Graphics cards are too costly. I don’t assume anybody would significantly disagree with me there — to get the identical degree of efficiency relative to the place the business was ten years in the past, you’re $100-300 extra for a GPU. Options are notably anemic beneath the $200 degree, with Intel and AMD preventing for a market that Nvidia has principally deserted. Until now. A brand new, lower-spec variant of the GeForce RTX 3050 is coming to market with a refreshingly approachable price ticket.

The new 6GB model of the GeForce RTX 3050 was introduced right now, and there are two issues about it that may simply flip some heads. One, in contrast to the original 8GB version of the RTX 3050, it doesn’t require an influence connector from the ability provide. That makes it a super-easy, drop-in improve for any desktop with a PCIe slot, similar to the venerable GTX 1050 and 1650. And two, the beginning value is $169, a full $80 cheaper than the unique RTX 3050 that debuted two years in the past.

Other cuts needed to be made to succeed in that value level. As WCCFTech reports, the 6GB model of the cardboard must make do with 2048 CUDA cores, a 96-bit reminiscence bus, and a 1470MHz clock, all downgrades from the unique about in keeping with the 25 % VRAM discount. On the plus facet you continue to get three DisplayPort and one HDMI video out, that means this can be a low cost strategy to get entry to a multi-monitor machine with some additional graphical oomph.

Though it’ll clearly carry out at a decrease degree than the 8GB card, the cheaper price and decrease energy requirement makes the brand new 6GB RTX 3060 a severe contender within the area, preventing in opposition to rivals just like the Radeon RX 6500 XT and Intel Arc A580. Though the RTX 3050 has a RAM drawback in opposition to each of these playing cards (the 6500 XT is available in a 6GB model that’s less expensive proper now), the Nvidia card is able to DLSS, which nonetheless has a notable benefit over comparable super-sampling strategies from the opposite two gamers. For players making an attempt to get the very best out of a 1080p setup, that could possibly be the deciding issue.

We’ll should get the brand new GeForce RTX 3050 6GB on a testing bench to make any ultimate judgments, however at this value it would simply be the inheritor obvious to the GTX 1050 and 1650, which retained the price range crown for years. The significance of a graphics card with no exterior energy necessities can’t be overstated. It’s an thrilling improvement for followers of Nvidia {hardware}, and a sign that the corporate continues to be within the price range GPU market, even because it rides excessive promoting each costly chip it could make to the rising AI business.

A exact launch date hasn’t been introduced, however there are already listings for fashions of the 6GB RTX 3050 up on Newegg from Asus and MSI, so they might drop at kind of any time.