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Compared to the three-and-a-half-year-old RTX 3050 8GB, the RTX 5050 is a solid improvement - and it certainly ought to be, given that Nvidia didn't make an RTX 4050 for the desktop in the meantime. The baby Blackwell card is 60% faster on average than its entry-level Ampere predecessor in our raster results at 1080p (all without any help from DLSS or MFG).
If you squint, the 5050 brings RTX 4060 performance to a $50 lower price point, and given that the 4060 is the most popular graphics card on Steam right now, that sounds like a potentially appealing combo on paper.
For the $249 Nvidia wants for these cards in reality, we think the 5050 is an overpriced, relatively inefficient product that faces tough challengers from AMD and Intel alike, as well as more appealing options within Nvidia's own lineup. It also feels insulting that this card can't consistently deliver the Blackwell architecture's marquee experiences.
DLSS Multi-Frame Generation sometimes just doesn't work on the RTX 5050 in the titles that could really use the boost, because those demanding games already eat up all of the 5050's 8GB of VRAM, leaving no room for the MFG AI model to reside in local memory.
If you end up with an RTX 5050 in a pre-built system or because you received one as a gift, you certainly won't have a bad time with it at 1080p. Outside of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which really, really wants a powerful GPU with 16GB of VRAM to deliver anything approaching consistent performance even at 1080p, we had a perfectly fine time with 1080p gaming on the RTX 5050. The Gigabyte card we tested runs cool and quiet, too, so it's easy to live with. But if you have any say in the matter, you can do much better for yourself by saving up and spending just a bit more money.
The real spoiler for every $300-or-less graphics card available right now is AMD's Radeon RX 9060 XT 8GB, which has consistently been available for $269 on Amazon of late. At that price point—$30 under its $299 MSRP—it delivers 25% higher frame rates on average than the RTX 5050 for just 8% more money. In raster games that aren't limited by VRAM, which describes many of today's most popular titles on the PC at 1080p, the 9060 XT wipes the floor with everything further down the ladder, and it isn't even close.
Try to render games at a native 1440p, and the 9060 XT 8GB does start to show some cracks, as evidenced by its 1% low frame rates. Of course, you can get around those challenges by lowering settings a bit, using FSR 4 upscaling, or both. You can usually work around 8GB of VRAM in general, but you can't add more raw compute horsepower to begin with, and the RX 9060 XT 8GB has the most raw muscle per dollar of anything on the market if you find it on sale.
If you prefer to stay in the green team's corner to keep access to DLSS 4 and MFG, the RTX 5060 makes a strong case for itself at $300. It delivers 27% higher performance than the RTX 5050 at 1080p for 20% more money. This card's high standings in our overall results at 1080p (and 1440p) show that even if the RX 9060 XT 8GB can outrun and outgun it from time to time, the 5060 hits back by maintaining a more consistent level of performance across our test suite, even as the 9060 XT 8GB sometimes stumbles.
Pair that consistently high performance with wickedly good power efficiency, and it's easy to understand why the RTX 5060 is storming up the Steam Hardware Survey charts of late.
Despite its age, Intel's Arc B580 stays in the affordable gaming fight thanks to some recent price decreases. It can finally be had for its $249 MSRP from some Intel board partners on Newegg. It still delivers solid enough gaming performance at both 1080p and 1440p, along with an ample 12GB of VRAM for better game compatibility across a wider range of resolutions and settings.
The challenge for Intel is that Battlemage can exhibit big performance falloffs even in extremely popular games that aren't VRAM-limited (like Fortnite) that sometimes put it behind even the RTX 5050. Those performance cliffs make it tough to generally recommend.
You really need to make sure your favorite titles play well on Arc before buying a B580 (or B570), and you need to be prepared for the possibility that future titles might not run as well as you'd expect. And that's before we touch on Battlemage's power efficiency, which trails everything but the RDNA 3 cards we tested. For the money, though, you might not care.
Putting the spotlight back on the RTX 5050, this card feels like something Nvidia had to make to keep its system integrator partners happy rather than something it really wanted to put on store shelves for enthusiasts.
The Dells, HPs, and Lenovos of the world that need to build cheap gaming PCs for buyers at Wal-Mart and Best Buy now have access to a product that says RTX 50 rather than RTX 30 on the shelf sticker, and for more casual audiences who mostly spend time in wildly popular free-to-play games like Counter-Strike 2, Fortnite, Apex Legends, or Marvel Rivals, this card provides a much-needed performance boost over the ancient RTX 3050. But price-conscious enthusiasts who are waiting for a true no-compromise, game-changing product around the $250 mark are still going to find themselves tapping their feet.
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