GeForce RTX 5050 Desktop GPU May Arrive With A VRAM Twist For Budget Gaming
As of this moment, NVIDIA's stack of desktop graphics cards for gamers based on Blackwell stands six models high, or seven models if you count the 16GB and 8GB variants of the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti separately. However you want to audit the lineup, you can add one more to the mix, as rumors are swirling of a GeForce RTX 5050 in desktop form being added to the mix. This raises the question, what will the VRAM look like on what figures to be the last budget variant of the GeForce RTX 50 series?
First things first—let's discuss the rumored specs. The folks at Videocardz said their sources "confirmed" that NVIDIA truly is planning on adding a GeForce RTX 5050 to the mix, and that it will arrive in the "coming weeks." We've also heard chatter about a mobile variant for laptops, but we'll keep the focus on the desktop part for now.
It's said the upcoming budget card will feature a GB207-300 GPU with 2,560 CUDA cores. To put that into perspective, here's a high-level overview of NVIDIA's existing GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs...
- GeForce RTX 5090: 21,760 CUDA cores, 32GB GDDR7, 512-bit bus, 1,792GB/s bandwidth
- GeForce RTX 5080: 10,752 CUDA cores, 16GB GDDR7, 256-bit bus, 960GB/s bandwidth
- GeForce RTX 5070 Ti: 8,960 CUDA cores, 16GB GDDR7, 256-bit bus, 896GB/s bandwidth
- GeForce RTX 5070: 6,144 CUDA cores, 12GB GDDR7, 192-bit bus, 672GB/s bandwidth
- GeForce RTX 5060 Ti: 4,608 CUDA cores, 16GB/8GB GDDR7, 128-bit bus, 448GB/s bandwidth
- GeForce RTX 5060: 3,840 CUDA cores, 8GB GDDR7, 128-bit bus, 448GB/s bandwidth
Should the GeForce RTX 5050 arrive with 2,560 CUDA cores as rumored, it would represent a 33.3% reduction compared to the GeForce RTX 5060 and a 44.4% reduction compared to the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti.
It's also said that the GeForce RTX 5050 will come with 8GB of GDDR6 memory linked to the same 128-bit bus as both the GeForce RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti. However, that might not be the case. Benchlife says it's heard from "reliable sources" (via Google Translate) that the budget gaming part will employ faster GDDR7 memory chips instead.
If true, and assuming the GDDR7 memory chips are operating at the same speed (28Gbps), the GeForce RTX 5050 would match the GeForce RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti in memory bandwidth at 448GB/s. As an additional point of reference, the previous generation GeForce RTX 4060 features 8GB of GDDR6 (17Gbps) memory on a 128-bit bus, resulting in 272GB/s of memory bandwidth.
One thing not discussed in the rumor mill is the possibility of NVIDIA offering two versions, one with GDDR6 and one with GDDR7. We don't think that's super likely, but if the decision is based on supply (Benchlife claims AMD is eating into the supply of GDDR6 chips, hence why NVIDIA may make the switch to GDDR7), then it's at least possible. We shall see.
