Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3050 EAGLE OC 8GB GDDR6 Graphics Card

The biggest limiting factor to what the Gigabyte RTX 3050 EAGLE OC is going to be able to do comes down to its significantly smaller memory bus than any other RTX 20- or 30-series GPU so far. Despite the RTX 3050 utilizing 8GB GDDR6 memory over the RTX 2060’s 6GB, the latter’s 192-bit memory bus simply allows for the GPU to hit higher frame rates and perform more consistently overall. This means that the RTX 3050 essentially performs closer to a GTX 1660 Ti while benefiting from ray tracing and DLSS support.

The Gigabyte RTX 3050 EAGLE OC features all the ports that you would expect to find on a current-generation GPU; 2x DisplayPort 1.4 and 2x HDMI 2.1 for connectivity with all the best gaming monitors on the market right now. It’s worth pointing out that many budget video cards, such as the GTX 1660 and RTX 2060 usually only feature one of each port, with those older models lacking HDMI 2.1 support as expected. This means, if you’re after a respectably priced GPU for a multi-monitor setup, you’ll have plenty of options for which panels you wish to plug into.

RTX 3050 EAGLE OC performance of the Gigabyte Eagle RTX 3050 OC is decent across the board so long as you temper your expectations according. The Nvidia RTX 3050 has been billed as a 1080p60 GPU utilizing both ray tracing and DLSS in the latest titles. Well, I thought the best way to test the claims by the company would be to see how the RTX 3050 stacked up in two of the games that featured heavily in the performance marketing material: Guardians of the Galaxy and Control.

Nvidia claims that the RTX 3050 GPU can achieve 60fps at Full HD with both ray tracing and DLSS on in both Guardians of the Galaxy and Control, and I’m here to tell you that Gigabyte Eagle RTX 3050 OC hits the mark – most of the time.

Control has been the go-to of games for its ray tracing functionality since its launch, and the RTX 3050 does indeed hold its own in this title in both Full HD and even 1440p. Now, I’ll say this much right away, DLSS is an absolute requirement in order to hit 60 FPS, which could prove disappointing for those wanting solid native performance without reliance on the A.I. upscaling tech.

Control was playable at 60 FPS with both DLSS and ray tracing enabled. However, should you not want to take the resolution hit (as DLSS renders at 720p then A.I. upscales the footage) you can also hit 60 FPS natively with ray tracing disabled. A good compromise for a playable framerate was High settings with ray tracing set to medium (which still gives you ray traced reflections and transparent reflections) that averaged around 54 FPS consistently.

Should you want to go for high settings and ray tracing maxed out in 1080p without DLSS enabled, the Gigabyte Eagle RTX 3050 OC averages around 40 FPS, which is far from ideal for those wanting a silky smooth gameplay experience. My best advice is to keep DLSS enabled and set to either ‘Balanced’ or ‘Performance’ to keep the frame rate and picture quality consistent here.

Guardians of the Galaxy is not only a fantastic-looking game, but it’s also brilliantly optimized – the Gigabyte Eagle RTX 3050 OC held its own in both 1080p and 1440p under the right circumstances. I’ll preface by saying that the video card was able to run Guardians of the Galaxy at ultra settings with both ray tracing and DLSS on. It’s a very impressive feat and certainly goes a long way in showing the potential of a lower-end GPU like this when it comes to the fidelity on display here.

With 1440p, however, you’ve got a choice to make between graphical fidelity and overall performance as the Gigabyte Eagle RTX 3050 OC doesn’t quite hit 60 FPS mark even with DLSS on. Enabling both DLSS and ray tracing averages out at around 47 FPS, though performance improves to around 52 FPS with ray tracing disabled. Things generally looked and ran smoothly enough, however, if you’re after a rock-solid 60, then your best bet is to keep it locked at 1080p.

Lastly, for the ray tracing performance tests, we have Metro Last Light which held up remarkably well when running the PC Enhanced Edition. Even now, just under three years after its initial release date, this title is still one of the best-looking PC games for ray tracing in my opinion.