Nvidia just fired the opening salvo in this year’s GPU wars by announcing the $249 RTX 3050 but is it all just hyperbolae.
In today’s raft of CES 2022 showcases coming direct to the public, GPU chip maker Nvidia took to the airwaves to announce a new take on their latest tech. Later this month, gamers might be able to get their hands on the best-looking budget card for some time, a fully featured 30 series slab of silicon priced at just $249.
The Nvidia 3050 series will bring the starting point for the latest Ampere architecture down while opening up tensor cores to the entry level market. While it won’t have the same processing power or voltage requirements as its bigger brethren, the card will bring Ray Tracing and DLSS technology to the table, or wherever else you keep your desktop.
Nvidia 3050 Specifications
Architecture: Ampere
Cuda Cores: 2560
RT Cores: 20
Tensor Cores: 80
Base Clock: 1.55 GHz
Memory: 8GB GDDR6
With Tensor performance clocking in at around 73 TFLOPS, the 3050 might seem like a significant step down from the next full jump, the 3060 cards, but Nvidia is sure that this new option will tempt your wallet with an example of the expected performance gain against older cards.
The only problem here is the usual lack of availability. With the distant cries of “paper launch” echoing across the internet already and the lottery to get any new cards, it’s something of a wonder why Nvidia is still trying to spread existing components and market availability across an even larger lineup of cards. Still, you can always get a console if prices skyrocket, right? Maybe I’m being too optimistic. If you want to find out more before attempting to get an RTX 3050, check out the official Nvidia CES 2022 announcement playback.
