New 6GB version of the RTX 3050 may be Nvidia’s first sub-$200 GPU in over 4 years
Enlarge (credit: Gigabyte)
Nvidia launched three new GPUs last month, part of a Super overhaul of the RTX 40-series designed to improve the value of the company's $600-and-up graphics cards.
But today, the company is quietly doing something that it hasn't done in over four years: launching a sub-$200 graphics card. As spotted by TechPowerUp, Nvidia partners like Gigabyte have begun officially announcing a 6GB version of the old RTX 3050 graphics card, albeit with less memory and memory bandwidth, fewer CUDA cores, and lower power requirements.
The announcement follows a few days of leaked retail listings, which generally point to an MSRP of roughly $179 for the new-old card. This would make it Nvidia's first sub-$200 graphics card launch since the GeForce GTX 1650 Super came out in late 2019, a four-year gap caused partially by a cryptocurrency- and pandemic-fueled GPU shortage that lasted from late 2020 into mid-to-late 2022.