The Nvidia RTX 3050 is the spiritual successor to the now-aging GTX 1650 graphics card. The latter was massively a successful card and is currently the second most popular GPU on the Steam Hardware Survey charts. It brought affordable 1080p gaming to the masses. People who do not have a lot to spend on their build could easily opt for the GTX 1650 or the slightly more powerful GTX 1650 Super. These cards were almost as powerful as the GTX 1060 3GB and the GTX 1060 6GB cards, which is the most popular video card currently.
Thus, it is no surprise that the RTX 3050 will come with a similar price-to-performance ratio and will be a massively adopted card. However, that is not quite the scenario. While the GTX 1050 Ti had launched for US$ 139 and the GTX 1650 came at US$ 149, the RTX 3050 has been launched for a whopping US$ 249. However, you will not be able to find it below $350 in the current market scenario. This pushes the RTX 3050 to the neighborhood of the RX 6600 cards. Not only is the RX 6600 better on paper, but it also manages to beat the RTX 3050 hugely in terms of performance.
Why are Nvidia Cards a No-Go These Days?
Nvidia cards have not come down to MSRP as quickly as AMD Radeon cards have. Most of Team Green’s offerings still hover around 100-200$ above the MSRP they were introduced at. Thus, we cannot recommend the RTX 3050 to mainstream gamers. Yes, this card has a few advantages over its competitors, namely the surprisingly bad RX 6500 XT and the okay-ish RX 6600. Support for DLSS and Nvidia’s already mature ray-tracing implementation can be considered a few of them. But, these advantages fade away while considering the price these GPUs are selling for.