NVIDIA prepares to battle Intel Arc with the RTX 3050

Soon AMD and NVIDIA will have to contend with a new competitor in the dedicated graphics card market. Intel will launch its family of Arc graphics cards early next year and, in preparation for its arrival, NVIDIA is expected to introduce the new GeForce RTX 3050 for the entry-level segment, according to reports from well-known leaker Kopite7Kimi.
Kopite7Kimi sources indicate that the GeForce RTX 3050 is based on the GA106-150 GPU and will have 8GB of GDDR6 memory on board. It is also reported that the product will feature 3,072 CUDA cores compared to the GeForce RTX 3060 and GeForce RTX 3060 TI's 3,584 and 4,864, respectively. Other rumors suggest that the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti variant will also arrive, but there does not seem to be any updated information on that particular model.

Intel Arc A380 Graphics

2.45GHz 6GB

perf 1650S #IntelArc # DG2

- APISAK (@TUM_APISAK) December 2, 2021



It looks like the GeForce RTX 3050 will outperform the GeForce GTX 1660 Super, but it will be smaller than the 12GB GeForce RTX 2060 recently announced by NVIDIA. However, if TUM_APISAK's latest tweets prove to be true, the GeForce RTX 3050 could end up competing with the Intel Arc A380. The Arc A380's performance target (DG2-128) is reportedly the GeForce GTX 1650 Super and will be equipped with 6GB of GDDR6.

We'll likely hear about NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3050 family and Intel's Arc line early next year at CES 2022. If so, we may see the cards on the market within the first or second quarter if production proceeds according to plan. However, finding the items in the retail market could be a problem due to the continuing shortage of chips. This means that cards like the GeForce RTX 3050 and Arc A380, which should be priced at under $ 300, are likely to be found in stores at a much higher cost.