Nvidia has fully unveiled its next lineup of laptop GPUs, including the RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti. The new cards have seen ample leaks leading up to their release, but as of today, they've finally been made official.
The past few months have been a roller coaster for Nvidia. The company has released truly excellent graphics cards with its entire RTX 30 Series. The cards are powerful, competitively priced, and among the best the market has to offer. The problem, however, is that buying GPUs is virtually impossible right now — and has been for quite a while. The ongoing chip shortage has resulted in Nvidia being faced with more demand than it can handle, with Nvidia itself warning that these supply constraints could last into 2022. Despite all of that, it hasn't stopped Nvidia from churning out even more GPUs that gamers will be itching to get their hands on.
As noted above, the new models are the RTX 3050 and 3050 Ti. Both are mobile GPUs designed specifically for gaming laptops, offering features like ray tracing and AI-based DLSS. Running games like Minecraft RTX and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War at medium settings, the 3050 and 3050 Ti deliver 60fps gaming at 1080p resolution. Nvidia says this level of performance is "twice as fast as previous-generations systems," meaning anyone with a budget gaming laptop from a few years ago can look forward to noticeable performance gains. DLSS is a key feature of the new cards. It allows gamers to run titles at lower resolutions, uses AI to upscale everything, and results in a higher-end gaming experience on the lesser hardware. For example, Call of Duty: Warzone can hit 80fps without DLSS enabled on the RTX 3050 Ti, but creeps up to 95fps with it turned on. DLSS running on the 3050 Ti also sees the card hit over 70fps in Outriders, where the GTX 1650 Ti it's replacing can't even hit 40fps.
Laptops With The RTX 3050 Start At $799
Nvidia has yet to provide exact availability info for the new GPUs, but at the very least, starting prices have been revealed. Shoppers can expect laptops with the RTX 3050 to start at $799, with laptops featuring the RTX 3050 Ti starting at $849. Samsung announced the Galaxy Book Odyssey last month, which features a $1,399 starting price and a choice between either the 3050 or 3050 Ti. That's likely one of the higher-end devices that'll feature the GPU, which should offer a relative idea of how these new laptops will be priced.
Overall, both the 3050 and 3050 Ti look to be excellent entries in the budget laptop space. There are ample performance upgrades over their predecessors, features like DLSS are great to see, and the starting prices are quite good given everything they bring to the table. Assuming manufacturers can keep laptops with the 3050 series in stock, this looks like a huge win for gamers that can't afford Nvidia's more expensive laptop offerings.
Source: Nvidia