on the top edge of the card. As always I would love to see this layout get the actual model name, EVGA RTX 3050 up along there would look really good. The PX1 on the front edge would have been a great place for the XC Black as well. PX1 stands for EVGA’s Precision X1 software.

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Also up on the top edge, EVGA has the power connection for the RTX 3050 XC Black. I was surprised that they don’t have the plug flipped around with the PCB notched, but the 8-pin power connection fits in with the heatsink around it and a small section of the heatsink is curved to let you have room to remove the clip in the future.

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For the back of the card, the RTX 3050 XC Black being a black edition is EVGA’s entry-level model so they skip including any backplate. The black PCB does look good and goes well with the blacked-out card of course. We can see that the GPU itself is centered really well on the card and that the end of the card actually has some ventilation holes cut into the PCB for air to blow through from the axial fans on the other side. The end of the card does hang out past the PCB and the shroud hangs out even farther than the heatsink as well, around 13mm in total.

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For the back I really like the EVGA stuck with the blacked-out PCB. Not only do black PCBs look better as a whole, but it also goes well with the blacked-out card. The top 2/3 has some ventilation with hexagon-shaped holes that are laid out slightly randomly. The cooler design isn’t really designed to push air in this direction, but there is some ventilation if it ends up needed. As for display connections, the RTX 3050 XC Black has the standard 3 DisplayPort’s and one HDMI. They do have the HDMI down at the bottom, not mixed in like some cards do which is also nice making it easier to know where that plug is.

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Test Rig and Procedures

 

Test System

CPU: Intel Core-i9 12900K – Live Pricing

Motherboard: Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme – Live Pricing

Cooling: Corsair H100i Elite LCD Display - Live Pricing

Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste - Live Pricing

Memory: Micron Pre Launch DDR5 2x32GB – Live Pricing

Storage: Sabrent Rocket Q4 2TB – Live Pricing

Power Supply: Corsair AX1200 - Live Pricing

Case: Primochill Wetbench - Live Pricing

OS: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit - Live Pricing

   

Our Testing Procedures

3DMark

All 3DMark based tests are done using the most recent version. We test using all three versions of Fire Strike and both Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme. Tests to look at ray tracing performance are done with Port Royal when supported and for Nvidia cards that support DLSS, the DLSS subtest is also done at 1440p with the performance setting and DLSS 2.0.

Unigine Superposition

1080p Extreme and 4k Optimized benchmarks along with the VR Future test are done. The VR test is done at the Oculus resolution

VRMark

Only the Blue room test is run

CS:GO

This test is done using the workshop map called CS:GO Benchmark. You can find more information at this link. https://www.gamingpcbuilder.com/how-to-install-csgo-fps-benchmark-map/  I test at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions. All auto settings are turned off and detail is set to their highest settings. shadow quality high, model texture detail high, shader detail very high, AA set to 16x, uber shaders enabled

Mafia 2 Definitive Edition

This uses the built-in benchmark to test at High and Medium detail presets at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions

Watch Dogs: Legion

Built-in benchmark testing at ultra and high details. Tested at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k. I also do RTX and DLSS testing on Nvidia cards at 4K using the Ultra detail settings as a base as well.

Borderlands 3

Built-in benchmark testing with the ultra detail setting and medium detail setting, done at full screen with default settings at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k on DX11

Metro Exodus

Using built-in benchmark, testing at ultra and normal details at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k. I also do RTX and DLSS testing at 4K with the ultra detail base settings for Nvidia cards as well.

World War Z Aftermath

Built-in benchmark in DX11 testing both the Ultra detail and Medium detail levels at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions

The Division 2

Built-in benchmark at Ultra detail with V-Sync turned off at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k resolutions.

