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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Max-Q Refresh 4 GB

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Max-Q Refresh 4 GB: A Compact Graphics Card for Gamers and Mobile Users

April 2025

Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Max-Q Refresh 4 GB is an updated version of the popular mobile graphics card designed for thin laptops and compact PCs. It combines energy efficiency with support for modern technologies, but how does it perform in gaming and professional tasks in 2025? Let's delve into the details.

Architecture and Key Features

Ampere Refresh Architecture

The card is built on an optimized version of the Ampere architecture, produced using TSMC's 6nm process technology (compared to 8nm for the original RTX 3050). This has resulted in lower power consumption and improved clock speeds.

Unique Features

- RTX (Ray Tracing): Hardware support for ray tracing through 3rd generation RT cores.

- DLSS 3.5: Artificial intelligence increases FPS with minimal quality loss.

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR): Compatibility with AMD’s open standard for alternative scaling.

Despite its modest 4 GB of memory, NVIDIA Reflex technology reduces latency in esports games, which is relevant for CS2 and Valorant.

Memory: Pros and Cons

Type and Capacity: 4 GB GDDR6 with a 128-bit bus. Bandwidth is 224 GB/s (14 Gbps effective speed).

Impact on Performance

The memory capacity is sufficient for gaming at medium settings in 1080p, but in projects with HD textures (such as Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty), performance may drop to 30 FPS due to VRAM limitations. By 2025, 6-8 GB has become the standard for comfortable gaming, making 4 GB a limitation for AAA titles.

Gaming Performance

Average FPS in Popular Games (1080p, Medium Settings):

- Apex Legends — 90 FPS (without DLSS), 110 FPS (DLSS Quality).

- The Elder Scrolls VI — 45 FPS (High settings), 60 FPS (DLSS Balanced).

- Call of Duty: Warzone 3 — 65 FPS (Medium settings), 85 FPS (DLSS Performance).

Ray Tracing: Enabling RT reduces FPS by 30-40%. For instance, Alan Wake 2 performs at 28 FPS without DLSS, but with DLSS 3.5, it can reach up to 50 FPS.

1440p and 4K: Only lighter games are suitable for 1440p (for example, Fortnite — 60 FPS at low settings). 4K is impractical due to limited memory.

Professional Tasks

Video Editing and 3D Modeling:

- Premiere Pro: Rendering 1080p video with effects takes 20% less time due to CUDA cores compared to integrated graphics.

- Blender: Simple scenes render in acceptable time (example: BMW Benchmark — 7 minutes compared to 15 minutes on GTX 1650).

Limitations: 4 GB of memory is insufficient for working with 8K footage or complex 3D models in Maya. For scientific calculations (e.g., MATLAB), the card is viable, but specialized GPUs (NVIDIA Tesla) are more effective.

Power Consumption and Thermal Management

TDP: 50 W (peak — 60 W).

Cooling Recommendations:

- For laptops: A dual-fan system with copper heat pipes.

- For compact PCs: A case optimized for airflow (e.g., Cooler Master NR200).

The card runs cool under load (maximum 75°C), making it ideal for ultrabooks.

Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 6500M (4 GB GDDR6):

- Pros: Cheaper ($230), supports FSR 3.0.

- Cons: No equivalent to DLSS 3.5, worse ray tracing performance.

Intel Arc A580 (8 GB GDDR6):

- Pros: More memory, better performance at 1440p.

- Cons: Higher TDP (75 W), less stable drivers.

Conclusion: The RTX 3050 Max-Q Refresh excels in energy efficiency and support for AI technologies, but it falls behind in memory.

Practical Advice

Power Supply: For PCs — 400 W (e.g., Corsair CV450). For laptops — standard adapter is sufficient.

Compatibility:

- PCIe 4.0 x8.

- Supports Windows 11 and Linux (NVIDIA drivers 550.x).

Drivers: Regularly update through GeForce Experience — this is critical for DLSS 3.5 functionality.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Energy efficiency (ideal for portable devices).

- Support for DLSS 3.5 and Reflex.

- Quiet operation even under load.

Cons:

- Only 4 GB of VRAM.

- Limited performance in 1440p+ gaming.

Final Conclusion: Who is the RTX 3050 Max-Q Refresh For?

This graphics card is suitable for:

1. Gamers with thin laptops who value a balance between price and quality at 1080p.

2. Students and editors working on lighter projects.

3. Esports enthusiasts where low latency and stable 60+ FPS are important.

If you need ultra settings or 1440p performance, consider the RTX 4060 or AMD RX 7600M. However, at $270 (the average price in 2025), the RTX 3050 Max-Q Refresh remains the best budget option with support for "smart" upscaling.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

July 2022

Model Name

GeForce RTX 3050 Max-Q Refresh 4 GB

Generation

GeForce 30 Mobile

Base Clock

757MHz

Boost Clock

1125MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x8

Transistors

8,700 million

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

4GB

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

1375MHz

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.

176.0 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.

36.00 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.

72.00 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.

4.608 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.

72.00 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.

4.7 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.

2048

L1 Cache

128 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

35W

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

None

Shader Model

6.7

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.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

4.7 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GRID M60 1Q

4.922 +4.7%

Radeon RX 570 X2

4.841 +3%

GeForce RTX 3050 Max-Q Refresh 4 GB

4.7

Quadro P4000 Max Q

4.489 -4.5%

Radeon RX 560 XT

4.306 -8.4%