There’s a desktop-grade Nvidia RTX 5050 after all, and it’s out next month

I’d springiness it a fifty-fifty chance

Yesterday’s motorboat of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 laptop GPU was quiet, yet nevertheless featured a surprise: there’s besides a desktop mentation of the RTX 5050, acceptable to merchandise (exclusively successful third-party garb – there’s nary Founders Edition) successful "the 2nd half" of July. Quite the turnaround for the non-laptop XX50 lineage, which was wide assumed extinguished pursuing 2022’s RTX 3050.

The RTX 5050 volition regenerate the RTX 5060 arsenic the cheapest of Nvidia's current-gen desktop GPUs, starting astatine $249. Budget buyers volition request to marque bash with 8GB of last-gen GDDR6 VRAM, however, arsenic good arsenic a lighter smattering of CUDA cores: 2,560 to the RTX 5060’s 3,840. There’s evidently nary desktop RTX 4050 to comparison these specs to, though adjacent to the RTX 3050, it does connection much representation bandwidth adjacent if the full gigabyte number remains the same. Presumably determination are besides show advantages, particularly wherever ray tracing is concerned, that the RTX 5050 tin glean from its updated Blackwell architecture.

'Course, portion the RTX 5050 mightiness marque for a decent upgrade for existent 3050 owners – particularly those funny successful DLSS 4 and framework procreation – its $249 terms tag does support it nervily adjacent to the $300 RTX 5060. Which, adjacent with its operator issues, truly isn’t a atrocious 1080p paper itself, truthful we’ll person to spot what the 5050 tin bash to coexist with its much core-rich, wider-bandwidth large brother.

I’ll admit, there’s a not-small portion of maine that hopes it can. We tin rise eyebrows astatine the specifications and marque "Fnar fnar caller GTX 1030" jokes until our typing fingers are worn down to stumps, but determination genuinely are immense numbers of PC players who are blessed with below-max prime 1080p yet can’t reliably agelong to mid-rangers similar the XX60 series. People, successful different words, who haven’t been adequately served by the GPU marketplace successful years. Arguably since adjacent earlier the RTX 3050, what with that GPU launching during the acheronian times of COVID-compounded shortages and terms gouging.

Will the RTX 5050 capable that gap? I won’t cognize until I’ve tested 1 out. But I’d alternatively it ends up arsenic a failed attempt, than a repetition of the RTX 40 series' failing to effort astatine all.