NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 8 GB

[jaszy]

I love being right.

Called the 5050 being a little under 4060 a couple weeks ago. People were trying to say it was weaker than a 1080 lmao.

Anywho, card is decent @ $200-230 market. Any higher makes no sense.

 

[Nikhar]

Hmm, for 200 bucks I'd say it's good for what it can do. (Well by the standards of 2025, I think?)

250 bucks is where I'd say it's not worth it for budget gamers... But they don't really have options anyway.

In the end, most AIB variants will cost above MSRP/RRP, but 3 fans on a simple finstack and basic heatpipes for a ~130 Watt card is hilarious

Thank heavens nvidia didn't pull a fast one amongst all the BS, like putting 6 or 4 gigs of memory on the 50-Series' runt of the pack

As a product - It's decent

 

[f0ssile]

Did the 3050 almost beat the 2060 when it came out? No this is closer to last gen than the 3050 was to the 2060

The "regular" 3050 also had 8GB of VRAM, and a decent power consumption advantage over both the 2060 and 3060.

Okay, let’s not jump off a cliff here, it’s not a fucking glorified display adapter, it’s actually a perfectly viable and decently performant budget card. The issue is, as is always these days, the price. The card itself is fine.

So, since the price is not good the card is not good, you seem to be the first to ignore what you would like to explain.....

Christ, I understand that nuance is very hard and outrageous claims are edgy and cool and makes one feel tingly in their no-no bits, but please, let’s actually act like tech enthusiasts and not gibbering goblins.

Not satisfied, you try to squeeze the technical discussion into your funnel.

It costs only 50 dollars less than the 5060, which goes 30% more and in practice also consumes the same.
It can't even boast that advantage, since it is evident that it is stretched to death in the frequencies, which further minimizes the value in relation to the units.

It is a terrible card, if you have to buy it, it does not mean that it is good, it is just a terrible choice that naturally follows the card.

The guided rhetoric placed before the arguments, is a form of self-harm that I do not even appreciate stylistically.

 

[yfn_ratchet]

$250 was already a tough sell, $275 for this hunk'a sand? Seriously? The card itself isn't bad, It's filling a spot the 4060 used to dutifully, but for this asking price it's essentially pointless. This is an entry-level card, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, and that means it needs to go for entry-level prices.

 

[ARF]

Cons:
1. Illogical / stupid PCB design - 30% of the PCB left empty.
2. Illogical cooling solution - oversized heatsink, but only two pathetic heat pipes - it actually means the card occupies quite large volumes in the users' PC cases.
3. Pathetically low performance.
4. Pathetically high price.
5. No generational improvement at all.
6. Downgrade with only 8 GB of VRAM. 12 GB should be the bare minimum these days for anything.

 

[demonicmaniac]

first of all I want to make it clear that I have nothing but respect for w1zzard and techpowerup! I am not criticising the review/methology/persons, I'd just say I somewhat disagree with part of the conclusion. the 3060 12gb does pull ahead of the 5050 8gb in some scenarios in the rt testing even at fhd already where the 5050 just runs out of vram and while those cases have the 3060 in the 30s as well there are options for using upscaling with vram to spare to make it playable - no such thing on the 5050. dlss/fsr4/etc all require additional vram - and not too little - as does rt itself. it's simply a caveat i'd like to be mentioned more often and explored when the testing is done without dlss4/fsr4 which i appreciate to show the raw pure performance of the cards! but when touting dlss4 as something these cards offer it should also be stated that rt/upscaling/fg all require additional vram each which will not be possible to activate on 8gb without drastically reducing texture quality in the process vs something with 12 or 16gb. thanks for the review!

 

[jaszy]

Cons:
1. Illogical / stupid PCB design - 30% of the PCB left empty.
2. Illogical cooling solution - oversized heatsink, but only two pathetic heat pipes - it actually means the card occupies quite large volumes in the users' PC cases.
3. Pathetically low performance.
4. Pathetically high price.
5. No generational improvement at all.
6. Downgrade with only 8 GB of VRAM. 12 GB should be the bare minimum these days for anything.

Tbh, this is the only card that should be 8GB, given it uses older GDDR6. Pricing should have been max $220-$230, but I digress.

$250 makes it the worse SM/$ in the lineup, especially next to the 5060s.

 

[wNotyarD]

I agree that $250 for this is a joke, but imho the real joke is the power consumption. I'd rather have it detuned so it could stay slot-powered, it'd be a nice usp in its class.

 

[ARF]

Tbh, this is the only card that should be 8GB

It should be 4GB.

