The Nvidia RTX 3050 and AMD RX 6500 XT are potentially the two most affordable entry-level graphics cards of their generations. If affordability isn’t an issue (and it might be), they should offer the most affordable price of any current-gen graphics card in quite some time. But how do you measure yourself?
Which offers the best value for money? Nvidia RTX 3050 or AMD RX 6500 XT?
Glasses
| Nvidia RTX 3050 | AMD RX 6500 XT | |
| GPU | GA106 (rumored) | Navi 24 |
| Procedure | 8 nm | 6 nm |
| Interface | PCIE x16 | PCIE x4 |
| Shader processors | 2560 CUDA cores | 1,024 shading units |
| Ray Tracing Accelerators | 20 RT cores (rumored) | 16 air accelerators |
| Tensor kernels | 80 (rumored) | ON |
| Basic block | 1.55 GHz | Unknown |
| Game clock | ON | 2.610 MHz |
| Turn up the clock | 1.78 GHz | 2.815 MHz |
| Memory | 8 GB GDDR6 | 4GB GDDR6 + 16MB Infinity Cache |
| Memory speed | 14 Gbps (rumored) | 18 Gbps |
| Memory bus width | 128-bit | 64-bit |
| Band width | Unknown | 144 GBps (effective 305 GBps with Infinity Cache) |
| TDP | 130W | 107W |
Prices and availability
None of these graphics cards are available yet, but they will be on sale soon. The Nvidia RTX 3050 is scheduled to be released on January 27th with a suggested retail price of $249. The AMD RX 6500 XT is coming a bit earlier, with a release date of January 19.
Its MSRP of just $199 makes it a significantly cheaper GPU, though that may not be the case in all territories. The European retail price for the 6500 XT is already inflated to the equivalent of $340, so we’ll have to see what this card does actually at retail when they go on sale.
Performance
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We still don’t have third-party testing for these cards, so there’s no definitive way to know how effective any of these cards are. But what we can do is look at the specifications and first-party benchmarks released by both AMD and Nvidia at CES 2022, and make a relative assessment to shake up a head-to-head battle between these two cards.
Both the RTX 3050 and RX 6500 XT are designed as 1080p graphics cards, replacing older 1080p high-end cards such as the GTX 1650 and RX 570/580. Nvidia’s testing has shown that the RTX 3050 is more than capable of delivering over 60 frames per second (fps) in a number of mainstream games, including F1 2021, control, and Doom Eternal. But anyway, that was with Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) enabled, which doesn’t give us a clear idea of performance, as older cards like the GTX 1650 can’t use that upscaling technology and not every game supports it.
AMD’s benchmarks showed the RX 6500 XT to be a somewhat arbitrary 23% to 59% faster than the GTX 1650 in games like Age of Empires 4, Apex Legends, and Resident Evil: The Village. That’s good, but without actual frames per second it doesn’t tell us much.
Looking at the specs, the RTX 3050 should have a big advantage when it comes to enabling advanced visual settings, thanks to dual GDDR6 memory. We don’t know its bandwidth yet, but it should be higher than that of the RX 6500 XT, although the Infinity Cache there could help AMD close the gap like it did with some of its high-end RDNA 2 graphics cards.
The 6500 XT also has a big clock advantage over the RTX 3050, which could also offer competitive performance with an Nvidia GPU.
Considering the prices of these cards that the companies have set, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the RTX 3050 is a slightly stronger card, with AMD right on its heels and even surpassing it in some games. We’ll have to see some unbiased real-world testing to be sure.
Scaling up and ray tracing
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Both graphics cards support additional upscaling technology to improve performance in the games they support. The RTX 3050 has Nvidia’s tensor cores that let you use DLSS for impressive performance gains in select games, which can make a big difference — especially when you’re playing on an entry-level card like this one.
The RX 6500 XT doesn’t have dedicated hardware for superior gaming visuals, but it can use AMD’s Fidelity FX Super Resolution in select games — a technology that impressed us quite a bit. However, the RTX 3050 can also use it, and some games even offer the option of FSR and DLSS.
Both cards also support ray tracing, although you’re unlikely to use it in any great capacity as, even with dedicated hardware acceleration, it will mean a big performance drop, especially with the weaker accelerators in the 6500 XT. Still, it’s nice to have the option, and as games get better at implementing it, it’s nice to be able to turn it on to improve gameplay, even at the cost of frames per second.
Interfaces and media encoding
One area of concern with the 6500 XT at this untested pre-release stage of its lifecycle is the limited PCIE x4 interface. While this shouldn’t matter on newer PCIE 4-capable motherboards, on older PCIE 3-capable motherboards it could be a bandwidth limitation that could limit overall performance. Considering that gamers with older PCs are the likely target audience for a card like this, it seems like a puzzling design choice by AMD.
In comparison, the RTX 3050 can take full advantage of PCIE x16 interfaces. It won’t use anything close to maximum bandwidth, but there won’t be a slot bottleneck, even on older motherboards.
AMD also made the surprising choice to disable H264/HEVC encoding and AV1 decoding on the 6500 XT. This may cause some problems with streaming at higher resolutions and will limit the ability to work with the Oculus Quest headset. These aren’t huge issues for a card targeting 1080p gaming, but it’s a shame to see such standard features removed from the card.
The 6500 XT isn’t great, but it might be all you can get
Of the two cards, it seems that the RTX 3050 will be the more powerful when it hits the market. Everything from the wider memory configuration to the ability to use DLSS and the higher price point suggests it should be a more powerful GPU. However, its 8GB of RAM could be its downfall as it allows cryptocurrency miners to use it to mine Etherum. The limited 4GB of GDDR6 on the 6500 XT makes it unviable for that, which can make it far easier to get.
We still don’t know if any of these cards will be produced in sufficient volume to deter scalpers, but AMD has made bold claims about providing high volume for this entry-level GPU. If the $200 price tag is relatively accurate, it’s likely to be a very popular card among gamers. If they get their hands on it, it could be a decent buy at a time when any reasonably priced card isn’t easy to come by.
The RTX 3050 should be the better card, but it might lose due to its higher specs.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn