Pros & Cons
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- Accessible price
- Decent content creation performance
- Available in compact versions, such as the short Zotac card we tested
- Demands only a single 8-pin power connector
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- Lackluster gaming performance relative to other budget options
- High power consumption for its speed
Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5050 Solo Specs
| Board Power or TDP | 130 |
| Card Length | 6.5 |
| Card Width | double |
| DisplayPort Outputs | 3 |
| GPU Base Clock | 2310 |
| GPU Boost Clock | 2572 |
| Graphics Memory Amount | 8 |
| Graphics Memory Type | GDDR6 |
| Graphics Processor | Nvidia GB207 |
| HDMI Outputs | 1 |
| Number of Fans | 1 |
| Power Connector(s) | 1 8-pin |
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5050 desktop graphics card announcement was a bit of a surprise—an RTX 4050 desktop card never emerged, so we figured this generation would be no different. But here it is: At $249, the RTX 5050 is Nvidia’s most affordable new graphics card since the 2022 Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050. We tested a snubnose version of the card, Zotac's Gaming GeForce RTX 5050 Solo, which packs a decent punch for the price, but not enough to unseat its competitors. For just another $50, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 unlocks a better experience, while another $100 for the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT will take your PC games even further.
GPU: Nvidia's Smallest Blackwell Yet
Each GeForce RTX 5050 card contains an Nvidia GB207 graphics chip, the smallest graphics die based on Nvidia’s "Blackwell" microarchitecture. The graphics chip has 2,560 CUDA cores, 80 texture mapping units (TMUs), 32 raster operation processors (ROPs), and 20 ray-tracing cores.
This is a significant step down from the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060, but at $249, the RTX 5050 has some potential as Nvidia's least-expensive modern graphics card. At this price, it competes with the last-generation $269 AMD Radeon RX 7600 and the $249 Intel Arc B580.
With this loadout of resources, the RTX 5050 sits beneath the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 in potency on paper, but that isn’t the full story. The Blackwell architecture has enhancements that make it faster than the "Ada Lovelace" architecture used in all RTX 40-series graphics chips, when all else is equal.
Another factor helping the RTX 5050 out-spec the RTX 4060 is its increased clock speed. The RTX 5050 has a higher base clock speed and a turbo clock that is 110MHz higher, giving it a slight 4% advantage when maxed out.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 is the only RTX 50-series graphics card to use GDDR6 memory, whereas all the others work on the latest GDDR7 memory. However, the RTX 5050 uses a faster kind of GDDR6 RAM than the RTX 4060 does. As both cards have a 128-bit memory interface, the faster memory results in the RTX 5050 having nearly 18% more memory bandwidth than the RTX 4060. Both cards are equipped with 8GB of GDDR6, giving neither an advantage in memory amount.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)These factors should give the RTX 5050 the advantage over the RTX 4060 in gaming performance, which will become more relevant as the graphics card market adjusts to new releases. Discounted RTX 4060 graphics cards could stand as alternatives to the RTX 5050 for as long as they are available, though that is unlikely to persist long-term.
The Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5050 Solo in Detail
As I mentioned earlier, the version of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5050 we tested is the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5050 Solo. This implementation of the RTX 5050 is among the most compact on the market, measuring 6.5 by 4.4 by 1.4 inches (LWD) with a two-slot-wide, single-fan thermal solution. (Hence the "Solo" in the name.) This makes the Solo shorter than graphics cards that typically have two or three fans, which measure from around 9 to 11.5 inches long, making it easier to fit inside compact PC cases.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Zotac's Solo card is plain (almost to a fault), lacking anything in the way of RGB LEDs or a metal backplate. To power the card, you need only a single standard eight-pin power connector, not the increasingly common Nvidia-specific 12-pin power connector that many users love to hate. On the rear I/O panel, you will find a single HDMI 2.1b port and three DisplayPort 2.1b connections. That's a standard loadout of outputs for a late-model GPU.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Our Test Setup
Our current graphics card test bed contains an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X processor on a Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master motherboard with two 16GB sticks of DDR5 RAM set to 6,000MHz. We use a 360mm Cooler Master liquid cooler to manage processor temperatures. The system also has two 2TB Crucial PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs and a 1,500-watt Corsair power supply. We conduct all of our testing using Windows 11 with the latest updates installed.
The RTX 5050's toughest competition will likely be Intel’s Arc B580, which is similarly priced. Though Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 and AMD’s Radeon RX 7600 will likely also be competitive, their prices put them at a disadvantage.
Synthetic Benchmarks
Testing with 3DMark was not deeply informative about how the RTX 5050 stands against its competition. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 and the RTX 4060 remained unusually close throughout our synthetic benchmarks. The RTX 5050 was also essentially tied overall with the AMD Radeon RX 7600. In some 3DMark tests, the RTX 5050 did pull ahead, but these wins were cancelled out by the AMD Radeon RX 7600 performing better in other tests.