Total War: Three Kingdoms

Built-in benchmark using the Battle Benchmark setting. Tested at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k at both high and ultra detail settings

Far Cry 6

Built-in benchmark, tested at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k with the Ultra and Medium detail settings

Ghost Recon Breakpoint

Built-in benchmark, tested at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k with the Ultra and Medium detail settings

Boundary Benchmark

Testing different DLSS detail levels on cards that support it. All testing is done at 4k with RTX on

Bright Memory Infinite RTX Benchmark

Benchmark all of the different RTX detail levels. Resolution at 4k and DLSS on balanced for each test

Passmark Performance Test 10.2

Test using the GPU Compute Score inside of Passmark’s Performance Test 10.2

Blender

Using the new Blender Benchmark with the Quick Benchmark setting set to use the GPU, not the CPU. Nvidia cards are tested twice, once with CUDA and the other with Optix, and AMD cards are run on OpenGL. The result is in total seconds the test took, lower is better. The 2.93.1 build is used and I run all six tests, BMW27, Koro, Classroom, Pavillon, Fishy cat (my favorite), and Victor

OctaneBench 2020.1

OctaneBench is designed to test rendering in OctaneRender. RTX and non-RTX are both ran. This is a CUDA only test so only Nvidia cards are tested

Power Testing

I run three power tests. Two I use a Kill-A-Watt hooked up in line with the power cord for the test rig. Two tests are done, one using the AIDA64 Stress Test and the second using the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark on the second test. I also use GPUz to document the GPU only reading off the card itself for wattage when doing the Time Spy test. The Time Spy test uses only the second test here because the3rd test is the combined test that loads the CPU as well.

Noise Testing

Our Noise testing is done using a decibel meter 18 inches away from the video card on the bottom/fan side of the card. We test at 50% and 100% fan speeds as well as a third test while under load using AIDA64's stress test. This is done using a Protmex PT02 Sound Meter that is rated IEC651 type 2 and ANSI S1.4 type 2. Tests are done set weighted to A and set to a slow response using the max function and tested a second time with C weighting as well.  The ambient noise level in the testing area is 33.3 decibels using A weight and 50.0 using C weight.

 Temperature Testing

Using AIDA64, the GPU stress test is run for 30 minutes or until the result has leveled off. The test is run twice, once with the stock fan profile and a second time with 100% fan speed. During this, I also document the 100% fan speed RPM and document the delta between the fan profile and 100% fan speed as well.

 

 


Synthetic Benchmarks

As always I like to start my testing with a few synthetic benchmarks. 3DMark especially is one of my favorites because it is very optimized in both Nvidia and AMD drivers. It's nice to not have to worry about it being favored too much either way and the repeatability of the results makes it a nice chance to compare from card to card, especially when comparing with the same GPU. For the RTX 3050 XC Black with it being the first RTX 3050 to come in, I’m not comparing so much with the same GPUs but I am looking at how it compares with the GTX 1650, RTX 2060, and RTX 3060 on Nvidia’s side of things and the RX 5500 XT, RX 5600 XT, and RX 6600 from AMD. Sadly we never were able to get our hands on an RX 5600 and our new RX 6500 XT just came in today.

The first round of tests were done in the older Fire Strike benchmark which is a DX11 test. There are three detail levels, performance, extreme, and ultra. The RTX 3050 XC Black came in sitting between the 5500 XT and the older GTX 1070 in all three of these benchmarks. On the Fire Strike Ultra test, the RTX 3050 XC Black nearly matches the score of the RX 5500 XT.

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The next two were both based on the Time Spy benchmark. One is the standard test and then there is the extreme detail level. Here the RTX 3050 XC Black did better, like the 2000 and 3000 series cards normally do with the DX12 based Time Spy. The RTX 3050 XC Black jumped up above the GTX 1070 on both tests and WAY ahead of the last generation XX50 series card with the GTX 1650.

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The last test was using the Unigine based Superposition benchmark and I tested at 1080p with the extreme detail setting as well as the 4K optimized setting. In the extreme detail setting the RTX 3050 XC Black landed sitting between the GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080. The higher 4K resolution test on the other hand had the 1070 back out ahead with its higher memory bandwidth.

