Home / NVIDIA / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB GA107: Performance and Specs

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB GA107

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB GA107: The Ideal Choice for Budget Gamers and Beyond

April 2025

Since its release in 2021, the RTX 3050 series graphics cards have become a popular choice for those seeking a balance between price and performance. In 2025, the RTX 3050 8 GB GA107 model continues to hold its ground thanks to its optimized architecture and support for modern technologies. Let’s explore why this card remains relevant and who it is suitable for.

Architecture and Key Features

Ampere Architecture: Power in Details

The RTX 3050 8 GB GA107 is built on the Ampere architecture, which first debuted in NVIDIA's top GPUs. The GA107 chip is manufactured using Samsung's 8nm process technology, providing a good balance between energy efficiency and performance.

RTX Features: Ray Tracing and DLSS

The card is equipped with:

- RT Cores for hardware ray tracing, enhancing the realism of lighting and shadows in games.

- Tensor Cores utilized in DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology. DLSS 3.5 (the current version in 2025) increases FPS through AI image scaling with minimal quality loss.

- Support for FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) from AMD, broadening the list of games with enhanced scaling.

Why is this Important?

Even in 2025, many titles such as Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty or Alan Wake 2 require DLSS/FSR for comfortable gameplay with ray tracing on mid-range GPUs.

Memory: Fast, but Not Without Compromises

GDDR6 and 8 GB: Is it Enough?

The graphics card utilizes GDDR6 memory with a 128-bit bus and a speed of 14 Gb/s. The bandwidth is 224 GB/s. For 2025, 8 GB is the minimum comfortable amount for gaming at 1080p, but in some AAA titles (for example, Starfield on ultra settings), frame drops may occur due to insufficient VRAM.

Tip:

For 1440p, it's better to reduce textures to high or medium to avoid memory overload. In professional tasks (3D rendering), 8 GB will suffice for basic projects, but complex scenes will require an upgrade.

Gaming Performance: 1080p - The Gold Standard

FPS Examples (2025, Medium Settings):

- Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p, RT Ultra, DLSS Quality): 48–55 FPS.

- Fortnite (1440p, Epic, DLSS Performance): 75–90 FPS.

- Apex Legends (1080p, Ultra, no RT): 110–130 FPS.

- Hogwarts Legacy 2 (1080p, High, RT Medium, DLSS Balanced): 50–60 FPS.

Ray Tracing:

Enabling RT reduces FPS by 30–40%, but DLSS compensates for the losses. For example, in Cyberpunk 2077, without DLSS, the RTX 3050 delivers only 25–30 FPS at the same settings.

1440p and 4K:

At 1440p, the card handles games on high settings only with active DLSS/FSR. 4K is not its forte: even in CS2, frame rates rarely exceed 60 FPS on medium settings.

Professional Tasks: Not Just Gaming

Video Editing and 3D Rendering

With 2560 CUDA cores and support for NVIDIA Studio drivers, the RTX 3050 is suitable for:

- Editing in Premiere Pro (30% faster rendering compared to integrated graphics).

- Working in Blender (Cycles with CUDA) — rendering simple scenes takes 2–3 times less time than on CPU.

- Machine Learning: The card supports libraries like TensorFlow, but for serious tasks, models with larger memory are recommended.

Limitations:

8 GB of memory and low bandwidth become a bottleneck when working with 8K video or complex 3D models.

Power Consumption and Heat Output

TDP 130W: Savings on Power Supply

The RTX 3050 is one of the most energy-efficient cards in NVIDIA's lineup. The recommended power supply is 450–500W with an 80+ Bronze rating.

Cooling:

Even in compact cases, dual-fan systems (for example, in ASUS Dual or MSI Ventus models) maintain temperatures between 65–75°C under load.

Tip:

For mini-PCs, choose single-fan versions, but ensure good airflow: 2–3 case fans are essential.

Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT (8 GB):

- Pros: Higher performance in non-RT games (by 10–15%), supports FSR 3.5.

- Cons: Weaker in ray tracing, no equivalent to DLSS 3.5.

- Price: $250–270 (new models, 2025).

Intel Arc A580:

- Pros: Cheaper ($200), 8 GB memory.

- Cons: Unstable drivers, low performance in older games.

Conclusion: The RTX 3050 outshines competitors thanks to DLSS and stability, but AMD offers a better price-to-FPS ratio without RT.

Practical Tips

Power Supply:

- Minimum of 450W (e.g., Corsair CX450M).

- Required 8-pin power connector.

Compatibility:

- PCIe 4.0 x8 (backward compatible with 3.0).

- Supports Windows 11 and Linux (Nouveau drivers).

Drivers:

- Regularly update via GeForce Experience.

- For professional tasks, use Studio drivers.

Pros and Cons

👍 Pros:

- Affordable price ($220–240 in 2025).

- Support for DLSS 3.5 and ray tracing.

- Low power consumption.

👎 Cons:

- 8 GB memory is insufficient for some games and tasks.

- 128-bit bus limits bandwidth.

- Competitors offer better FPS/value ratios without RT.

Final Conclusion: Who is the RTX 3050 8 GB GA107 For?

This graphics card is the ideal choice for:

1. Gamers with 1080p monitors who want to play with RT and high settings.

2. Budget builds (PCs under $700).

3. Novice professionals in video editing or 3D graphics.

If you're willing to forego ray tracing for higher FPS, consider the AMD RX 7600. But for those who value NVIDIA technology and stability, the RTX 3050 remains the best option in its category.

Prices are accurate as of April 2025 and may vary by region and manufacturer.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

January 2022

Model Name

GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB GA107

Generation

GeForce 30

Base Clock

1552MHz

Boost Clock

1777MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x8

Transistors

Unknown

RT Cores

Tensor Cores

Tensor Cores are specialized processing units designed specifically for deep learning, providing higher training and inference performance compared to FP32 training. They enable rapid computations in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, text-to-speech conversion, and personalized recommendations. The two most notable applications of Tensor Cores are DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AI Denoiser for noise reduction.

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

Samsung

Process Size

8 nm

Architecture

Ampere

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

1750MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

224.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

56.86 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

142.2 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

9.098 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

142.2 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

8.916 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

2560

L1 Cache

128 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

115W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 Ultimate (12_2)

CUDA

8.6

Power Connectors

1x 8-pin

Shader Model

6.6

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

300W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

8.916 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

PG506 242

10.114 +13.4%

Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB

9.335 +4.7%

GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB GA107

8.916

GeForce GTX 1080 11Gbps

8.696 -2.5%

Tesla T4

8.304 -6.9%