[Hardware] Asus GeForce RTX 3050 ROG Strix Review: High Clocks, High Price

[Agent47]

 

Asus is arguably the most recognized enthusiast PC brand in the US, selling some of the best motherboards, graphics cards, gaming laptops, and more with a focus on PC gamers. Its GeForce RTX 3050 ROG Strix follows the familiar formula of using a large cooler with plenty of RGB lighting, coupled with a relatively large factory overclock. Like other GeForce RTX 3050 cards, however, the resulting performance lands well behind similarly priced GPUs like the Radeon RX 6600, and also trails the previous generation GeForce RTX 2060. Our updated GPU benchmarks hierarchy puts it well into the midrange or even budget territory, but the ongoing component shortages and brand name recognition give it a high-end price tag that makes it a poor value relative to the best graphics cards.

This Asus RTX 3050 review is our third time testing the RTX 3050, following on the heels of the initial EVGA RTX 3050 Black XC and subsequent Zotac RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC reviews. With the highest factory overclock of all the announced GeForce RTX 3050 cards, the Strix should be the pinnacle of the sort of performance we can expect to see out of Nvidia's lowest tier RTX 30-series GPU. Here's how it looks on paper: 

GPU Specifications
Graphics Card    Asus RTX 3050 ROG Strix OC    Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 (Reference)    EVGA RTX 3050 XC Black    Zotac RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC    AMD Radeon RX 6600 (Reference)
Architecture    GA106    GA106    GA106    GA106    Navi 23
Process Technology    Samsung 8N    Samsung 8N    Samsung 8N    Samsung 8N    TSMC N7
Transistors (Billion)    12    12    12    12    11.1
Die size (mm^2)    276    276    276    276    237
SMs / CUs    20    20    20    20    28
GPU Cores    2560    2560    2560    2560    1792
Tensor Cores    80    80    80    80    N/A
RT Cores    20    20    20    20    28
Boost Clock (MHz)    1890 (OC mode), 1860 (Gaming)    1777    1777    1807    2491
VRAM Speed (Gbps)    14    14    14    14    14
VRAM (GB)    8    8    8    8    8
VRAM Bus Width    128    128    128    128    128
ROPs    48    48    48    48    64
TMUs    80    80    80    80    112
TFLOPS FP32 (Boost)    9.7    9.1    9.1    9.3    8.9
TFLOPS FP16 (Tensor)    39 (77)    36 (73)    36 (73)    37 (74)    N/A
Bandwidth (GBps)    224    224    224    224    224
TDP (watts)    130    130    130    130    132
Launch Date    Jan 2022    Jan 2022    Jan 2022    Jan 2022    Oct 2021
Official MSRP    $489    $249    $249    $399    $329
eBay Price (Feb 2022)    $523    $455    $450    $470    $460
Even with the OC mode enabled, theoretical performance on the Asus RTX 3050 is only about 6% faster than the reference RTX 3050. Of course the TDP limit is likely higher (Asus doesn't specify the card's TDP, but we'll look at power use later), but with the same memory bandwidth and core counts, we don't expect to see a massive difference between the various RTX 3050 cards.

We've included MSRPs as well as the typical GPU prices from eBay for the past month (February 2022). The former is generally meaningless right now, while real-world prices at places like Newegg and Amazon often mirror the eBay pricing. The good news is that, as far as street prices are concerned, the Asus ROG Strix 'only' costs about $50–$75 more than the cheapest RTX 3050 cards on average. The bad news is that the typical price on an RTX 3050 is about $200 more than Nvidia's pie-in-the-sky suggested price.

We've included AMD's Radeon RX 6600 in the table as well as a comparison point. Particularly in non-ray tracing (and non-DLSS) games, it tends to compete with the RTX 3060 and will thus easily outpace the RTX 3050 cards. AMD also has a (relatively) large Infinity Cache, 32MB for Navi 23, which improves the bandwidth utilization quite a bit so that performance often ends up being far better than what the raw specs would suggest.