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VR Benchmarks

As for Virtual Reality, I love it but it is more demanding than traditional gaming. This is partially because of the resolutions needed to render for two eyes and because they render more than what is immediately visible. But also because of post effects to get the proper “fisheye” effect for it to look proper in your eyes with the HMD. You also have to have much higher expectations for frame rates in VR, skipping frames or lower FPS can cause motion sickness in VR. Because of that, I ran a few tests.

My first test was again in Superposition. This time I tested the VR Future test using the Oculus resolution. Here the RTX 3050 XC Black set itself way out ahead of the 1650 and the 5500 XT but it still came in a hair behind the RTX 1070 and the 5600XT.

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My second round of VR testing was in VRMark which has three tests that are similar to the VR tests in Superposition. I only focused on just the most demanding test called Blue Room that is looking more at future VR performance. The RTX 3050 XC Black jumped out ahead of the GTX 1070 on this test and was sitting below the 5600XT. It was also 400 points out ahead of the GTX 1650 but well behind the RTX 2060 and RTX 3060 which were 500 and 800 points out in front still.

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In-Game Benchmarks

Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 10 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of if turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. In total, each video card is tested 54 times and that makes for a huge mess of results when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier to read result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, and then over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors.

So how did the RTX 3050 XC Black look in our resolution breakdown? Well, we can get 4K out of the way by saying it struggled there like expected with just one game (CS:GO) up over 120 FPS, 11 over 30 FPS, and 7 were unplayable at below 30. It does have more in the playable 30-59 FPS range at 4K than I would have expected but it wouldn’t be a great experience. At 1440p things look better, there is once again one result up over 120 FPS and this time there are 6 up over 60 FPS. There are 11 in the 30-59 range again but this time there is just one unplayable result. So 1440p is playable and sometimes good but still not optimal. Then for 1080p which is where the RTX 3050 XC Black is designed, there is finally no result in the red sub 30 FPS range. There are three in the bubble 30-59 range. But then from there, 13 results came in at over 60 FPS, and the 120 FPS range doubled with two results up there at 1080p. So 1080p performance is solid.

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Of course, I have all of the actual in game results as well for anyone who wants to sort through the wall of graphs below. With the new test suite, I had some of our former tests but I have also changed things up slightly with a few older games as well. I was excited to include CS:GO this time around so we can get a better look at how the always popular but classic game handles things. The RTX 3050 XC Black may be near the bottom of the chart overall with just the GTX 1650 below it, but even at 4K, it came in at 125 FPS. For 1440p it was at 250 FPS and 1080 375 FPS. All there of those are important because being an esports title it is great to see that the RTX 3050 XC Black is able to perform up over the high refresh rates for each of those resolutions with 1080p reaching up to 360 Hz, 165 Hz starting to be popular for 1440p and  144 Hz hitting 4K. Beyond that, I will say that our inclusion of Mafia 2 Definitive edition as a throwback game with an update is looking a little weird with its high detail results all leveling off at 1080p and 1440p. Normally a CPU limitation would show itself more at the lower medium detail. Overall the RTX 3050 XC Black stayed in the same range sitting ahead of the 5500 XT consistently and going back and forth with the older GTX 1070 depending on the game.

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Compute Benchmarks

Now some people don’t need a video card for gaming, they need the processing power for rendering or 2D/3D production, or in some cases people who game also do work on the side. So it is also important to check out the compute performance on all of the video cards that come in. That includes doing a few different tests. My first test was a simple GPU Compute benchmark using Passmark’s Performance Test 10 and the RTX 3050 XC Black did well here with its 6991 score. That put it out ahead of the RTX 2060 with the RTX 2060 SUPER being the next card up. That’s also 2353 points ahead of the last generation GTX 1650.

