Please note that this post is tagged as a rumor.
NVIDIA preparing PG190 SKU 70 with GA106-150 GPU
We have just learned some new details on the upcoming RTX 3050 series. The new information comes from the same source that told us about RTX 2060 12GB weeks in advance before any such rumors appeared elsewhere.
The RTX 3050 rumors are actually quite old at this point. AIBs were informed about this SKU in January this year, but for reasons only known to NVIDIA, the series was shelved till October. This is when Kopite7Kimi shared new information on the RTX 3050 series. He alleged that RTX 3050 Ti will feature GA106-150 GPU whereas the RTX 3050 non-Ti would get GA107-350 GPU. According to our source, there is a small modification to those specs.
A graphics card which is internally referred to as PG190 SKU 70 will feature GA106-150 GPU. It was indeed rumored to be RTX 3050 Ti, but our source now believes it is actually the non-Ti model. We were also told that it might feature 8GB memory, but we couldn’t verify this claim with other sources, which is why it is marked as ‘to be confirmed’ in the charts below.
As we were told, the GeForce RTX 3050 is to have higher performance than GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER, but still lower than RTX 2060 12GB, which is launching next month. What this means is that the card will not compete with Radeon RX 6600 series, but rather the rumored RX 6500XT which is to launch in the first quarter of 2022. Additionally, we also have Intel Arc A128 (rumored SKU name) coming a bit later.
What all these cards have in common is their performance target, which is casual/e-sports 1080p gaming. To get a better understanding of how neglected this segment has been in the past 2 years, we put all these SKUs in a 1080p relative performance chart from TechPowerUP.
Entry-level GPU Segment in 1080p gaming, Source: TechPowerUP
| RUMORED 2022 Entry-Level Graphics Cards | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| VideoCardz | GeForce RTX 3050/Ti* | Radeon RX 6500 XT | Intel Arc A128* |
| GPU | GA106-150 | Navi 24 XT | DG2-128 |
| FP32 Cores | 3072 (?) | 1024 | 1024 |
| Memory | TBC | 4 GB GDDR6 | 6 GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bus | TBC | 64-bit | 96-bit |
| Launch Date | Q2 2022 | Q1 2022 | Q2 2022 |
* naming has not been confirmed
The RTX 3050 isn’t the only new card on internal roadmaps, NVIDIA is also planning RTX 3090 Ti, RTX 3080 12GB, and RTX 3070 Ti 16GB models, all expected to launch early next year. The chart also lists board and SKU numbers (some of them were never published before), which should help you keep track of all these new cards. This is especially important when NVIDIA tends to shift board numbers to different SKUs, such as in RTX 3050Ti/non-Ti case:
| Upcoming NVIDIA GeForce Graphics Cards | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VideoCardz.com | RTX 3090 Ti | RTX 3080 12GB | RTX 3070 Ti 16GB | RTX 3050 | RTX 2060 12GB |
| Launch Date | January 2022 | January 2022 | January 2022 | Q2 2022 | December 7, 2021 |
| Model | PG136 SKU 05 | PG132 SKU 25 | PG141 SKU 14 | PG190 SKU 70 | PG161 SKU 64 |
| GPU | GA102-350-A1 | GA-102-220-A1 | GA104-401-A1 | GA106-150-A1 | TU106-300-Kx-A1 |
| CUDA Cores | 10752 | TBC | 6144 | 3072 (?) | 2176 |
| Memory | 24GB GDDR6X | 12GB GDDR6X | 16GB GDDR6X | TBC | 12GB GDDR6 |
Clearly, there are still more questions than answers, but the RTX 3050 reappearance is a relatively new development. It shouldn’t really surprise anyone if there is another change in the coming weeks. After all, this time NVIDIA has to plan ahead to compete with not one but two competitors.
If you would like to learn more as to why neither AMD nor NVIDIA has released their entry-level GPUs with the current generation of GPUs yet, then it might be worth checking the most recent HardwareUnboxed Q&A video, which covers this topic in detail:
