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Nvidia’s RTX 3050 graphics card offers ray tracing at an affordable price

Nvidia has unveiled the Nvidia RTX 3050, which is a new budget-friendly GPU that aims at a 1080p 60fps (and beyond) performance for all of the latest AAA games. 

The Nvidia RTX 3050 desktop graphics card will have a starting price of $249, making it the most affordable option in the Ampere family. 

Nvidia claims that the RTX 3050 will be able to run games such Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Doom Eternal, and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War at a frame rate higher than 80fps when playing games at a 1080p resolution. 

With 2nd gen RT cores optimised for ray tracing, you’ll be getting a more efficient ray tracing performance compared to the RTX 20-Series graphics cards. 

You’ll also see an improved DLSS performance compared to the previous generation too, allowing you to boost the frame rate performance for supported games without seeing a noticeable downgrade to the visuals. 

By featuring support for both ray tracing and DLSS, the RTX 3050 is a more tempting option than the likes of the GTX 1650 and GTX 1050 graphics cards. The Nvidia RTX 3050 will feature 8GB of GDDR6 memory, which is the same spec as the more expensive Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti GPU. 

There unfortunately won’t be a Founders Edition of the new RTX 3050 graphics card, but we expect plenty of third-party manufacturers to start shipping the GPU. The Nvidia RTX 3050 will hit store on 27 January 2022, so you only have to wait  few weeks to get your hands on it. 

The Trusted Take

It’s great to see the Nvidia RTX 3050 finally unveiled, finally making the impressive Ampere range affordable to the average gamer. Nvidia claims it’s capable of hitting 60fps and beyond for all of the latest blockbuster games when playing in 1080p, which should please the majority of PC gamers.

Of course, the most exciting feature here is that you’ll be able to make use of ray tracing and DLSS without spending a bomb. I’ll have to wait until I can test it myself before calling it a budget champion, but it’s still great to see that Nvidia hasn’t forgotten about its more affordable graphics card options

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