But this could be the most powerful 3050 we've ever seen.
(Image credit: Future)
Buying a new graphics card is an expensive and frustrating process in the year 2025. New GPUs are pricy, especially good ones, and that's if you can even find them listed for MSRP. Nvidia's solution, when it's not stealth launching new 50 series cards, is to go back to the old ways, and release yet another iteration of the 3050. And honestly? I think it's a pretty good idea.
We've been hearing rumours of a new RTX 3050 from Nvidia for about a year now, though they're unclear as to whether we're looking at a mobile or desktop GPU. Mobile was the more likely route but Tom's Hardware has spotted a new listing in GPU-Z that shows support for an as of yet announced RTX 3050, brining back those desktop speculations.
In the notes the mystery card is referred to as the GeForce RTX 3050 A, which really doesn't tell us much at all. What we do know is this Nvidia GPU will be using the new Ada Lovelace employed in cards like the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, and mobile cards like the GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile, and GeForce RTX 4070 Max-Q. If we're lucky the greater density featured in this AD106 silicon will give us a 3050 bursting with transistors and gaming power.
Nvidia could be using the newer dies just because it's what it has available, or dumping the last of the AD106 silicon before it moves on to the next best thing. What we know of AD106 tells us it should be more than enough to handle a 3050, but it begs the question of what kind we can expect to see.
A new RTX 3050 A would put us up to a grand total of five iterations of this card so far. In the first year we saw the 4 GB and 8 GB variations launch followed by another 8 GB using the same dies as the 4 GB model. Then last year we saw a 6 GB middle of the road release, so I'm hoping for something a little shinier.
Given Nvidia are still calling this an RTX 3050, I don't plan on getting my hopes up too high for this unit, but a chunky lovelace box isn't too much to ask. I'd like to see a 12 GB VRAM unit, another 8 GB doesn't feel worth it but I know it won't be worth going to the full 16 GB. If they can also give it the ability to run frame generation like the 40 series cards recently got, then these could be a real winner.
The RTX 3050 currently sits at 5th place on Steam's hardware survey for popular GPUs, so we know gamers haven't given up on these little beasties yet. If Nvidia nails the price point for a new release, it could be that we see these continue to sit visibly on that list for years to come.
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Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here.
No, she’s not kidding.
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