AMD RX 6500 XT vs Nvidia RTX 3050 – which one is better?
Team Red, or Team Green?
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The AMD RX 6500 XT is being released today, and the real competition on the low end, where GPU manufacturers make most of their money is heating up. Mainly, the battle will be against the RX 6500 XT, a card that’s been mired in mystery and a curious technical specification, against NVIDIAs now well-established Ampere architecture that we first saw in the RTX 3080 almost two years ago. The steam survey shows the GTX 1060 as one of the most popular graphics cards ever created, and now a new generation of cards has risen, but which one will come out on top?
RX 6500 XT vs RTX 3050 specifications
GPU | AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 |
Launch date | January 2022 | January 2022 |
Shader Cores | 1024 (RDNA 2) | 2560 (CUDA) |
ROPs | 32 | 40 |
Memory | 4GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
Memory bandwidth | 144 GB/s | 224 GB/s |
Memory bus | 64-bit | 128-bit |
PCIe bandwidth | PCIe 4.0 x 4 PCIe 3.0 x 4 | PCIe 4.0 X 16 |
Maximum PCIe bandwidth | 8GB/s | 64GB/s |
Price | $199 | $249 |
After a cursory glance at both of the cards to see which one may perform better, it’s difficult to say without having the data right in front of you, but at least on paper, the RTX 3050 appears to be the better buy. This is because it has higher PCIe and Memory bandwidth, in addition to twice the amount of RAM. Additionally, the 6500 XT relies on AMD’s driver technology, which has historically been slightly weaker than the Nvidia offering. It is possible that you might see things such as AMD releasing their own real competitor to DLSS, but for now, FSR will just have to do, which is a bit of a shame. It is disappointing to see the 6500 XT only using 4 PCIe lanes, however, this should not impact performance too much, but it could potentially spell trouble for users on a legacy PCIe 3.0 platform.
Winner: Nvidia RTX 3050
RX 6500 XT vs RTX 3050 features
It’s not all about silicon anymore, you can have a great card with rubbish drivers, and it won’t perform as well as a card that might have weaker silicon but possess better software support and drivers. One aspect where Nvidia is consistently innovating is in their AI offering, which AMD simply just cannot match at all, even with their FSR offering. With features such as RTGI, Nvidia Reflex, Shadowplay, Broadcast, and NVENC encoders, the 3050 is packed full of things that you will actually use. The 6500 XT cannot even natively encode on the card, and only has a handful of useful features that we’d want to use.
Winner: Nvidia RTX 3050
RX 6500 XT vs RTX 3050 price
The price of the RX 6500 XT is $199, compared to the RTX 3050’s $249. However, we all know that MSRP is virtually meaningless in this current market climate, so you can expect these prices to be inflated once the cards eventually hit the market. However, it is genuinely an incredibly feat that AMD managed to reach an MSRP that is under the golden $200 mark. This kind of pricing is the same mark that other cards launched at. Yes, there may be compromises on the silicon, but it’s still impressive. The RTX 3050 is also playing at around a similar price, at $249. Though you can almost certainly expect that the 3050 will be in significantly higher demand due to the fact that it can be mined on, regardless, you have to applaud the fact that AMD managed to keep this entry-level card under $200, it’s something seldom seen before.
Update: ASUS has confirmed that their TUF 6500 XT will be priced in the UK at £179.99.
Winner: AMD RX 6500 XT
RX 6500 XT vs RTX 3050 performance
We do not yet have data on exactly how the performance will shake out between these two cards. However, you can expect the RTX 3050 to slightly pull ahead here with more headroom for displaying at higher resolutions, additional support for more displays if needed, in addition to having a slightly better spec sheet to the humble RX 6500. The RX 6500 also has support for FSR, which might help to massage some of the framerates higher, but in general, DLSS performs slightly better and is more often widely supported by other cards. Additionally, the VRAM on the RX 6500 XT will let it down here, meaning that there is less space for higher resolution textures, which may also be a struggle for the 3050, although the latter has more VRAM to help it out. Where the RX 6500 XT might have an edge is in the sheer clock speed that it runs at, which may outpace the RTX 3050 in some titles. Regardless, you can expect both of these cards to be pretty decent performers at 1080p resolutions with mid to high settings in most AAA titles, and higher framerates in esports titles.
Winner: Tie
RX 6500 XT vs RTX 3050 ray tracing
While both of these cards might support ray tracing, the performance hit that you might have when it comes to these low-end cards means that the support is there in pretty much name only. Both the 3050 and 6500 XT will not have great ray tracing performance, so be aware of that before expecting to turn on all of the bells and whistles. Even solutions such as FSR and DLSS might not help enough to bring the framerates up to being playable for the most demanding titles on these cards, so be sure to keep your expectations in check.
Winner: Tie
RX 6500 XT vs RTX 3050 availability
While both of these cards are expected to sell out very quickly, the RX 6500 XT might have the extra edge of being more available due to being slightly less desirable for most gamers than the RTX 3050. This is because of all of the things we just mentioned, the 3050 is going to have more VRAM, it’s likely that it will see better performance, and with things such as DLSS, Broadcast, and NVENC, it’s very likely that it’s going to be much easier to pick up an RX 6500 XT than an RTX 3050. Both of these cards are expected to be available very soon. You can find where to pick them up below.
Winner: AMD RX 6500 XT
- Where to buy an RTX 3050
- Where to buy an RX 6500 XT
- Where to buy an RTX 3080 12GB
- Where to buy an RTX 3080
- Where to buy an RTX 3090 Ti
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