[Music] how can a graphics card be this bad this is a question that's been asked a lot about the RTX 3050 and let's say when this launched it didn't exactly have the warmest reception it was overpriced and it underperformed but thanks to the used market I'll pick this one up for £135 to truly see if it's that bad when this entry-level RTX graphics card launched it was absolutely blasted by reviewers because in 2022 this GPU would have set you back $250 for a 50 class graphics card which is absolutely insane because if we look at all the other 50 class gpus they usually cost around $150 which is a lot more reasonable and if this graphics card launched out that price it wouldn't have been that bad and for when it was new this $250 would have got you 1660ti levels of gaming performance which is kind of a joke because this thing is less powerful than the RTX 2060 albe it does have an extra 2 GB of vram so in three years the best Nvidia could muster was the same rasterization performance at the same price point which is not great at all and this leads it to be memed online constantly especially on Tik Tok if you look over there everyone hates this GPU for lack there of a better word because it's just one of the worst value cards well at least a lot of people think that and even myself I've MD on this quite a lot but to see if it's actually that bad I've tested it at 1080p all testing has been done in my testing PC which has a ryzen 5 7600 32 GB of 6,000 Mega CL 36 ddr5 memory a Western Digital SN 770 nvme Gen 4 SSD built on an MSI X 70E Tomahawk motherboard I've gave this GPU an undervolt to 900 M volts as it was running quite hot at like 80° even after a repace which was kind of concerning so I've undervolted it and I've also overclocked the memory by 1,000 MHz the latest Nvidia driver has been used at the time of testing which is 5599 and resizable bar has been enabled so let's get straight into the Benchmark shall we although it's 4 years old almost cyberpunk 2077 is still quite hard to run however the 3050 does put out a playable frame rate and all fairness but on the medium preset with high textures regardless 68 FPS on average and that 1% low is only trailing that by 8 frames per second means performance in saber Punk is at least playable but to be fair I was expecting the 3050 to play this with no issues is it the best performance in the world no is it playable yeah with Hogwarts Legacy we got away with the high preset today just barely with 61 frames per second on average and the 1% low is usually trailing quite far behind in Hogwarts Legacy but to be fair 45 frames per second is not too bad here performance is quite good if you ask me I'm not going to lie to you but yeah other gpus in this price point would do a better job checking out some Esports gaming performance with fortnite on the low preset with direct X11 selected and performance here was totally fine getting more than 300 frames per second on average with that 1% low just under 200 FPS means if you wanted a competitive 360 HZ gaming experience the 3050 can definitely do it in fortnite more consuming not a lot of power either if you wanted more frames you could always go with the performance API here you would get quite a lot of performance with Forza Motorsport I was expecting slightly more performance than this but 69 FPS on average nice with have 56 FPS for the 1% low I can't really complain that much it is playable but in a racing game I'd ideally want around 120 FPS if you're just playing casually around 70 FPS on average is not that bad at all it's certainly playable and it looks pretty decent with the high texture so I can't really complain that much Starfield is up next and this is the title that surprised me the most yes on the medium preset we didn't get above 60 FPS but in all fairness I was expecting much worse this kind of tells me that Starfield is optimized for Amper and newer graphics cards because performance and touring gpus wouldn't be like this even on something like an RTX 2060 or something like that so Starfield is kind of playable on a 3050 but you could always enable dlss and is it the most ideal way to play at 1080p not necessarily but you should be okay with it enabled and you'll get above 60 FPS there Star Wars Jedi Survivor continues to show it's probably one of the worst PC ports in the world because 49 FPS on average with a pretty horrid 1% low of 32 FPS means performance in this game is not great on the medium preset I'll be honest probably avoid this if you've got an RTX 3050 conversely f123 has no issues with performance on this lowend RTX card with 145 FPS on average and that 1% low staying nice and close to that so you're not going to have any problems in this title and you can race to your heart's content on the medium pret in f123 if you're playing f124 I'd expect the performance is very similar it's still on the same engine and it doesn't look like cod Masters have done that much in terms of visual so yeah you should still be fine in f124 as well Spider-Man on the high preset continues to show this game is really not that hard to run at all getting 92 FPS on average and the 1% low is at 58 so it's not particularly the best but the 1% low is well web slinging which is what I do in my benchmarks haven't always been particularly brilliant