In a rut? Reduce VRAM! RTX 3050 6GB launching with a rumoured MSRP of $180 with 96 bit bus

[WereCat]

12 minutes ago, porina said:

What is the best graphics performance APU right now? 8700G? There's still a big gap between that and other low end dGPUs.

 

I'm going to use the 1650 as an intermediate step in this comparison. AMD used the 1650 as a reference point, although Tom's Hardware's testing showed AMD used aggressive upscaling to keep up. Without the benefit of such, the 8700G lagged on average over 20% behind a 1650.

 

3050 6GB is harder to reference since it doesn't seem widely tested by more reputable sites yet. Computerbase results put the 6GB model around 20% slower than the 8GB. Tom's Hardware puts the 1650 at about 60% of the 3050 8GB. If the 3050 6GB does end up generally 20% slower than the 8GB model, it still is clearly faster than a 1650, which itself is clearly faster than the 8700G. The exact gap will need more targeted like-for-like testing to be performed but we're looking in ball park of 40% here.

 

Since memory bandwidth was mentioned, 8700G with officially supported ram (5200) gets 81GB/s. But enthusiasts will know to get something faster, so pony up for 6000. That gets you to 94GB/s. The 3050 6GB bandwidth is 168GB/s, so the 8700G is running 48% to 56% the bandwidth of a 3050 6GB. This is a big reason why APUs will struggle to reach even lower end dGPUs, unless there is a radical implementation change. Either provide more bandwidth (LPDDR helps a little bit, GDDR/HBM better), or provide a much bigger cache. But these are all high cost options.

 

Above is based on gaming performance, but to repeat what I said earlier, there will be non-gaming uses that could use a product like this. 

 

 

I mean.... refurbished Steam Deck on Steam costs the same as a 8700G alone. IDK who the 8700G is for at 350eur+. It makes no sense at all considering the cost of the entire platform to go along with it.

[porina]

16 minutes ago, WereCat said:

I mean.... refurbished Steam Deck on Steam costs the same as a 8700G alone. IDK who the 8700G is for at 350eur+. It makes no sense at all considering the cost of the entire platform to go along with it.

The main point of my post was that the 3050 6GB is still a LOT faster than APUs/iGPUs from a gaming perspective. I wasn't focusing on pricing or value. 8700G is assumed to be fastest desktop APU/iGPU currently, do correct if there is something I've overlooked.

 

8700G to me seems to be a viable alternative to a 7700(X) given they're similar in price but the G does get you quite a bit more GPU, relatively speaking, trading off some CPU performance. Any of those CPUs will be much faster than the Steam Deck if the use case is CPU first, with a bit more GPU occasionally needed.

[WereCat]

 

Basically, if you don't care about external power get RX 6600 for almost the same price and have around 60%+ more performance (it still even beats the regular RTX 3050 8GB which sells for way more than a RX 6600).

 

If you need a card with no external power this is a bit more complicated as this card may actually be compelling at that point somewhat.

Total system usage vs RX 6600 was at around 60W-70W lower with the 3050 6GB being around 190W total system usage and RX 6600 around 250W (with their config).

 

This card makes RX 6500 XT 4GB (which is absolutely terrible) and 8GB even more obsolete than it was until now at least which IMO is a good thing since that card does not even have any HW encoders and has some quirky requirements like the need of PCI-e 4.0 for it to perform properly which makes little sense as a budget card.

 

Regarding the 8000 series APU discussion before. You can pair this card with a Ryzen 5 7500f and it will cost almost the same as a Ryzen 7 8700G alone while offering significantly more GPU performance and some hit to multi-core CPU performance while not having any of the PCI-e 4.0 lane count limitations that come with the 8000 series APUs.

[BrandonTech.05]

On 2/2/2024 at 4:42 AM, RejZoR said:

RTX 3050 E-Waste Edition. Only half redeeming value is lack of any PCIe power connector. And that's it.

Litter-ally

 

Puns aside, why does nvidia insist on making cards like this? This reminds me of the GT 1030. No innovation, not that usable. So why make it? There is no way they are making good money on this. Unless all the money is from people buying day passes for gforce now because their brand new graphics card is a manufactured garbage can filler.

Nvidia, please stop.  

