ASUS GeForce RTX 3050 STRIX OC

[W1zzard]

The ASUS GeForce RTX 3050 STRIX OC is the flagship RTX 3050 from ASUS. Its large triple-slot, triple-fan cooler ensures amazing temperatures and whisper-quiet noise levels. What makes the card stand out is the biggest factory overclock and highest power limit of all the RTX 3050 cards we review today.

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[birdie]

• Performance is somewhat underwhelming.
• Power efficiency is simply underwhelming. No generational improvement over RTX 2060 whatsoever.
• At least it's a tad faster than GTX 1660 Ti unlike RX 6500 XT which in many cases is slower than RX 5500 XT which is just travesty.
• It's greatest redeeming quality over GTX 1660 Ti is DLSS and that's about it. I doubt people will seriously consider enabling RTRT on it.

If available at MSRP it's a bearable low-end card at the current market conditions. If it's to be sold at $400 or above, it's just sad and depressing.

Just a refresher: GTX 1650 was released for $150.

GTX 1660 Super which has approximately the same performance was released for $250. Two years have passed, where's progress? ;-)

 

[Selaya]

is this really worth $490 tho :thinking:

 

[BSim500]

The real problem is going to be pricing & availability. The £149 GTX 1650 Super (2019) replaced the £149 GTX 1050Ti (2016) with a big +70-100% performance boost after 3 years at same price point. 2022 vs 2019 is the same +3 years, but the jump from GTX 1650S to RTX 3050 seems only 30-40% (more like an RTX 2050), so pricing should reflect that but probably won't. For those who don't play AAA games and don't need 8GB VRAM, instead of a 4GB VRAM option they'll probably get to enjoy 0GB (if you can't actually buy it at any sane price that makes sense due to being targeted by miners...) It doesn't make much sense to put ray-tracing on low-end cards so is all the "RTX" stuff really needed? You could argue it's for DLSS but that only improves a relative handful of games that have DLSS support, whereas having no RTX cores at all but simply using the same die space to increase the number of regular GTX cores would improve everything (inc the thousands of games with no DLSS support).

Overall it's pretty sad the way both AMD & nVidia alike have treated the low-end market with literally no decent upgrades after +3 years being something I definitely don't recall in the past, and that's going all the way back to the era of 286's and ISA bus (remember the actual competition we had back when there were more than 2x GPU manufacturers? I sure do...)

 

[Chrispy_]

Comparing the temps and fan noise to the most underwhelming and basic 3050 like the Palit StormX it's clear that this cooler is overkill to the point of stupidity.

At the same time, if street price on both is $500 then it's a no-brainer - get the one with the amazing cooler repurposed from a 300W card.

However, given how completely unnecessary the cooler is, it's not worth paying a penny more for it.

 

[W1zzard]

is this really worth $490 tho :thinking:

it'll probably sell out tomorrow, so yes

 

[napata]

Power efficiency is weird for Ampere. You'd expect lower end GPUs to have better power efficiency as generally there's diminishing returns in performance with more SMs, but GA106 is worse than GA102 and G104 is a good deal better than both.

 

[Pumper]

Asus is a joke. What's the point in making a Strix version of the lowest end GPU when it just doubles the price? Who's buying these things?

 

[usiname]

Asus is a joke. What's the point in making a Strix version of the lowest end GPU when it just doubles the price? Who's buying these things?

Huh? Double price sound good, also they are sold out so why not to milk as much as possible?

 

[KarymidoN]

no reason for anyone with a 2060 or 1070 to upgrade, it really annoys me that i'm running a 2016 GPU in 2022, but what can i do? NVidia, AMD and even Intel are in no rush to help the Low/MID PC gamer.
Today is the first day that i'm considering a Gaming Console in 20+ Years of PC Gaming, just pisses me off so much.

 

[Anymal]

What a waste of materials. Its sad and irresponsible.

 

[Mindweaver]

Asus is a joke. What's the point in making a Strix version of the lowest end GPU when it just doubles the price? Who's buying these things?

It feels like a Trojan horse for scalpers. I bet most of them just see big coolers and buy. It feels like they are just cleaning out stock as cheap as possible with a huge turn in profit. 1050, 1650's have been readily available at around 300 usd. They are just giving it a beefier look and slapping rtx 3050 on it to sell better at a higher price point. Scalpers just see RTX 3XXX card and are buying it. I bet most of the scalper bots are just setup to look for (RTX 3\d+) cards. lol

 

[Ruru]

500 USD (probably EUR as well) for a card which is slower than the old 2060 6GB? This and Radeon RX 6500 XT have been the most pointless new releases for a while (I don't count RTX 2060 & 3080 12GB cards for new releases).

 

[Assimilator]

ASUS tax strikes again. Why make better products when you can just charge more for ordinary ones and convince fanboys that's okay?

 

[TheDeeGee]

Yep, Asus is the way to go if you want a proper GPU cooler.

Asus is a joke. What's the point in making a Strix version of the lowest end GPU when it just doubles the price? Who's buying these things?

Some people want a quiet gaming PC.

You might be deaf af, i'm not.

 

[thelawnet]

> What makes the card stand out is the biggest factory overclock and highest power limit of all the RTX 3050 cards we review today.

Factory overclock is worthless on all these cards, however the power, cooling solution, etc. is a very relevant consideration.

It looks like the Colorful Ultra W is the strongest https://en.colorful.cn/product_show.aspx?mid=102&id=1907

 

[Assimilator]

Yep, Asus is the way to go if you want a proper GPU cooler.


Some people want a quiet gaming PC.

You might be deaf af, i'm not.

30dBA is the level of a whisper, apparently you think that is deafening, perhaps you should do some research before posting fanboy comments.

 

[Pumper]

Yep, Asus is the way to go if you want a proper GPU cooler.


Some people want a quiet gaming PC.

You might be deaf af, i'm not.

People who can drop +$200 on a $250 GPU just for silent fans are not buying low end GPUs.

 

[seth1911]

My regular shop told me:
Asus RX 3050 499,99€
Msi RX 2060 12GB 504,98€

 

[kruk]

The Asus 3060 Ti Strix that runs circles around this card launched at $400 MSRP. This has to be the worst ripoff ever -> ASUS == scalpers because they are actively trying to keep the inflated prices up.

 

[Chomiq]

xx50 level card with triple fan cooler? Ok...

 

[Turmania]

RX 6600 is better card both in performance and power draw.

 

[Object55]

Strix version of 3050 ? GTFO !

 

[Jism]

500$ ... And it's like 25% faster then a casual RX580 which was at launch, 260$ ?

 

[B-Real]

500$ ... And it's like 25% faster then a casual RX580 which was at launch, 260$ ?

The RX 580 8 GB was $230, the 4 GB version was $200.