Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 review: the typical performance upgrade spectrum

Our next titles are ones that don't necessarily play well on modern Nvidia hardware. We have Death Stranding, a game that favours Team Red, and Hitman 2, a game that's relatively CPU-limited at the 1080p and 1440p resolutions we're most interested in. We also have two Ubisoft games, Far Cry 5 and Assassin's Creed Odyssey, that have their own unique performance characteristics which we'll detail in flight. We have an even split between DX11 and DX12 representation here, with Far Cry and Assassin's Creed on the older API and the non-Ubisoft games on the latest DirectX revision.

As we mentioned earlier, we're using our 2022 GPU test rig for these benchmarks. The heart of the system is a Core i9 10900K locked to an all-core turbo frequency of 5.0GHz on a ultra premium Asus Maximus 13 Hero Z590 motherboard. This is cooled with a Alphacool Eisbaer Aurora 240mm AiO and backed with 16GB of dual-channel G.Skill Trident Z Royal at DDR4-3600 CL16. To keep our entire test suite installed on a single drive, we're relying on a 2TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe SSD. All of this is powered by a 1000W Corsair RM1000X PSU, a recent upgrade to our test rig supplied by Infinite Computing.

Death Stranding

The Decima Engine is well optimised for AMD hardware, and the RX 6600 beats the RTX 3060 convincingly here - by 37 percent. However, the lacklustre RX 6500 XT is significantly worse, with the new Nvidia card beating out AMD's latest by 28 percent despite costing only $50 more (in theory, anyway). The RTX 2060 turns in a better performance than the 3050, by a 17 percent margin at 1080p, but both cards hit 60+ frames per second at 1080p and 1440p, so I'd call that a job done - especially as DLSS exists to boost frame-rates further. That's an option you don't have on the 1660 Super, which outperforms the 3050 by a few frames per second.

Far Cry 5

Far Cry 5 tends to be quite CPU-bottlenecked at 1080p resolution, and it takes quite a slow card to come outside the usual 145-165fps range of our 1080p test. The 3050 doesn't particularly impress here, with a 95fps average that is sufficient but not in the same league as the RTX 2060 (16 percent faster) or RTX 3060 (38 percent faster). It also ties with the GTX 1660 Super, which is contrary to our expectations.

Hitman 2

Hitman 2 is even more strongly CPU-bound, so we only tend to see meaningful results from higher-tier cards here. For the sake of completeness though, the 3050 manages 96fps; the RTX 2060 is 14 percent faster and the 3060 is 31 percent faster. In terms of AMD's lineup, the 3050's 1080p average of 96fps puts it more or less evenly between the RX 6500 XT (77fps) and the RX 6600 (118fps). You can still expect a playable frame-rate at 1440p, where the 3050 has a 65fps average, some 10fps behind the RTX 2060 and 6fps in front of the GTX 1660 Super.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

AC Odyssey's built-in bench tanks both CPU and GPU, and even comes with random weather in its integrated benchmark - a scenario that can drop frame-rates significantly if not noticed by the benchmarker. The RTX 2060 is just nine percent faster than the 3050 here, one of the smallest margins we've seen, and the 3050 is almost twice as fast as the RX 6500 XT at 1080p (!!). Neither card performs great at these settings, coming in under 60fps, but the RTX 3050 can stretch to 1440p with an average of 40fps - meanwhile, the 6500 XT struggles to reach 20fps - ouch. Finally, the 3050 outperforms the GTX 1660 Super by around 10 percent at Full HD.

Next, let's look at our final set of rasterised game benchmarks - including one of our favourite games to benchmark of all time.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 analysis

• Introduction and hardware analysis
• Doom Eternal, Control, Borderlands 3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider - Game Benchmarks Part 1
• Death Stranding, Far Cry 5, Hitman 2, Assassin's Creed Odyssey - Game Benchmarks Part 2 [This Page]
• Metro Exodus, Dirt Rally 2, Assassin's Creed Unity - Game Benchmarks Part 3
• Control, Metro Exodus, Battlefield 5 - RT game benchmarks
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 - the Digital Foundry verdict