[Kisai]

9 minutes ago, BrandonT.05 said:

Litter-ally

 

Puns aside, why does nvidia insist on making cards like this? This reminds me of the GT 1030. No innovation, not that usable. So why make it? There is no way they are making good money on this. Unless all the money is from people buying day passes for gforce now because their brand new graphics card is a manufactured garbage can filler.

Nvidia, please stop.  

Gotta do something with those unsold dies that were made to put on embedded devices.

[Bitter]

50 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Gotta do something with those unsold dies that were made to put on embedded devices.

Now your Grandma can buy a $1000 computer off the TV with Ray Tracing.

[porina]

1 hour ago, BrandonT.05 said:

Puns aside, why does nvidia insist on making cards like this? This reminds me of the GT 1030. No innovation, not that usable. So why make it?

I bought new and still have both the 1030 and 1650. The 1030 is a low power GPU so great for running systems without iGPU, without the shortcomings of older used GPUs. The 1650 was for a long time the most powerful GPU not requiring a power cable. Excluding professional GPUs, I think only with the launch of 3050 6GB did the crown change hands. The 1650 was released almost 5 years ago and only very recently has the highest end iGPUs reached that level of performance to arguably make it irrelevant, but that's only considering gaming context.

 

Looking at my records I got the 1030 in November 2017 for £50. I think around that time I also got some used GT 710 which were cheaper, but they were no longer supported by the current driver package making it more of a pain if switching GPUs. I think the HDMI output was more limited too, although my memory is a bit fuzzy on that detail. The 1650 was bought in June 2019 for £154. I don't recall what else was around at the time. Turing was then current and I'm not sure how much Pascal stock was still around at that point. It would have fallen in performance between the 1050 Ti (the outgoing <75W GPU) and either of the 1060's.

 

Today the 3050 6GB is the leader in the category. The nearest competition, if you can even call it that, are the 6400 which isn't even trying, and the A380 which in my own testing falls behind the 1650 outside of ray tracking. My sample of A380, although a 75W card, does need a power connector. I don't know if connectorless models exist.

[powertoys]

On 3/11/2024 at 5:24 PM, porina said:

I bought new and still have both the 1030 and 1650. The 1030 is a low power GPU so great for running systems without iGPU, without the shortcomings of older used GPUs. The 1650 was for a long time the most powerful GPU not requiring a power cable. Excluding professional GPUs, I think only with the launch of 3050 6GB did the crown change hands. The 1650 was released almost 5 years ago and only very recently has the highest end iGPUs reached that level of performance to arguably make it irrelevant, but that's only considering gaming context.

 

I find it funny how so many people forget the primary function of a GPU... displaying video. The "G" does not stand for "Gaming", it stands for "Graphics", people. This is the real reason why GPUs such as the GT 710 and 1030 are best sellers even today. If you don't know why, then you are not their intended target audience.

 

This 3050 6GB by itself is actually pretty good within it's niche. My only gripe with it is the naming scheme. We've seen it multiple times... how can we forget the sneaky DDR4 GT 1030 that halved the performance in comparison to it's actually decent counterpart, the GDDR5 GT 1030, but sold as if it was the exact same thing... They should've called this RTX 3040 or something else.

 

Also, even the best integrated graphics today (Radeon 780M) still gets ass-whooped by a 1050 Ti in some cases. And since you can't buy only the "Radeon" part of the APU, you should also consider the AM5 + DDR5 costs, still a very costly combo.

[Noblekouta]

{Swipe right} not getting into a relationship with that. Expect issues.... 

[Giganthrax]

Who would buy this? Cant integrated gpus do everything this card can already?

[filpo]

53 minutes ago, Giganthrax said:

Who would buy this? Cant integrated gpus do everything this card can already?

not yet but they're close, they also don't have as much vram (though they can use system ram, but it's slower)

 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Giganthrax said:

Who would buy this? Cant integrated gpus do everything this card can already?

It's the same category of "720p30 experience"

52 minutes ago, filpo said:

not yet but they're close, they also don't have as much vram (though they can use system ram, but it's slower)

 

All this video tells me is that these parts shouldn't be marketed as gaming parts. 720p30 is about all you're going to get from a recent game, and 1080p60 you might get from a 10 year old, DirectX9 game.

