Nvidia’s purportedly incoming laptop GPUs, the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3050, have appeared in some leaked benchmarks, looking reasonably promising for next-gen entry-level models.
The fresh leakage comes from Notebookcheck.net, which details the various configurations of these graphics solutions, as well as providing an interesting selection of benchmarks – all of which must be taken with the usual skepticism around any rumor.
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The RTX 3050 Ti is expected to have 2,560 CUDA cores as previously rumored, with the RTX 3050 running with 2,048 cores, and both will be equipped with 4GB of GDDR6 VRAM.
Notebookcheck.net points out that they will have TGPs ranging from 35W to 80W, depending on the laptop manufacturer’s needs (and cooling systems available, of course – heat being the major stumbling block when it comes to notebook gaming and the tight confines of a laptop chassis).
As for the benchmarks, one is from a game (rather than a synthetic test), namely Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Running at ‘ultra’ and ‘medium’ at 1080p (Full HD) resolution, the RTX 3050 Ti manages 69 frames per second (fps) and 106 fps respectively (the CPU or rest of the notebook spec wasn’t mentioned).
The latter 106 fps beats out the RTX 2060 which recorded 93 fps at ‘medium’, although the 2060 was faster at ‘ultra’, but only by 6 fps, so not really a noticeable margin – impressive indeed.
The 3050 Ti is level pegging with the GTX 1660 Ti at ‘ultra’, but the incoming GPU is a lot faster at ‘medium’ – 23 fps quicker in fact.
As for the RTX 3050, that hits 60 fps and 75 fps at ‘ultra’ and ‘medium’ respectively, which isn’t too far off the GTX 1660 Ti at 69 fps and 83 fps. Obviously bear in mind that these are leaked pre-release results, so even if genuine, the finalized versions (and drivers) could (and very probably should) be faster.
Time (Spy) will tell
Notebookcheck.net also provides 3DMark results in the form of a Time Spy benchmark, with the RTX 3050 Ti scoring 5,246 and the RTX 3050 achieving a result of 4,798. Those two results land either side of the GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q which scores 5,084, with the 3050 Ti not that far behind the RTX 2060 Max-Q which scores 5,638.
Overall, these early indications are reasonably promising, then, and hopefully these mobile Ampere offerings will be good news for those looking for a more wallet-friendly gaming laptop still equipped with a decent GPU.
Also, don’t forget these are RTX models, so are equipped for ray tracing (at least in theory), but perhaps more importantly, DLSS. The latter could, of course, be particularly useful for helping to pep up those laptop frame rates at budget-friendly price points.
We don’t know when the RTX 3050 mobile series might pitch up, but given that GPUs are already being spotted in pre-release laptops, it shouldn’t be too long now.
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