on any GPU I've tested however if you wanted to play as Spider-Man you could probably get away with the very high preset in this title and still get a decent frame rate so the 3050 has hasn't done that bad of a job in Spider-Man so this is why this is one of the worst value graphics cards I've tested here on the channel in fact performance today wasn't actually bad like all of the games were indeed playable even then you will have to lower to the medium preset to get games like cyber Punk 2077 above 60 frames per second but then there's Jedi Survivor and Starfield where yeah these didn't get above 60 frames per second with medium presets enabled which I think is kind of a shame because if you're spending about £150 on a US graphics card you should be getting a bit more performance than that I would imagine but in all fairness on this graphics card the Starfield result was kind of surprising to me I was expecting much worse so it seems like this game is slightly more optimized for ampe gpus as to what it is with churing and aler because the RTX 2080 which I tested around a month ago did kind of struggle in that title on the other hand Esports games obviously on a GPU like this are going to be performing totally fine you're going to be getting around 300 FPS in titles like counter- strike 2 fortnite Rainbow Six Siege all those sorts of games are going to be fine on a graphics card of this caliber so you won't be having any issues there if you want to do some Competitive Gaming on a GPU like this considering that the GTX 660ti costs around 80 to 90 here in the UK on the used Market which is a GP which has the same performance as the RTX 3050 that means there's a discount of about £50 and probably even more because I put an offering for this not expecting the seller to actually accept it but they did for £1 135 which is still a bit too expensive for this GPU I reckon and at this price point £50 is a massive difference thus the RTX 3050 is kind of at a weird price you can spend much less money and get very similar r I ization performance or you could spend basically the same amount of money and get something like an RX 6600 XT which will absolutely smoke this graphics card if the 3050 was about 10 to 15 or even2 more expensive than the 1660 TI I would say it's a bit more worth it that is because the RTX branding does carry some weight obviously being an RTX GPU it has access to deep learning super sampling which leverages the AO tentacles built into this graphics card whereas on the 1660 TI you're going to be stuck using FSR which at lower resolutions like 1080p is not going to look as good as the AI accelerated upscaler also it does have an extra 2 GB of vram which does go a long way especially in 2024 as you can enable High textures or maybe even Ultra textures at 10 80P you shouldn't have any problems with the 8 GB of vram whereas with 6 GB you might be running into a few problems also this GPU barely consumes any power this probably isn't that much of an advantage over the 1660ti but if you compare it to an older GPU which should perform similar like the GTX 1070 or even 980 TI this is a huge advantage in my testing today I don't think it went above 100 watts in total power draw for this graphics card so so yeah that's a bit of a win right there unlike the 1660 TI and the older GTX cards the 3050 should be supported by Nvidia for longer with game ready drivers so that's ultimately a win right there and also unlike the AMD graphics card the 3050 has cudar acceleration so if you're a video editor and you use a lot of GPU accelerated effects the 3050 might actually outperform the RX 6600 there so that's something to consider so despite its upsides which most gamers proba wouldn't even benefit from to be honest the RTX 3050 still isn't worth it because with the price that these usually go for on the used Market you could always buy a secondhand rx5700 XT which is an absolute brilliant GPU at around $140 or you could always get an RX 6600 or 6600 XT all of these graphics cards will absolutely smoke the RTX 3050 in virtually every single game out there and there's no level of optimiz I ation that will bridge that performance Delta and in the case of the RX 6600 it will consume virtually the same amount of power if not a tiny bit more for a lot more performance so yeah the efficiency concerns are not really there with the newer AMD graphics card in the case of the 5700 XT that will consume more power but at this price point a lot of Gamers want performance over efficiency depending on where you are in the world and how expensive your electricity is and because of this realistically I think this RTX graphics card shouldn't cost any more than $100 on the used Market it's okay this having a slight mark up over the 1660 TI for reasons I've previously mentioned but when you start to get over 20 or $30 over that price point it's really not worth it and you may as well just jump to the RX 6600 that is still one of the best value graphics cards in 2024 for 1080p gaming and if you want to throw it back a bit the rx5700 XT is also a brilliant deal on the used Market this GPU on the other hand nah it's it's not really that good of a value so if you want to see a good value GPU there will be a video up there with that being said I'll catch you in the next one