TECH NEWS – The currently available graphics card is not that outstanding, but the “greens” are preparing an even weaker variant!
After the GT 210, GT 710, GT 1030 trio, the RTX 3050 could be the cheapest and most powerful graphics card from Nvidia available in a wider range (true, there’s also the GT 1010, which is VERY rare…). It’s been almost two years since the original model was released (January 2022), and since then the entire RTX 4000 series has been released (maybe except for the desktop RTX 4050 because it’s already in laptops), so Nvidia is continuing this unusual tradition if we are to believe WCCFTech.
Presumably Nvidia has a ton of RTX 3050 GPUs they want to get rid of (although you can get one for around $230 in the US), so it wouldn’t be surprising to see a card called RT 3030 that consumes only 70W. This would eliminate the need for a 6/8-pin power connector and allow it to be powered via the PCIe connector, which would be particularly useful in low-power configurations (or office PCs with weak power supplies).
Except that this new RTX 3050 would be dumbed down compared to the base version. The currently available model has a 128-bit memory bus, 1777 MHz clock speed, and 8GB of VRAM. In comparison, the stripped-down variant would get a 96-bit memory bus, 6 GB of VRAM, and a clock speed of 1470 MHz. There is no information on the number of CUDA cores, but the changes mentioned so far would further degrade the already not outstanding performance.
Rumors suggest that this card will be released in early 2024 (which makes its existence even more incomprehensible), and it wouldn’t be surprising if Intel’s Arc A580 is launched against Nvidia’s. Intel’s graphics card would cost less than $200. But wouldn’t it be more appropriate to launch a budget Ada Lovelace card? The RTX 3050 is based on the previous Ampere architecture…
Source: PCGamer
