Nvidia's RTX 5050 is a waste of everybody's time

We've arrived at the time of year when the new generation of budget GPUs begins to trickle onto store shelves. Both Nvidia and AMD have released their main offerings for this generation to varying levels of acclaim, and despite efforts to take back GPU market share, the Green Team owns more than it ever has.

Nvidia is still the top dog in the eyes of the consumer, from the deep-pocketed enthusiasts, all the way down the ladder to the budget-minded PC gamer. The latter group has been hit the heaviest over the last couple of generations, and it feels like it's impossible to get good value without buying used. The RTX 5050 is the latest budget RTX offering, and unfortunately, for those looking to game while staying frugal, it's not the budget behemoth you deserve. In fact, it's a massive waste of everyone's time.

Past budget options were actually good

You've never received less for your money

Nvidia's past budget offerings have actually made some sense in the past, but the RTX 5050 is a GPU that makes such little sense as a standalone product. By specs, it has 2560 CUDA cores, which is dwarfed compared to the RTX 5060's 3840 cores. Pair that with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory limited to a 128-bit bus, and you have a $250 paperweight.

For comparison's sake, let's take a look at the GTX 1660 Ti, which was $280 on launch. It had 1526 CUDA cores and performance comparable to a GTX 1070. In terms of specs alone, the next card in the stack from that generation would've been the RTX 2060, which had 1920 CUDA cores and the same amount of memory. The GTX 1660 Ti was a genuinely solid budget card that was received well. It matched the relative performance of a 70-class card from a couple of generations prior, and did so at a much lower cost and power consumption.

The RTX 5050 has the same TDP, 2 GB more memory, and will be able to handle ray tracing just as well: meaning, not at all. While actual performance figures aren't out yet for the RTX 5050, it's a pretty safe assumption that this thing won't be able to keep up in anything beyond titles from multiple generations ago, and in that case, you might as well buy a used card that's more capable for less money. Not being capable of ray tracing is one thing, but this card is going to struggle in pure raster. It will hardly be capable of pushing 1080p in modern titles, let alone anything with baked-in RT.

For perspective, the RTX 5050 has the same amount of CUDA cores, VRAM, and TDP as the last 50-class card released, the RTX 3050 8GB. It was also launched at the same $250 MSRP. Time has passed, but Nvidia's GPU configurations truly feel like they're frozen in time. In Nvidia's own graph pictured above, they show that their own RTX 3050 with DLSS enabled outperforms an RTX 5060 with DLSS disabled. This weird "relative performance" graph is odd for many different reasons, but that was the main thing I noticed when I read through Nvidia's RTX 5050 announcement.

Is it a product that ever makes sense?

Where does the RTX 5050 fit in 2025?

A card like the RTX 5050 really only makes sense if users want the latest features that come with an RTX 50-series card, without having to pay for a 5060. Maybe you really want the latest NVENC version. Beyond that, it's really difficult to make an argument for why this GPU should exist at $250. The Intel Arc B580 is the immediate answer for anyone looking for a $250 GPU, and it's not particularly close, even factoring in AMD.

Even if you wanted an "RTX-capable" card that had low power consumption for dedicated for something like video encoding, the 5050 can't fit that bill either. The requirement for an 8-pin power connector makes it ineligible for setups that don't have one available, so even that niche use case can't be considered.

What you should buy instead

Used cards have never looked better

The RTX 5050 for $250 looks really poor when you put it up against a B580, but when you put it up against used GPUs within the same price range, it's clear why this thing shouldn't be considered by anyone. 3070 and 3070 Ti cards can be found used at around $280, and if you're really sticking to the $250 price tag, RTX 2080 Tis are regularly selling for around, or even under that price. On the Red Team side of things, the RX 6700 XT is worth taking a look at used. The RTX 5060 was already vulnerable to this kind of critique, being a card that is under-powered compared to previous cards in its class, relative to their flagships. The RTX 5050 is even worse off, not being able to match used cards in performance, nor price, even over a period of time.

The RTX 5050 is e-waste in 2025

If the RTX 5050 had any potential to be a compelling product, it would have to be around $100 cheaper to make any sense. Against both new and used offerings, there's just no world in which this card can be a compelling buy for anyone, even for those who just need a display output. For those on a budget, buying used is looking like the correct avenue if you need a GPU today.