Nvidia has announced two new mobile GPUs for gaming laptops: the RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti.
The RTX 3060 was previously the cheapest Nvidia 30-Series GPU you could find in a laptop, commanding upwards of £1000/$1000. Nvidia now suggests upcoming RTX 3050 laptops could see starting prices as low as $799.
The GeForce RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti will target a 60fps in 1080p gaming performance, while also featuring the latest and greatest features such as ray tracing and DLSS.
Ray tracing is a trendy gaming technology that enables more realsitic lighting and shadow effects for supported games such as CyberPunk 2077, Fortnite and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
Meanwhile, DLSS can boost a game’s frame rate performance via some clever AI technology, which renders the game at a lower resolution but then upscales it to your chosen pixel count so you don’t lose out on the picture quality.
It looks like Nvidia will be relying on these next-gen features to differentiate the new RTX 3050 GPUs from the existing GTX 1650 offerings. This means you won’t get the full benefit of the upgrade with games that don’t currently support DLSS or ray tracing on Nvidia hardware.
That said, Nvidia suggests the RTX 3050 Ti still offers a sizeable performance jump from the previous generation. When playing Call of Duty: Warzone, Nvidia claims the average frame rate will jump from around 50fps to 80fps after upgrading from the GTX 1650 Ti to the RTX 3050 Ti.
However, Nvidia confirmed the older 16-Series GPUs will coexist with the newer RTX 30-Series GPUs, and will not be phased out. So if you’re not bothered about the likes of DLSS and ray tracing, and want to save as much money as possible, sticking to a GTX 1650 gaming laptop should still be an option.
Nvidia also announced it will be expanding its Nvidia Studio laptop range, with the RTX 3050 Ti featuring in non-gaming laptops such as the Dell XPS 15.
The new mobile GPU will apparently be up to 7x faster for 4K video editing than the integrated graphics in Intel 11th Gen mobile processors. This shows that Nvidia wants to target both budget laptop gamers and on-the-go creators with the RTX 3050 GPU family.
Are you excited for the new RTX 3050 GPUs? Let us know on Twitter and keep an eye on Trusted Reviews for more updates.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