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Blender is always my favorite compute benchmark because the open-source 3D rendering software is very popular and it isn’t a synthetic benchmark. Here I render all six scenes and combine the total time it takes in seconds using the provided Blender Benchmark on the 2.93.1 build. The RTX 3050 XC Black ended up taking 1813 seconds to run the full test which is just over 30 minutes. That put it right with the RTX 2060 as well as AMD's RX 6600. If you are doing rendering like this all of the time, you could save a LOT of time going with any of the higher-end cards. But That isn’t bad all things considering if you only need to do it from time to time. I also tested all of the Nvidia cards again using Optix to do the render rather than CUDA and Optix makes a huge difference. While Optix ran on the older GTX cards, it isn’t any faster unless you have tensor cores like the RTX cards have. You can also see the performance difference between the 3000 series cards and the 2000 series cards when you compare the RTX 3050 and the RTX 2060 where the 2060 is faster with CUDA but the RTX 3050 XC Black was faster with Optix than the 2060 and the 2060 SUPER. The RTX 3050 XC Black took half as long at 880 seconds or 14.6 minutes.

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For CUDA-based cards, I also check out OctaneRender performance using their OctaneBench 2060.1 benchmark which allows me to check out both RTX and non-RTX rendering performance. Here the RTX 3050 XC Black is right with the GTX 1080 when not utilizing RTX but it jumps up near the 1080 Ti when using RTX.

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RTX and DLSS

Being an RTX card I also like checking out the performance of some of Nvidia’s features. Namely the ray tracing performance and the performance improvements you can see by using DLSS combined with the tensor cores. My first test goes back to our synthetic benchmarks with 3DMark where I check out their Port Royal benchmark. This is the one test that does also have AMD Ray Tracing support which is great to get a look at how different cards including older non-RTX cards perform. The RTX 3050 XC Black over doubled the score compared to the GTX 1080 and was well ahead of the GTX 1080 Ti which both don’t have ray tracing specific cores. It is of course the lowest end RTX card so it is 700 points below the RTX 2060 and nearer to the RX 6600 from AMD.

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3DMark also has added in a few feature tests, one being a look at DLSS performance. For this one, I have the resolution set to 1440p and DLSS 2.0 turned on. I then have run the test on every card supported to get a comparison on how their test performs with and without DLSS. There are a couple of things that this test shows up. It does let us see how Nvidia’s DLSS capable cards compare. But it also shows just how much of a performance improvement you can potentially see with DLSS when things are completely optimized. The RTX 3050 XC Black jumped up 151% when turning it on. For comparison, the RTX 3060 went up 143% and the 3080 Ti 119%. DLSS helps the lower-end cards even more than the higher-end cards.

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I then jumped into game tests, this time with Watch Dogs: Legion. For this one, I wanted to get an idea of the performance you will see when taking advantage of Nvidia’s RTX and DLSS features. I tested at 4k with the ultra detail setting and with ultra being the setting for DLSS and RTX when they are on as well. I then test with no RTX or DLSS on and then with RTX DLSS on and off and on together. Here the results can be a little hard to sort through because I do have some of the older 1000 series cards in the results as well which don’t have DLSS support so we just have RTX and non-RTX numbers. The RTX 3050 XC Black sits down in between the GTX 1080 and the RTX 2060 when we have things sorted by the no RTX or DLSS results. With DLSS on the 3050 and 2060 have the same FPS and the RTX 3050 XC Black is 3 FPS ahead of the 2060 when we have both RTX and DLSS on showing that the tensor and RT core improvements for the 3000 series do help.

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Next, I wanted to check out the performance in Metro Exodus which we have used for testing for a long time now. This test is similar as well with it set to 4K and Ultra detail, I use the included benchmark to test DLSS and RTX individually and then with them both on and both off to give us a look at overall frame rates depending on which direction you go. For this test the RTX 3050, XC Black is back down below the GTX 1070 because I have the result sorted by the no RTX or DLSS results. I’m surprised that DLSS didn’t help the lower-end cards here at all on both tests that DLSS was turned on.

