New rumors strongly suggest that Nvidia could stop making the RTX 3050 8GB GPU and could replace it with a 6GB version with cut-down specs.
Almost two years ago, Nvidia released a budget graphics card in the RTX 3000 series – the RTX 3050. The RTX 3050 was never really the talk of the town. The reason was simple, it came with rather mediocre specs and performance.
The RTX 3050 is based on a massively cut-down GA106 GPU. It comes with just 2560 CUDA Cores and a 128-bit memory bus. If that was not enough, Nvidia released another version of the RTX 3050 for OEMs. It came with further cut-down specs with 2304 CUDA Cores and lower clock rates.
But despite all this, RTX 3050 enjoys a good market share. Take Steam Hardware Survey, for example, where it is 9th on the list of most used graphics card. The reason is simple, it comes with 8GB VRAM and is affordable. It released with an MSRP of $249 and now costs around $220. Which makes budget gamers attracted towards it.
Looks like Nvidia is not liking that people are still buying RTX 3050 with 8GB VRAM and wants that to change.
Nvidia To Discontinue RTX 3050 8GB
VideoCardz reports that Nvidia is not only phasing out the production of the RTX 3050 8GB GPU, but is going to release a 6GB version instead. The reason given is to meet the market demand. The new 6GB model is all set to release in January next year.
Why? VideoCardz says that a possible reason could be that the RTX 3050 comes with similar specs (only specs, not performance) of the RTX 4060 and hence could be impacting the sales of it. It must be mentioned that Nvidia hasn’t released RTX 4050 yet, which was earlier rumored to come with just 6GB VRAM but was never released.
Additionally, IT-Home reports (via @harukaze5719) that the RTX 3050 6GB version is expected to use the mobile version of the RTX 3050 graphics card, which is based on GA107. Not only that, the 6GB version could further cut-down the memory bus to 96-bit. They could also use 192-bit, but Nvidia is not going to do that. The power consumption could see a reduction too, which means no need for any external power plug.
Possible Specs
If Nvidia is going to base the RTX 3050 6GB VRAM graphics card on the mobile version, then expect the specs to be like this.
| Specs | RTX 3050 8GB | RTX 3050 6GB |
|---|---|---|
| GPU | GA106-150 | GA107-325 |
| CUDA Cores | 2560 | 2048 |
| SM Count | 20 | 16 |
| Base / Boost Clock | 1552 MHz / 1777 MHz | 1065 MHz / 1343 MHz |
| Memory Type | 8GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Speed | 14 Gbps | 12 Gbps |
| Memory Bus | 128-bit | 96-bit |
Conclusion
As one can see. The RTX 3050 could see a significant downgrade in specs and performance. Which is very concerning as budget buyers are the ones which form a big chunk of gamers. By doing this, Nvidia is disappointing them further.
It doesn’t help that both Nvidia and AMD haven’t released xx50 and x500 version of the budget graphics cards in the RTX 4000 and RX 7000 series, respectively. So rather than doing all this. We would suggest Nvidia to release RTX 4050 8GB instead at an acceptable price for everyone.
Update: Benchlife reports (via @harukaze5719 again) that it would be priced around $179-189, would use 75W or less and Nvidia might release a graphics card which would be between RTX 4060 and RTX 3050. It means RTX 4050 is a possibility from the looks of it.