, given it uses older GDDR6.

Doesn't matter. Could be with GDDR5.

Pricing should have been max $220-$230, but I digress.

$250 makes it the worse SM/$ in the lineup, especially next to the 5060s.

99$ or DOA.

I agree that $250 for this is a joke, but imho the real joke is the power consumption. I'd rather have it detuned so it could stay slot-powered, it'd be a nice usp in its class.

It could be undervolted and underclocked.
130 watts is extremely high level of heat and this doesn't help at all for the "green policies" and global warming battle.

 

[Onasi]

So, since the price is not good the card is not good, you seem to be the first to ignore what you would like to explain.....

The price is “not good” on EVERY GPU in the current market. Is ~3000 dollars a “good price” for a 5090? If not, does that make that card “not good” either? Do you not understand the difference between a genuinely bad product that is fundamentally flawed (the 3050, yes) and a perfectly fine product that is priced poorly? The 5050 is a poorly priced card. But claiming that it’s a “bad card” is disingenuous. Because that implies it would still be bad at 200, which it would not.

It costs only 50 dollars less than the 5060, which goes 30% more and in practice also consumes the same.

…what part of this do you not understand?

For a flat 200 it would actually be a banger card for people on a budget. For 250 it’s a joke and every AIB model that’s over that is an entire circus. No, please, I am sure that this 130 watt GPU absolutely NEEDS a tri-fan solution.

You realize that the post of mine that you are quoting was in the response to an overreaction by another poster comparing this card to x30 tier cards of the past, right? It wasn’t me defending the MSRP.

 

[sLowEnd]

Intel's best, the Arc B580, is 5% faster than NVIDIA's new weakest GPU,

I wonder if that's still the case if tested with a lesser CPU than the 9800X3D. I doubt people in the market for the B580 or RTX 5050 would be running such a CPU, and there was some noise raised about Intel's CPU overhead a while ago.

 

[f0ssile]

The price is “not good” on EVERY GPU in the current market. Is ~3000 dollars a “good price” for a 5090? If not, does that make that card “not good” either? Do you not understand the difference between a genuinely bad product that is fundamentally flawed (the 3050, yes) and a perfectly fine product that is priced poorly? The 5050 is a poorly priced card. But claiming that it’s a “bad card” is disingenuous. Because that implies it would still be bad at 200, which it would not.


…what part of this do you not understand?

What you're saying makes no sense. The fact that the 5090 is the top doesn't make it great regardless, the comparison doesn't hold up, and I don't think it's worth wasting time explaining why...

Explain to me why the 3050 is terrible, unlike the 5050?
Would the 3050 at €100 still be terrible?
The fact that it had more VRAM than the 2060, and consumed less than this and the 3060 doesn't make it better in comparison with your respected - I don't understand why - 5050?
The pulled frequency, and the ratio with the units must not count for anything because you're sorry...?

Do you want to talk about technical pragmatism while demonstrating that you ignore it? Yes, that's exactly how it is.

 

[Hecate91]

let’s actually act like tech enthusiasts

Yes, let's act like tech enthusiasts and not defend a garbage overpriced card.

The price is “not good” on EVERY GPU in the current market.

The price being bad on every other GPU doesn't excuse the price of the low end cards being bad, I've seen the "but every card is expensive" defense being used on every 50 series GPU launch.
Pricing is what it is, you can go but if it was X price it would be a good card, well it's not so the card is essentially a waste of sand at $250. This 5050 makes no sense aside from OEM systems where people are going to be ripped off on a prebuilt gaming PC anyway. For another $50 someone on a budget can get a 5060.

overreaction by another poster comparing this card to x30 tier cards of the past

Given how tiny the die is, and all of the wasted PCB space, I think it's fair to call it a 5030, also because Nvidia has shifted everything up in price a whole tier while giving the consumer less percentage of the full die.

 

[megaclite]

This card is an impressive... turd
slower than 4060 and at the same time consumes more power

This is what happens when you are become a monopoly

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Did the 3050 almost beat the 2060 when it came out? No this is closer to last gen than the 3050 was to the 2060

The 2060 matched the previous gen 80 class card so that comparison only makes sense if the 4060 came close to the 3080....

 

[Macro Device]

I wonder if that's still the case if tested with a lesser CPU than the 9800X3D.

It's not. With 11400F (a fairly common CPU for such buyers) the nVidia GPU is significantly faster, sometimes with >15% lead.

5050 is effectively a 4060 with disabled 32-bit CUDA. And a slight price reduction. Yawn.