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Next, I tested using a benchmark based on the game Boundary. For this one, I wanted to see how all of the different DLSS settings would perform, including turning it off completely. This is run using the free benchmark and with the resolution set to 4k and RTX on. I have the graph sorted by the DLSS off numbers but if we look closely this is the only result where the RTX 3050 XC Black was out ahead of the RTX 2060. As for the DLSS setting comparisons, the RTX 3050 XC Black was basically unplayable in all of the results except for when DLSS Ultra Performance was turned on which almost doubled the FPS over the other DLSS results and was 5 times faster than the RTX 3050 XC Black with DLSS turned completely off. Let’s not forget this is testing at 4K with a card that isn’t at all designed for 4K and DLSS managed to make it playable on the one setting at least.

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The last tests were done in a benchmark based on the game Bright Memory with their free steam benchmark. This is similar to the previous Boundary test only it is looking at RTX settings individually with the resolution set to 4K and DLSS is set to the balanced setting. Once again it isn’t a surprise that the RTX 3050 XC Black is down at the bottom of the chart here, it is still the lowest end RTX card. But it is interesting to see how the different RTX settings affect the card. With the highest detail it was down to 13 FPS and the lowest it was at 22 FPS. None were playable, but at 4K with RTX on that isn’t a big shock. It does however show the wiggle room games that have different RTX detail settings can offer for lower-end cards like this when you are trying to fine tune things to get the best image quality while still being smooth.

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Cooling Noise and Power

For my last few tests, rather than focusing on in game performance, I like to check out other aspects of video card performance. These are also the most important ways to differentiate the performance between cards that have the same GPU. To start things off I took a look at power usage. For this, I use our Kill-A-Watt hooked up to the test bench to record the total wattage of the system. I ran two tests with the first using 3DMark Time Spy to put the system under a load similar to normal in game performance. Here our test system with the RTX 3050 XC Black pulled a total of 252 watts which given the performance increase over the 1650 wasn’t too much more than it. At the same time with Time Spy I also use GPUz to check out the onboard reading for GPU power draw at the chip. The RTX 3050 XC Black registered 101.1 watts at the GPU which was just 1 watt higher than the RX 6600. Lastly, I run AIDA64’s stress test on the video card to load up only the GPU, and using the Kill-A-Watt the test bench with the RTX 3050 XC Black pulled 210 watts, just 12 over the GTX 1650.

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My next round of tests were looking at noise levels. These are especially important to me because I can’t stand to listen to my PC whirling. Especially when I’m not in game and other applications are using the GPU. For my testing, though I first tested with the fan cranked up to 100% to get an idea of how loud it can get, then again at 50% to get an idea of its range. I test using both A and C weighting, A is the standard way and C has a little more of the low end to check for low-level hums. The RTX 3050 XC Black came in near the bottom of the chart both at 50% and 100% fan speeds. Most of the cards tested currently with it being a fresh reboot of our test rig are reference cards, but there are a few aftermarket cards in the mix and only the Zotac 3060 AMP was quieter. I also take a look at noise performance while under load. For that when running AIDA64’s stress test I wait until the temperature of the card has leveled off and then measure how loud things are when the card is at its worst-case scenario with the stock fan profile. Under load, the RTX 3050 XC Black is a little higher up on the chart, but still quiet with the A-weighted tests. The C weighted results across all three tests tell us a few things. At 100% fan speed the gap between A and C isn’t much and we can see some cards have more lower-end noise than others. But at 50% fan speed and the under load test the C weighted is significantly higher than the A-weighted with less of a difference from card to card.

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To finish up my testing I of course had to check out the cooling performance. To do this I ran two different tests. I used AIDA64’s Stress Test run for a half-hour each to warm things up. Then I documented what temperature the GPU leveled out at with the stock fan profile and then again with the fans cranked up to 100%. With the stock profile, the RTX 3050 XC Black was the coolest running card of the cards tested at 52 degrees. Then with the fans cranked up, the RTX 3050 XC Black dropped down to 45c which had a few cards a little lower than that. The delta between the two was only 7 degrees which is a little low, but that has less to do with the overall performance of the RTX 3050 XC Black and more to do with the card already running cool with the stock fan profile.

