Nvidia's new graphics card is its cheapest GPU in years

Nvidia is revisiting a price point it hasn't touched in years. The new RTX 5050 is a desktop GPU that's set to launch in the second half of July, and it comes in at an MSRP of $250. Nvidia hasn't released a graphics card at this price since the RTX 3050, which is over three years old at this point. Similar to the RTX 5060 that launched just a month ago, the RTX 5050 will only be available from board partners, and it'll be limited to 8GB of GDDR6 memory.

The RTX 5050 unlocks DLSS 4 for $250

The cheapest Nvidia GPU in years

Rather than fanfare, Nvidia quietly revealed the RTX 5050 through a product page on its website. The page lists the full specs of the GPU, and confirms the card will arrive in the second half of July, but it doesn't include an exact release date. The specs provide a lot of hints about what you can expect out of the GPU, though.

First, core count. The RTX 5050 comes with 2,560 CUDA cores, which is one-third fewer cores than the RTX 5060. Both cards are limited to 8GB of VRAM, but the RTX 5050 uses older, slower GDDR6 memory. All other RTX 50-series GPUs use the latest GDDR7 memory. Despite older memory and fewer cores, the RTX 5050 still has a rated TDP of 130W — just 15W less than the RTX 5060. That's still extremely low power draw, but it suggests Nvidia is hitting a floor on power with its Blackwell architecture.

The big addition is DLSS 4, however. The RTX 5050 not only supports the latest transformer model for DLSS Super Resolution, it also supports Multi-Frame Generation (MFG). Nvidia shared some performance numbers in various games, most of which have DLSS enabled. However, in games like Apex Legends, Counter-Strike 2, and Overwatch 2 that don't support DLSS, the RTX 5050 provides a solid 40% to 50% uplift over the RTX 3050, at least based on Nvidia's numbers.

The RTX 5050 is set to arrive within a month, but it's possible we could see a rollout similar to the RTX 5060. That GPU launched without any launch-day reviews, as Nvidia limited driver distribution to media partners that published a preview. The RTX 5050 might be in a similar situation, but it's too soon to tell. When the card releases later in July, Nvidia says models will be available from board partners like Asus, Colorful, Galaxy, Gigabyte, MSI, PNY, and Zotac.

Although Nvidia has set the list price at $250, there's a chance prices could climb after release, particularly for overclocked versions.