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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile: The Perfect Balance for Gaming and Work in 2025

Updated Guide to Mobile Graphics Cards for Gamers and Professionals

1. Architecture and Key Features

Ampere: The Foundation of Performance

The RTX 3050 Mobile is built on the Ampere architecture, which remains relevant in the budget segment even in 2025. The card is manufactured using Samsung's 8nm process, ensuring a good balance between energy efficiency and power.

RTX and DLSS: The Magic of NVIDIA

The main advantages of this model are the support for ray tracing (RTX) and DLSS 3.5. The DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology uses neural networks to boost FPS without sacrificing detail. For example, in Cyberpunk 2077, enabling DLSS in "Balanced" mode adds up to 40% to the frame rate.

FidelityFX and Other Technologies

Although FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is an AMD development, the RTX 3050 Mobile supports it in games with cross-platform integration. This is useful in projects where DLSS is not available, such as in Hogwarts Legacy.

2. Memory: Fast, but Modest

GDDR6 and 6 GB: Minimum for 2025

The 2025 version features 6 GB of GDDR6 (up from 4 GB) with a 96-bit bus. The bandwidth is 168 GB/s. This is sufficient for gaming at 1080p, but in AAA titles with ultra textures (e.g., Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora), data loading may occur.

Tip: For comfortable gaming, disable "HD textures" in settings if you notice a drop in FPS in open-world games.

3. Gaming Performance: 1080p as Standard

Average FPS in Top Titles

- Cyberpunk 2077 (without RT): 65–70 FPS on high settings.

- Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0: 80–90 FPS.

- The Last of Us Part II (PC version): 55–60 FPS (due to high detail).

Ray Tracing: Beauty Comes at a Cost

With RTX enabled, FPS drops by 30–40%, but DLSS compensates for the losses. In Fortnite, with RT at medium settings and DLSS, the card delivers stable 60 FPS.

1440p and 4K: Only for Undemanding Games

In CS2 or Valorant, reaching 100+ FPS at 1440p is easy. 4K gaming is reserved for desktop GPUs, but the RTX 3050 Mobile can handle indie projects (Hades 2).

4. Professional Tasks: Not Just for Gaming

Video Editing and Rendering

With 2048 CUDA cores, the card speeds up rendering in DaVinci Resolve by 30% compared to integrated graphics. For editing 4K videos in Premiere Pro, using proxy files is recommended.

3D Modeling

In Blender, the RTX 3050 Mobile shows modest results: rendering a BMW scene takes about 15 minutes (for comparison, RTX 4060 Mobile takes 8 minutes). Suitable for students and beginner designers.

Scientific Computing

CUDA and OpenCL are useful in basic machine learning (processing datasets in TensorFlow), but for complex tasks, it's better to choose cards with a higher core count.

5. Power Consumption and Cooling

TDP: 50–60 Watts

The RTX 3050 Mobile does not require a powerful cooling system, making it popular in thin gaming laptops (e.g., ASUS Zephyrus G14).

Tips for Choosing a Laptop

- Look for models with 2–3 fans and copper heat pipes.

- Avoid ultrabooks with passive cooling, as throttling may occur under load.

6. Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 6600M: A Rival Without DLSS

The RX 6600M is 10–15% faster in games without RT but falls behind with ray tracing due to the lack of a DLSS equivalent. Prices for laptops with RX 6600M start at $900.

Intel Arc A580: Cheaper, but More Capricious

The Intel card shows similar performance but suffers from unoptimized drivers. In Starfield, the RTX 3050 Mobile outperforms the A580 by 20%.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply and Compatibility

- Laptops with the RTX 3050 Mobile require a standard adapter of 120–150 Watts.

- Use HDMI 2.1 or DisplayPort 1.4a for external monitors.

Drivers and Optimization

- Update through GeForce Experience: in 2025, NVIDIA is actively improving DLSS 3.5 support in new games.

- In Alan Wake 2, set DLSS to "Performance" mode for stable 60 FPS.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Support for DLSS 3.5 and RTX.

- Energy efficiency.

- Affordable laptop prices (starting from $800).

Cons:

- 6 GB of memory is a bit low for AAA games in 2025.

- Not suitable for 4K gaming.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the RTX 3050 Mobile For?

This graphics card is an ideal choice for:

- Gamers playing at 1080p with high settings.

- Students and freelancers who need a laptop for studying, working, and occasional gaming.

- Travelers who value compactness and battery life.

In 2025, the RTX 3050 Mobile remains the "golden mean": it offers premium-class technologies (DLSS, RTX) for a reasonable price without compromising portability.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

May 2021

Model Name

GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile

Generation

GeForce 30 Mobile

Base Clock

712MHz

Boost Clock

1057MHz

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

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

1500MHz

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.

192.0 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.

33.82 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.

67.65 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.

4.329 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.

67.65 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.

4.242 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

75W

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

6.6

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.