 

Like, I don't know what nvidia is using as a guideline for how to cut/cripple the chip, but it's clearly the memory bandwidth playing a role otherwise they wouldn't be cutting it below 128bit. When the 3050 is supposed to be "Close to" the GTX 1080 in game performance, it doesn't have the memory bandwidth of it.

 

The 3050 with 96bit memory bandwidth has 168GB/s of bandwidth while the GTX 1080 has 320GB/s, that 3050's bandwidth is between the 1050Ti and 1060. 

 

Memory bandwidth is important, particularly in non-gaming situations like CAD and Video editing, but it does tend to have a floor of around 106GB/s for the CAD tools to not perform miserably.

The 780M will depend on what the system has has for system memory. Same with Intel iGPU's. And Intel iGPU's have -NEVER- hit this requirement. DDR5 maximum you're going to get is 64GB/s (DDR5-8000)

 

So the single advantage the 3050 has, is that it just squeeks by the memory bandwidth requirements. But if they cut it any further it would not.

 

[porina]

2 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

Who would buy this? Cant integrated gpus do everything this card can already?

Market: Anyone who wants a new dGPU not requiring a power connector with the highest performance available. There is one Pro card that does better but no consumer would pay for it.

 

iGPU have the problem you have to buy them at the start. You can't upgrade them later on without replacing the whole CPU, at which point a dGPU may make sense. Also as others mentioned, even the best ones today will fall clearly behind the 3050 6GB.

 

6 minutes ago, Kisai said:

All this video tells me is that these parts shouldn't be marketed as gaming parts.

Following that logic, APUs shouldn't be marketed for gaming? Current handhelds specifically come to mind.

 

6 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The 780M will depend on what the system has has for system memory. Same with Intel iGPU's. And Intel iGPU's have -NEVER- hit this requirement. DDR5 maximum you're going to get is 64GB/s (DDR5-8000)

You forgot to x2 for channels. Dual channel DDR4-3200 was already 50GB/s. Two way DDR5-6400 takes us to 100GB/s.

[Kisai]

6 minutes ago, porina said:

Market: Anyone who wants a new dGPU not requiring a power connector with the highest performance available. There is one Pro card that does better but no consumer would pay for it.

Historically these bottom end parts (730/1030, xx50/xx60) parts are meant for "additional monitor" situations, where as the xx60 parts are entry level gaming type systems. Laptop versions of the xx50 and xx60 are significantly poorer performing and approach iGPU performance.

Note how the 6GB 3050 Laptop part is on parity with the A770 desktop part that has 580GB/s of memory bandwidth.

 

While the desktop part is close to a GTX Titan X from 9 years ago. 

 

6 minutes ago, porina said:

iGPU have the problem you have to buy them at the start. You can't upgrade them later on without replacing the whole CPU, at which point a dGPU may make sense. Also as others mentioned, even the best ones today will fall clearly behind the 3050 6GB.

 

Following that logic, APUs shouldn't be marketed for gaming? Current handhelds specifically come to mind.

If you are playing 10 year old games or games designed for a 720p experience like the Switch. Not every game released requires a good GPU (Most GameMaker stuff will run on a Pentium 4 system.) But many games that are popular for one reason or another, that use Unity or Unreal will not give a satisfactory performance on these devices without significant nerfs.

 

Like the reason Nintendo/Mario/Pokemon games look the way they do, is because that's not particularly taxing on the GPU. You will never see a Mario game look like the Mario Movie because Nintendo's hardware is 10 years old when it's new.

 

6 minutes ago, porina said:

You forgot to x2 for channels. Dual channel DDR4-3200 was already 50GB/s. Two way DDR5-6400 takes us to 100GB/s.

Even then, one should not aim for just touching the suggested requirements. That suggested requirement has been static for at least 5 years for AutoCad/Civil3D. That said there are other engineering tools (eg architectural visualization) that use the GPU in ways that are closer to a game.

 

 

[porina]

9 minutes ago, Kisai said:

If you are playing 10 year old games or games designed for a 720p experience like the Switch. Not every game released requires a good GPU (Most GameMaker stuff will run on a Pentium 4 system.) But many games that are popular for one reason or another, that use Unity or Unreal will not give a satisfactory performance on these devices without significant nerfs.

