MSI GeForce RTX 5050 Shadow 2X Review: Budget Blackwell Gaming Tested

Speed Way is the most recent addition to the UL 3DMark graphics test suite. Speed Way uses the DirectX 12 Ultimate API and leverages advanced features like DirectX Ray Tracing tier 1.1 for real-time global illumination and ray traced reflections, Mesh Shaders, and high resolution textures and artwork. All of the graphics cards here were testing using the default benchmark options should you want to compare the performance of your system to our test rig...

UL 3DMark Speedway DX12 Ultimate Benchmarks

In 3DMark's most-taxing DX12 test with ray tracing, the GeForce RTX 5050 can't quite catch the Radeon RX 9060 XT, but it does dispatch the Radeon RX 7600 XT and more than doubles the performance of the RTX 3050.

UL 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 Benchmarks

3DMark Steel Nomad is one of the newer cross-platform GPU benchmarks developed by UL Solutions as part of the 3DMark suite. This test is designed to evaluate the performance of modern gaming hardware in non-ray-traced scenarios, but using otherwise advanced rendering techniques with DX12.

With ray tracing removed from the equation, however, the Radeon RX 7600 XT is able to pull ahead of the GeForce RTX 5050 by a small margin, but the RTX 3050 continues to bring up the rear. 

VR Benchmarks: Unigine Superposition And VRMark

Superposition is an aging benchmark from Unigine, powered by the UNIGINE 2 Engine. It offers an array of benchmark modes, targeting gaming workloads as well as VR, with both DirectX and OpenGL code paths. There is an extreme hardware stability test built-in too. Unigine Superposition uses the developer’s unique SSRTGI (Screen-Space Ray-Traced Global Illumination) dynamic lighting technology, along with high quality textures and models, to produce some excellent visuals. We ran Superposition's VR Future benchmark to compare the performance of all of the graphics cards featured here.

Unigine Superposition VR Future Test

Unigine's VR Future benchmark doesn't make use of ray tracing and we see more of the same. The GeForce RTX 5050 crushes the RTX 3050, but the Radeon RX 7600 XT pulls ahead.

UL VR Mark Blue Room Benchmarks

UL's VRMark was designed to test a PC’s readiness for HMDs like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. The benchmark does not, however, require that one of the headsets is attached to the PC to run and it uses an in-house graphics engine and content to ensure comparable results between different platforms. We ran the "Blue Room" VRMark test at defaults settings here, which is the most taxing test offered by the tool.


There's not much more to say with VR Mark. The GeForce RTX 5050 and Radeon RX 7600 XT finish fairly close, but the Radeon still technically wins.