Intel’s Arc B580 more consistently outperformed the RTX 5050 in most of the 3DMark tests. This is likely thanks to the Arc B580's advantage in transistor count of nearly 3 billion, not to mention that it has double the TMUs and more than double the ROPs. The Arc also has a substantially faster boost clock speed and more overall video memory over a wider interface. Of course, synthetic test scores give only a directional idea of true performance, proportionally speaking, and the actual gaming results will vary.
UL Procyon AI Benchmarks
Even Nvidia’s lowest-end RTX 50-series graphics card produced excellent AI performance compared with the AMD competition. This advantage could simply be because Nvidia GPUs work better in these particular tests, but it is more likely due to Nvidia's optimizations for these models versus AMD's, which don't appear to be at the same level yet. AMD is also more focused on the CPU and neural processor side of AI hardware, whereas Nvidia has been on the GPU route regarding AI for a long time.
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Intel put up a better fight here, with the Arc B580 outperforming the GeForce RTX 5050 in all of these tests. Notably, the Intel Arc B580 and B570 could run the Llama 2 test, while the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 could not. The RTX 4060 could not run any of the tests in this category.
Content Creation Benchmarks
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 performed well in content creation workloads for its price class. In Adobe Premiere Pro, it outpaced the RTX 4060, the Arc B570, and all of the AMD cards in the chart. However, the Intel Arc B580 beat Nvidia's budget card just beyond the margin of error.
The Blender test results also showed the RTX 5050 in a potent position. It wasn’t as fast as the RTX 4060, but it was still ahead of all of the AMD and Intel competition this time. The AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT essentially tied with the RTX 5050 in the Monster and Junkshop tests, but it was slightly slower than the RTX 5050 in the Classroom test.
Screen Optimization Benchmarks
The recent game Black Myth Wukong locks you into using some form of screen optimization technology, be it Nvidia's DLSS, AMD's FSR, or Intel's XeSS. Without frame generation in DLSS 2, the RTX 5050 performed roughly the same as the RTX 4060. It was a bit faster than the Arc B580 at 1080p, but clearly ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 7600 and the Radeon RX 7600 XT.
Enabling frame generation helped the competition far more than it helped the RTX 5050. The AMD Radeon RX 7600 and the Radeon RX 7600 XT went from behind the RTX 5050 at 1080p and 1440p to outpacing it at both resolutions. The Intel graphics cards are missing because this game doesn’t support Intel’s frame generation XeSS 2 technology.
Ray-Traced Game Benchmarks
Like many results so far, the RTX 5050’s gaming performance is quite mixed. In Cyberpunk 2077, the RTX 5050 performed relatively poorly, with the RTX 4060 and the Intel Arc B580 both outpacing it. The RTX 5050 lagged behind the RTX 4060 and the RTX 5060 in F1 2024, Far Cry 6, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and Returnal. The only game in which the RTX 5050 didn’t lose to the Arc B580 and the RTX 4060 was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, and in that game, it was still behind both at 1440p and 4K resolutions.
The RTX 5050 performed better than the AMD Radeon RX 7600 and the RX 7600 XT in Cyberpunk 2077, F1 2024, and Returnal. (In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the RTX 5050 and RX 7600 XT effectively tied.) But that is a rather hollow victory, with the RTX 4060 and Intel Arc B580 beating the RTX 5050 in these same titles. The AMD Radeon RX 7600 and the Radeon RX 7600 XT all but tied the RTX 5050 in Far Cry 6. In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, the two AMD cards earned pretty clear wins over the RTX 5050 at all resolutions.
Raster-Only Game Benchmarks
The RTX 5050 didn't fare much better in games that don’t support ray tracing. The Radeon RX 7600 XT essentially tied with the RTX 5050 in Total War: Three Kingdoms, but the RTX 5050 was slightly faster than the Arc B580 and the RTX 4060.
The test results in Shadow of the Tomb Raider saw slightly different relative placement, but no big surprises. The Radeon RX 7600 was behind the RTX 5050, and the 7600 XT and RTX 4060 effectively tied with it. The Arc B580 outperformed the RTX 5050 in turn.
Power Consumption and Thermal Benchmarks
We use a Kill-A-Watt wall meter to measure the power draw of the GPU test bed during select tests. With its lackluster overall performance, one would hope the RTX 5050 would provide better efficiency than some of the competition. Smaller graphics chips tend to require less power, and there was good reason to hope this would also hold for the RTX 5050. That was not the case.
The RTX 5050 used more power in content creation tests than the RTX 4060 and the RTX 5060. In our Adobe Premiere Pro trial, the RTX 5050 also used more power than the RTX 5060 Ti and the RTX 4060 Ti. Gaming power consumption wasn’t much better with the RTX 5050, using about the same amount of power as the RTX 5060.
The RTX 4060 used more power than the RTX 5050 while gaming, and the Intel Arc B580 used more power than the RTX 5050 in all tests. But overall, the RTX 5050’s power consumption feels a bit high relative to its performance.
We found the RTX 5050's thermal performance adequate. Several other graphics cards in this test set stayed cooler during the testing process, but the RTX 5050 never approached unsafe temperatures. That's a win, considering it's a short, one-fan card.