NVIDIA Unveils GeForce RTX 5050 For Budget Gamers Jonesing For Blackwell

After a few months of rumors, NVIDIA has finally let the GeForce RTX 5050 cat out of the bag. This card joins the rest of its RTX 5000 brethren as the budget element in the lineup -- a much-needed shot in the arm for the gaming PC market, given the fairly apocalyptical state of the mid- and high-end GPU prices.

The GeForce RTX 5050 is part of the Blackwell family, and the name of its GPU is GB207. It packs a total of 2560 CUDA cores, a 33% reduction versus its slightly bigger brother RTX 5060. The RAM count is 8 GB on a 128-bit bus, but this model uses GDDR6 instead of the pricier GDDR7, undoubtedly in a bit to hit its desired price point.

For neural networking, the RTX 5050 contains 80 Tensor cores good for 421 TOPs, while the raytracing-dedicated hardware comprises 20 RT cores for a total of 40 TFLOPS. Base specs of RAM and CUDA core make this card eerily similar to the RTX 3050, but besides the two generations of architectural improvements, the boost clock is much higher than its predecessor, sitting at 2570 MHz. Being a member of the RTX 5000 family, there's support for all the DLSS4 goodies including Multi-Frame Generation, giving this card a potential leg up on its direct competition.

GeForce RTX 50-series chips are all quite power-efficient, and the debutante card has only a 130W standard TDP, meaning it can be powered with just a standard six-pin PCIe plug, though NVIDIA recommends an eight-pin connector, a guideline that cards announced thus far all seem to follow. At least Zotac, Colorful, and Inno3D have already announced cards. Predictably, they're mostly dual-fan models, and there are even some petite single-fan cards on display, just the ticket for compact builds.


The asking MSRP for GeForce RTX 5050 cards is $249, and assuming they materializes at retail at that price, it'll be facing some competition, including NVIDIA itself. The GeForce RTX 5060 8 GB and Radeon 9060 XT 8 GB, and Arc B580 can all be found be found around $300 with a little patience, while the Arc B580 12 GB is closer to $320. The launch date was previously set for late July, but an X post from @MEGAsizeGPU claims that NVIDIA suddenly pulled up the release to July 1st.


For what it's worth, Colorful's RTX 5050 lineup reportedly starts around 2099 yuan, or $292, so at least on paper, the RTX 5050 will have its work cut out for it. Our best guess is that NVIDIA is counting on having DLSS4 MFG enabled as the default mode of operation, at the expense of some input lag and the fact that you need a fairly decent frame rate to begin with for getting good results.

In the meantime, NVIDIA has posted some of its own performance metrics, and it appears to be a solid upgrade for gamers coming from a GeForce RTX 3050 vintage or older graphics card. Only time will tell, once the reviews are out.