GeForce RTX 3050 Review With EVGA: Potent, Mainstream PC Gaming

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards represented in this article on a Gigabyte X570 Pro Wi-Fi motherboard, equipped with a Ryzen 9 5950X and 16GB of G.SKILL DDR4 RAM clocked at 3,200MHz. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" defaults, then we disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's clock was dialed in to its optimal performance settings using its XMP profile and the solid state drive was then formatted and Windows 11 Professional was installed and fully updated. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, games, applications and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.

Our Test System Configuration:

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Hardware Used: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (3.4GHz - 4.9GHz, 16-Core) Gigabyte X570 Pro Wi-Fi (AMD X570 Chipset) 16GB G.SKILL DDR4-3200 Samsung SSD 970 EVO Integrated Audio Integrated Network NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti AMD Radeon RX 6600 AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT AMD GeForce RTX 3050

Relevant Software: Windows 11 Pro AMD Radeon Software v22.1.1 NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v511.23 Benchmarks Used: VRMark 3DMark (Time Spy, Port Royal, DXR) Unigine Superposition VR Future Crytek Neon Noir Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Gears 5 F1 2021 FarCry 6

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UL 3DMark Time Spy DX12 Benchmarks

3DMark Time Spy is a synthetic DirectX benchmark test from UL. It features a DirectX 12 engine built from the ground up to support bleeding-edge features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multithreading. Time Spy is designed to test the DX12 performance of the latest graphics cards using a variety of techniques and varied visual sequences. This benchmark was developed with input from AMD, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and the other members of the UL Benchmark Development Program, to showcase the performance and visual potential of graphics cards driven by close-to-the-metal, low-overhead APIs. In the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark, the new GeForce RTX 3050 clearly outruns NVIDIA's previous-gen GTX 16xx series cards and AMD's newest 6500 XT. Moving to an RTX 3060 or Radeon RX 6600, however, is a significant step up in performance.

UL 3DMark Port Royal Ray Tracing Benchmarks

Port Royal was released as an update to UL’s popular 3DMark suite. It is designed to test real-time ray tracing performance of graphics cards that support Microsoft DirectX Raytracing, or DXR. Although DXR is technically compatible with all DX12-class GPUs, the graphics card must have drivers that enable support for the feature.

Port Royal requires DXR hardware and software support, so most of the previous-gen cards fall of the charts. Versus the current-generation, however, the GeForce RTX 3050 fares well, dominating the Radeon RX 6500 XT and coming within striking distance of the more expensive Radeon RX 6600.
 
We also tested the cards with UL's DirectX Ray Tracing Feature test, which was recently incorporated into 3DMark...
This more specialized benchmark focuses solely on DXR Ray Tracing effects. Here, the new GeForce RTX 3050 outruns the Radeon RX 6600 by over 45% and more than doubles the performance of the Radeon RX 6500 XT.

Crytek Neon Noir Benchmarks

The GeForce RTX 3050 performed particularly well in the Crytek Neon Noir benchmark. Here, the GeForce RTX 3050 pulls off another victory over the Radeon RX 6600 at both resolutions and leaves the previous-gen cards in its wake. The GeForce RTX 3060, however, is significantly faster than its little brother.

VR Benchmarks: VR Mark & Unigine Superposition

Superposition is the latest 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

Superposition's VR Future benchmark has the GeForce RTX 3050 finishing about in the middle of the pack, well ahead of the GeForce GTX 16xx series cards and the Radeon RX 6500 XT. The 5600 XT and higher-end, current-gen Radeon RX 6600 and GeForce RTX 3060 finish at the top of the heap.

UL VR Mark Blue Room Benchmarks

UL's VRMark is designed to test a PC’s readiness for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets. 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 currently the most taxing test offered by the tool.


With VRMark's most-taxing Blue Room benchmark, the new GeForce RTX 3050 slots in just behind the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, but significantly ahead of the GeForce GTX 1650 it supplants in NVIDIA's mainstream GPU line-up, as well as the just-released Radeon RX 6500 XT.