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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Entry-Level GPU To Come With Ray Tracing?

You might not need to go top of the line to get ray-tracing graphics after all…

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According to the latest rumors, even the entry-level lineup from NVIDIA’s latest Ampere line of GPUs, including the GeForce RTX 3050, will also come with ray-tracing support. The RTX 3050 will apparently be making use of the GA107 GPU core meaning that, unlike the 1650 and 1660 series cards, these new entry-level models will come with the necessary tensor and raytracing cores to enable hardware-accelerated raytracing and DLSS featured in games.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 GPU

The tweet in question that sparked the rumor claims that the RTX 3050 features the GA107-300 GPU which, as far as we know is the most entry-level Ampere card when it comes to desktop GPUs. The RTX 3050 doesn’t leave much room for anything lower, but there’s still a chance we could see something that uses the GA108 GPU, although it does seem unlikely.

The card itself is expected to feature 2304 FP32 cores in a total of 18 SM units, with a 90W TGP. This means it would need an external 6-pin connector to boot, unlike the GTX 1650 that precedes it. It should feature a 128-bit bus interface and up to 4GB of DDR6 memory with speeds of up to 14 Gbps on the card – although that remains to be seen.

NVIDIA 30-Series Specs

RTX 3050 Performance & Price

When it comes to performance, the RTX 3050 should fall somewhere between the GeForce RTX 1660 SUPER and the GeForce RTX 2060, if the rumored specs are to be believed. In terms of pricing, the RTX 3050 should retail for around $150, pretty sweet when compared to the 1660 SUPER which retailed at $229. It could be a great choice for those looking for 1080p gaming, but AMD may be hot on their tracks with a Radeon RX 6500 model though.

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Danielle Hayes

Danielle has been in love with video games ever since her older brothers handed down their PS1 instead of buying her a Christmas present. She grew up fighting her way through epic JRPGs. Now, you're more likely to find her destroying her Sim's lives, causing absolute mayhem over in Azeroth, and slowly paying off her debt to Tom Nook.