I was not thinking about the Switch, but the Steam Deck and others like the Ally. If as you said a 3050 6GB is not "for gaming" then those gaming handhelds are not for gaming either as they're much lower performance.

 

9 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Even then, one should not aim for just touching the suggested requirements.

Not the point, which was the bandwidth is nowhere near as bad as you made out. With LPDDR it probably exceeds the recommendation for those that actually care about it.

 

Edit: just to poke further, it is not a requirement, but a recommendation. The minimum is way lower.

[Kisai]

6 minutes ago, porina said:

 

 

Edit: just to poke further, it is not a requirement, but a recommendation. The minimum is way lower.

The minimum is literately iGPU, but in the context of AutoCAD, this is literately the "minimum the application will open on", it will MELT any iGPU computer if you actually try to do anymore more than send the blueprints to a printer.

 

Like we had people being issued 12" iGPU-only laptops and they just straight up DIE when using AutoCAD, and clients of the engineering firm get extremely upset waiting for things to load. You want to lose a billion dollar client over a 500 dollar laptop expense? Seems pretty stupid to me. Forget the employee's concern about the weight of the laptop. Get them a pelican suitcase with wheels for it if the project is that expensive and important.

 

Even the Precision 15" laptops that have the Quadro 2000 series parts, often melt the laptop. I had to expressly point out that if someone is actually working in Civil3D, they need the Precision 7000 laptop or any of the Precision Desktops that aren't SFF. The 15" laptops can load and review things, but they are just too poorly engineered to run hot that long for 8 hours a day, every day.

 

For Clarity reasons. Someone who is opening a 1000sq ft house plan likely wouldn't have the problem, the client in question was literately working on a 1 billion dollar project (think bridges and subways) where the small laptops started dying left and right.

 

 

[GoStormPlays]

On 2/2/2024 at 4:42 AM, RejZoR said:

RTX 3050 E-Waste Edition. Only half redeeming value is lack of any PCIe power connector. And that's it.

as if the 3050 already wasn't an e-waste edition

 

On 2/3/2024 at 9:37 AM, Middcore said:

 

Most people buying RTX cards, even high end ones, are not running ray tracing in most games they play. 

 

still tho, if literally no one would ever consider playing RTX on that card, then why advertise that functionality anyway

 

it's like an artificial buff-

[porina]

27 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The minimum is literately iGPU, but in the context of AutoCAD, this is literately the "minimum the application will open on", it will MELT any iGPU computer if you actually try to do anymore more than send the blueprints to a printer.

I get that, and saw similar where I used to work. The last main laptop I was issued was a dual core Broadwell model which I had that until I left some time during lockdown. I also ran a test lab so had a bunch of much more powerful desktops for any heavy lifting.

 

Still, Intel desktop iGPUs with regular JEDEC standard DDR5 (not faster LPDDR or XMP) is 84% of recommended, so not that far off. Far higher than the ~27% that minimum would be.

 

23 minutes ago, GoStormPlays said:

still tho, if literally no one would ever consider playing RTX on that card, then why advertise that functionality anyway

I ran RT on the Arc A380 but that was more to see if it could than expecting anything playable. In Watch Dogs Legion it was 30fps class with RT low 720p effective. 3050 6GB should be way faster than that.

 

At the end of the day the functionality is there, and it is up for any user what they use it on. It doesn't have to be limited to AAA gaming.

[GoStormPlays]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

I ran RT on the Arc A380 but that was more to see if it could than expecting anything playable. In Watch Dogs Legion it was 30fps class with RT low 720p effective. 3050 6GB should be way faster than that.

so maybe 50fpd on low 720p?? If I were in that situation, I would just opt out of RTX.

 

I don't see why'd you buy that when you could get a GPU that has literally twice the VRAM for around the same price (link)

[porina]

2 minutes ago, GoStormPlays said:

I don't see why'd you buy that when you could get a GPU that has literally twice the VRAM for around the same price (link)

That link is to a USED 1080 Ti. Anything used is usually cheaper than nearest new, often by quite a bit. Also that will use over 3x the power. It might not matter to you, but again the 3050 6GB is the fastest consumer tier GPU that does not need a power connector. That is why it exists. A 1080 Ti would have zero performance if you don't have sufficient power connectors. 

