Nvidia's line of 40-series cards is still growing strong, with rumours of a potential refresh with some 4080 and 4070 Super variants set to release soon, but it seems like an RTX 3050 6GB model may be coming too, for some reason.
Released back in early 2022, the 3050 released to moderate success and decent critical scores as a budget card for 1080p gamers. Considering that some of the best gaming monitors can cost a fortune alone, the 3050 was an appealing offer for those still on 10-series cards, or if you're like myself, someone who was rocking a 1650 to play Cyberpunk 2077.
However, since its release, the 30-series has been succeeded by the expensive (and some would dare say, overpriced) 40-series line of cards, which feature the incredible DLSS 3 tech. However, Nvidia partner Palit may be introducing a line of even cheaper RTX 3050 models with 2GB less of VRAM, and a fanless model too.
Coming from the Russian retailer Citilink (thanks to VideoCardz), Palit is supposedly releasing the new line of 3050s in February 2024, which is a couple of weeks after the rumored 4070 Super release date. The specs are fairly conflicting on Citilink's listings, but each of them offer 6GB of VRAM. One is also a new KalmX model, which is a fanless line of GPUs, with the last one from Palit releasing almost four years ago in 2020.
The new version of the 3050 is set to have the same CUDA cores as the original model, landing at 2,560. As for the die, the original used a GA106 architecture, but Nvidia later released a refresh of the card that introduced the GA107 die. We imagine that, like the refresh, the RTX 3050 6GB will feature the newer chip.
However, for those looking for a great budget card, the original 3050 8GB may still be a better option. The 3050 6GB model still offers a bandwidth of 14 Gbps with its memory interface, according to the specs found on Citilink, but it's limited to a 96-bit bus compared to the original 3050's 128-bit.
As the release date approaches, more listings should appear for the new 3050 model, which should give us a better idea of how the GPU performs on paper. Nevertheless, we hope that it can give PC gamers a new budget option, even if there are better graphics cards out there.
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