 

[jaszy]

It should be 4GB.



Doesn't matter. Could be with GDDR5.



99$ or DOA.



It could be undervolted and underclocked.
130 watts is extremely high level of heat and this doesn't help at all for the "green policies" and global warming battle.

Delusional people on TPU. weird.

 

[tfdsaf]

What utter garbage. Even at $200 this would be too expensive, at $150 it might be a good option for budget gamers, get a barebone GPU that can run games at 1080p medium settings, hopefully upgrade to a better GPU 2 years down the line.

As it is this is a giant turd! Waste of silicon.

 

[bblzd]

Alternate headline: Nvidia releases a slightly worse RTX 4060 with some new tech under the hood.

Detailed and thorough review as always. Thank you.

 

[Tek-Check]

More laughable than this empty board is Gigabyte and other AIBs coming up with 3 fan designs for a GPU that barely needs a single one. Such a waste of copper and aluminum, just to fool the uninformed customer into overpaying for something they don't need.

Agreed. 3 fans - a total nonsense. That's how much Gigabyte is environmentally conscious. Absurd.

 

[sLowEnd]

More laughable than this empty board is Gigabyte and other AIBs coming up with 3 fan designs for a GPU that barely needs a single one. Such a waste of copper and aluminum, just to fool the uninformed customer into overpaying for something they don't need.

To be fair to Gigabyte, there is the benefit of very low noise and temperatures with the large heatsink, as evidenced by the noise/temperature results in the review. They also have a smaller dual-fan model and low profile model in their product lineup for people looking to get smaller cards.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N5050WF2OC-8GD

https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N5050OC-8GL

The price? The thermal putty? The sleeve bearing fans? The cheap plastic backplate? There's lots of potential things to criticize about this card, but I don't think Gigabyte providing an option of a big/quiet/cool card is one of those things.

 

[@man_daddio]

Well this is a review that actually is worth something to me. You at least made all the games run instead of putting those few games on Ultra and say they didn't run.
Thank you.
Great job !!!
As far as the 5050 goes it should be no more than $200 in my opinion.
The 3050 was going for $200 or less on average.

@_JP_
…it’s still budget relative to the rest of the market and NVidias own product stack. It’s replacing the atrocity that was the 3050, which it does successfully. It’s essentially the best overall card in its price class by default because there IS NO competition in said class (yes, I would take it over the B580, before you ask). And the “muh previous gen higher tier” argument is tosh - the 750/750Ti weren’t faster than the 660, yet were still popular cards in their own right. Christ, I understand that nuance is very hard and outrageous claims are edgy and cool and makes one feel tingly in their no-no bits, but please, let’s actually act like tech enthusiasts and not gibbering goblins.

The 3050 wasn't that bad. My son has a 3050 8gb and it runs all his games fine. The price was a problem as inflation rose.

 

[lexluthermiester]

This is a decent performance for a low-end card at all ultra settings. Not shabby at all!

I want to see the low-profile, slot powered versions!

Are there any positive comments?

Yup.

 

[N/A]

Given how tiny the die is, and all of the wasted PCB space, I think it's fair to call it a 5030, also because Nvidia has shifted everything up in price a whole tier while giving the consumer less percentage of the full die.

The last X30 GT 1030 was 64-bit and 75 sq mm. The RTX 5050 has a 128-bit bus and 150 sq mm, which is slightly larger than the GTX 1050 Ti.

This is a decent performance for a low-end card at all ultra settings. Not shabby at all!

I want to see the low-profile, slot powered versions!

There is no slot power version. It also requires an 8-pin connector. Only with a power limit of 60% of 80W could it qualify.

 

[W1zzard]

dlss/fsr4/etc all require additional vram - and not too little - as does rt itself.

Upscaling lowers the VRAM usage, because the game is rendered at lower resolution. Only FG increases VRAM usage

3060 12gb

The 3060 12 GB, is kinda similar to the B580's situation. You do have more VRAM which will let you run bigger workloads, but your GPU horsepower is so limited that you will never get decent FPS in any of them, so you'll never run them in real-life. This means you'll use upscaling, for those resolutions, which brings the VRAM usage back down.

Unlike the B580, the 3060 has MUCH less raw GPU perf, which amplifies the problem. For DLSS Transformer upscaling specifically, the performance hit is much small on Blackwell than on older architectures, so this will cost you even more FPS and the extra VRAM won't help you one bit. But the 3060 is $220, I'd still pick the 5050 for 250 (if I had to choose between those two cards)