The GeForce RTX 3050 desktop was reported to be more powerful than expected at the end of the year, and that instead of the originally expected 2304 stream processors and the GA107 core, it will build on the larger GA106 with 3072 active stream processors. Subsequently, however, came the specifications of 2560 stream processors, 80 texturing units, 48 ROPs and a 128-bit bus. Thus, the parameters exactly correspond to the fully active GA107 core.
| GeForce RTX 3050 (trimmed GA106) |
GA107 (fully active) |
GA106 (fully active) |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| stream processors | 2560 | 67 % | 2560 | 3840 |
| texturing units | 80 | 67 % | 80 | 120 |
| ROP | 48 | 75 % | 48 | 64 |
| bus | 128bit | 67 % | 128bit | 192bit |
But while a smaller GA107 core (which Nvidia uses on the mobile versions of the GeForce RTX 3050/3050 Ti) would suffice for this configuration, Inno3D photos revealed that the card carries a larger GA106 that is trimmed to the lower GA107’s parameter level:
Why Nvidia did not use GA107 straight away remains unclear. Hypothetical reasons may vary. For example, the production volumes of the GA107 core may not be sufficient for Nvidia to use on the desktop in addition to the two mobile models. Or it may be an effort to enter the market faster in the form of the fact that with GA106 card manufacturers can use PCB designs designed for previous graphics card models (GA106 is even pin compatible with larger GA104, which nicely illustrates the above shown PCB ready for 256bit memory configuration bus, which supports up to GA104). It is also possible that the yield of GA107 production is not such that Nvidia has a sufficient number of fully active chips, or conversely, there are too many cores left from GA106 production with a number of defects that are not enough to configure GeForce RTX 3060 and it was necessary to issue a card on which it would be possible to use them.
In any case, the specifications of the GeForce RTX 3050 are such that both GA106 and fully active GA107 can be used for its production. Nvidia, for example, envisages the possibility of switching to GA107 cores during the later production phase.
The increase in parameters compared to the original plan (in which the GeForce RTX 3050 would compete with the Radeon RX 6500 XT) gives GeForce the possibility of a performance advantage of about 10-15% on the mentioned Radeon. Radeon will be released on January 19, GeForce on January 27.
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