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While running the stock fan profile testing I also took the time to get a few thermal images so we could see what is going on. It’s not a surprise given how cool the RTX 3050 XC Black ran in our testing, but the hottest spot in the fan side picture was actually below the card all together on the motherboard where the card blows some heat down onto the SSD up under the card. At the top, the cooler points aren’t far off from room temperature which was 74f or 23.3c. The hottest area is on the PCI bracket end of the card which can also be seen on the fan side with the right side of the card running much cooler. The back picture of the PCB supports this as well with the hottest spot directly behind the GPU but there also being hot spots with the VRMs in between the GPU and PCI bracket. Then the other end which doesn’t have much going on and has the blow through holes is running 12/14c cooler.

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Overall and Final Verdict

Now that we have finished up checking out what the EVGA RTX 3050 XC Black is all about, what features it has, and how it performed. How does it all come together? Well as far as the RTX 3050 performance goes, it has its ups and downs. This is a big improvement over the last generation of xx50 cards and overall it trades blows with the GTX 1070 and sometimes the GTX 1080 in our tests which both are older cards but still solid performing cards when it comes to 1080p performance. The RTX 3050 was capable of playable 1440p performance and at 1080p didn’t struggle with anything. It also hit big numbers on older esports titles like CS:GO as well for those looking to take advantage of ultra-high refresh rate monitors without throwing down for high-end GPUs.

I know a lot of people are going to be focused on the addition of ray tracing with the RTX 3050 and it does open up those possibilities. Like a lot of the mid-ranged RTX cards, just because it is capable doesn’t mean that you are going to see ideal frame rates when doing that. But That doesn’t mean that I think that the inclusion of RTX is a bad thing. I think the area where RTX features help the RTX 3050 is with including DLSS and Nvidia Reflex. With DLSS the RTX 3050 can punch above its weight class and see higher frame rates in games that support it. Then for Nvidia Reflex, being able to better optimize latency could be another reason for the RTX 3050 to be targeted at competitive/esport games over older still capable cards like the high-end 1000 series.

As for the EVGA RTX 3050 XC Black, EVGA stuck with the same design that they used on the lower end RTX 3060 cards and I love that they did. I still love the blacked-out design of the card and even without a backplate it still ends up looking extremely clean. There isn’t any RGB lighting at all or flashy fan shroud designs. The EVGA RTX 3050 XC Black even goes as far as blacking out the rear PCI bracket which is something I’ve been calling for because it looks so much better when the card is installed as well. Especially in black cases. The EVGA RTX 3050 XC Black design also goes back years in the GPU market and fits within the “normal” PCI size with a real 2 slot design the card doesn’t stick up past the top of the PCI bracket. It isn’t an ITX size, but for length, it’s also not too long as well. Even with the compact design, the EVGA RTX 3050 XC Black performed well when it came to noise and cooling performance. I’m sure it helps a lot that this cooler was designed to handle the RTX 3060 as well, so the lower TGP 3050 is light work.

As for overall cons for the EVGA RTX 3050 XC Black, the only one I ran into was a small one with it not having a backplate. Even then with this card specifically, it wasn’t too bad. Beyond that, it is just the normal concerns with ANY video card right now about card availability and scalping prices. Nvidia did send over a price list for all of the launch SKUs and each company does have a $249 card. Aftermarket overclocked cards then jump up $100/$150 for most of the other models (though Asus does have two at $439/$489). So hopefully retailer prices stay a little more grounded this time around. The $249 price point for the EVGA RTX 3050 XC on the other hand is a great price considering today's market. That doesn’t mean that I like how crazy the market is of course, but until things calm down it is the world we live in. Overall, the EVGA RTX 3050 XC Black would be a great buy for anyone looking for 1080p gaming, especially if you are interested in some of the RTX features like DLSS and Reflex.

fv5recommended

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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