NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 review: Still 8GB so it needs DLSS to try to save the day

NVIDIA's minimum entry point for Blackwell desktops, the RTX 5050 lags behind the 5060 given the performance/price ratio.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Introduction

NVIDIA launched the RTX 5050 on July 1, 2025. It’s an interesting card because we didn’t have an RTX 4050, but we had a 3050. We didn’t have an RTX 2050, but we had a GTX 1650. And we also had the GTX 1050 if you go way back when, and GTX 950 and 750 back in the day. But this is the first true budget desktop GPU from Team Green in four years. How does it fare? We’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s talk specs and how the 5050 stacks up on paper.

This is where things get a little interesting. So this is a $250 card. The step up to the 5060 is $50 more — that’s a 20% increase in price. The 5050 comes with 20 streaming multiprocessors (SMs), and you get 128 CUDA cores per SM, so 2,560 CUDA cores versus 30 SMs on the 5060 — a 50% increase.

Now, the 5050 does have slightly higher clock speeds, and the ASUS card, like I said, is factory overclocked, but it’s not going to close a 50% gap. It’s going to maybe make it to a 40–45% gap on compute. The RTX 5050 also has GDDR6 memory running at 20 GT/s. The 5060 and above all use GDDR7 memory running at 28 GT/s (actually 30 on the RTX 5080, but that’s a different story).

So that’s almost 50% more theoretical performance for the RTX 5060 is what we’re really talking about — probably 40% in a lot of situations, for 20% more money. That right there makes the RTX 5050 a non-starter in my opinion. And yet I bought one because, hey, let’s see how it performs, right? I did pay my own money for this card. Thanks, ASUS and NVIDIA — you didn’t send it to me, and I get to say whatever I want.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 8GB review: 8GB just isn’t enough for a modern $300+ graphics card

The RTX 5060 runs well enough when it doesn't run out of VRAM, basically providing a horizontal shift from the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB for $100 less (two years later).

GPU Testbed
Asus RTX 5060 Dual OC
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU
Asus ROG Crosshair 870E Hero
G.Skill 2x16GB DDR5
Crucial T705 4TB SSD
Corsair HX1500i PSU
Cooler Master 280mm AIO

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060, with 8GB of VRAM, lands at the $299 price point, with factory overclocked cards pushing prices slightly higher. It replaces the RTX 4060 8GB in the product stack, with largely similar specifications that we'll get to in a moment. Built on the Blackwell architecture, the card promises higher performance than its predecessor, with GDDR7 memory boosting bandwidth by an impressive 65%. Still, 8GB of memory on a card that costs over $300 is a concern, much bigger now than when the 4060 launched — and it was a problem then as well!

We’ve been seeing Nvidia GPUs with 8GB of VRAM since the GTX 1070 in 2016. That was a $379 card at launch, which would be about $500 in today's money... but we do expect a certain element of computer components getting faster for the same price. Regardless, the VRAM is a potential sticking point. 1080p medium to high settings should work well enough, but maxed out settings, or even high settings with upscaling and frame generation, could push beyond the GPU's VRAM capacity. 8GB of VRAM simply doesn’t cut it anymore for a “new” GPU launching in 2025.

We’ve benchmarked the ASUS Dual RTX 5060, comparing it to a variety of current and previous generation GPUs, across our full suite of modern titles at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K. The short version? It’s generally a solid performer for 1080p gaming, but like its predecessors, the limited memory capacity becomes a serious concern the moment you crank up the settings. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle for instance flat-out refused to run on 8GB NVIDIA cards, even though AMD and Intel GPUs with 8GB managed to give it a go. In short, it's NVIDIA doing its best to marginalize the lower tier GPUs.