[Middcore]

40 minutes ago, GoStormPlays said:

as if the 3050 already wasn't an e-waste edition

 

still tho, if literally no one would ever consider playing RTX on that card, then why advertise that functionality anyway

 

it's like an artificial buff-

Because the primary value of RTX for Nvidia is and always has been marketing. 

[GoStormPlays]

7 minutes ago, porina said:

That link is to a USED 1080 Ti. Anything used is usually cheaper than nearest new, often by quite a bit. 

If you're trying to find the best bang-for-your-buck on a budget (which the demographic of people buying the 6GB 3050 are), then saving a little bit of money and buying a used GPU probably isn't that big a problem for you.

 

8 minutes ago, porina said:

That is why it exists. A 1080 Ti would have zero performance if you don't have sufficient power connectors. 

Buy a 1070 and use the money you saved to buy a psu that has power connectors. 

[StDragon]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

The minimum is literately iGPU, but in the context of AutoCAD, this is literately the "minimum the application will open on", it will MELT any iGPU computer if you actually try to do anymore more than send the blueprints to a printer.

 

Like we had people being issued 12" iGPU-only laptops and they just straight up DIE when using AutoCAD, and clients of the engineering firm get extremely upset waiting for things to load. You want to lose a billion dollar client over a 500 dollar laptop expense? Seems pretty stupid to me. Forget the employee's concern about the weight of the laptop. Get them a pelican suitcase with wheels for it if the project is that expensive and important.

 

Even the Precision 15" laptops that have the Quadro 2000 series parts, often melt the laptop. I had to expressly point out that if someone is actually working in Civil3D, they need the Precision 7000 laptop or any of the Precision Desktops that aren't SFF. The 15" laptops can load and review things, but they are just too poorly engineered to run hot that long for 8 hours a day, every day.

 

For Clarity reasons. Someone who is opening a 1000sq ft house plan likely wouldn't have the problem, the client in question was literately working on a 1 billion dollar project (think bridges and subways) where the small laptops started dying left and right.

 

 

I was about to say... Glad you clarified this because I knew several architects and drafters that got along just fine with an 7th gen Intel iGPUs for drawings of residential homes. In fact, it was way more performant than the older dGPU cards they were using prior.

CAD used to be the major market for GPUs 15 years ago for the majority of the market. Now?? You can run that on a cheap notebook with an iGPU and 16GB of RAM.

It's similar to how SGI was all custom and required million dollar hardware. Now you get better graphics out of a handheld gaming device at 60 FPS.

CAD usage is an important segment of the market, just no longer a major driving force that it once was. HW has advanced. CAD, not so much has changed fundamentally. Also, most of those large projects are broken up into separate files for workload distribution among drafters.

[StDragon]

On 3/11/2024 at 1:42 PM, BrandonTech.05 said:

...why does nvidia insist on making cards like this? This reminds me of the GT 1030. No innovation, not that usable. So why make it?

It wasn't a bad product, just sold at a bad price.

Once the price dropped, a GT 1030 was great for media playback and encoding thanks to the NVENC and the relatively low power requirements (30W max) from the PCIe slot itself.

And that's really what the xx30 series was really good for those "in the know", encoding and decoding of video.

[porina]

2 hours ago, GoStormPlays said:

If you're trying to find the best bang-for-your-buck on a budget (which the demographic of people buying the 6GB 3050 are), then saving a little bit of money and buying a used GPU probably isn't that big a problem for you.

I'd can't agree with all that. The 3050 6GB key feature is the lack of power connector needed. It will be chosen for that reason first, not low budget fps/$. I do agree if you are not power constrained then there may be other options especially used, but that doesn't take away the original selling point.

 

Just to do a like-for-like comparison, here's what I could buy new in the UK right now. Prices are the lowest in stock model from Scan in UK, who are one of the major e-tailers, with the exception of the A380 from Amazon since they don't list it. The crossed out items require a power connector so wouldn't be a full competitor.

 

£70 1030 DDR
£87 1030 GDDR
£109 A380
£143 6500 XT
£149 6400
£150 1650
£175 3050 6GB
£205 3050 8GB
£210 6600

 

Of the models not requiring a power connector, the 3050 6GB is the fastest, even if it costs the most too. If you can find a power connector, the 6500 XT might be marginally faster on average and slightly cheaper.