The RTX 3050 was 52% faster than the 6500 XT at 1080p using the second highest quality preset with 141 fps on average. PCIe 3.0 completely crippled the 6500 XT and now the RTX 3050 is seen to be 114% faster, and I should note I got the exact same result using PCIe 3.0 with the RTX 3050.

The Watch Dogs: Legion results are quite good for the 6500 XT when using the medium quality preset. Here the RTX 3050 was good for 88 fps and that only made it 17% faster than the 6500 XT, or 28% faster when compared to the PCIe 3.0 configuration, which remains a big win. Finance is only available to permanent UK residents aged >18, subject to status, terms and conditions apply. In Doom Eternal, the RTX 3050 does extremely well matching the RTX 2060 with 178 fps on average. That meant it was 82% faster than the 6500 XT and 287% faster than the PCIe 3.0 configuration. That's all we need to say about that. Now the RTX 3050 is 24% faster than the 6500 XT at 1440p. It was also a few frames faster than the 1660 Super and trailed the RTX 2060 by 15%.As we often saw, the 1440p data is even more brutal for the 6500 XT. Here the RTX 3050 was 54% faster, or 85% faster when comparing PCIe 3.0 performance. The RTX 3050 also averaged 74 fps, meaning it was more often than not good for over 60 fps at 1440p using respectable quality settings in many titles. Ray Tracing Performance

Starting with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, using the medium quality preset at 1080p, we find that the RTX 3050 is good for 79 fps on average, so here it's basically a GTX 1660 Super. That made it 18% faster than the 6500 XT using PCIe 4.0, and 30% faster when compared to the PCIe 3.0 configuration. It was also only 8% slower than the RTX 2060, a decent result overall. The game was playable with ray tracing enabled and DLSS, delivering ~60 fps on average. Without DLSS, the frame rate dropped into the low 40s, and that's about the same level of ray tracing performance than you can expect from the RX 6600 in this title. The GA106 GPU Nvidia reportedly has at the heart of the RTX 3050 is a smaller version than that used in the RTX 3060 which makes it roughly the same size as the chip used in the old GTX 1660 Ti. It does though have almost double the number of transistors at its heart and, thanks to the excellent Ampere architecture it comes with over one thousand more shaders inside it. Those margins remained at 1440p. Here the RTX 3050 was 37% faster than the 6500 XT, or 58% faster when using PCIe 3.0. It only managed 41 fps on average, so for this game I'd say the RTX 3050 is better suited for 1080p gameplay. Power ConsumptionIf that's the case, then you're best off being upsold to the RX 6600, or perhaps the smarter option would be to look for a cheaper second hand option to tie you over. The RTX 3050 had no such issues though, pumping out a super impressive 130 fps while keeping 1% lows above 100 fps. It was also 13% faster than the RTX 2060 and just 11% slower than the RX 6600. A stellar result there. Moving to 1440p increases the margin in favor of the 3050, which is now 66% faster than the 6500 XT when using PCI 4.0 and 128% faster than the PCIe 3.0 configuration. We're also looking at slightly better performance than the GTX 1660 Super.

The RTX 3050 rendered 112 fps on average in Hitman 3 using the medium quality preset at 1080p and that placed it very close to the RTX 2060, while beating the GTX 1660 Super by a 23% margin. It was also 29% faster than the 6500 XT, or 42% faster when restricted to PCIe 3.0. I am a huge fan of DLSS, however, and it does mean that the RTX 3050 isn't just a good 1080p gaming GPU, it's actually capable of running happily on a 1440p display too. Though DLSS isn't in every game and Nvidia's new game-agnostic Nvidia Image Scaling (roughly analogous to FSR) is available to its older GPUs, too. Whether that happens remains to be seen. AMD has cut the RX 6500 XT GPU to shreds, so it's less than half the size of the GA106 GPU in the RTX 3050, which means it can theoretically manufacture far more in the same amount of time because it gets more chips out of the same size silicon wafer. Maybe that's why there are more Radeon cards available a week on from launch, maybe AMD's gamble has paid off. The situation worsens for the 6500 XT at 1440p once again. Now even with PCIe 4.0 we can't even achieve a 40 fps average, meanwhile the RTX 3050 fell just shy of 60 fps and was seen matching the 1660 Super.Even at 1440p, the RTX 3050 managed well over 60 fps and this made it 9% faster than the RTX 2060, and 35% faster than the 6500 XT, a great result given the current market. Moving on to Far Cry 6, we find an average of 96 fps using the GeForce RTX 3050 at 1080p with the medium quality preset. As we've seen multiple times already, it's basically delivering 1660 Super performance, though it wasn't a great deal slower than the 2060 in this one, at least when looking at the average frame rate.