Nvidia RTX 3050 and 3050 Ti gaming laptops are here, but what are the actual differences
in games, and is it worth paying more money for the Ti?
I’ve compared both in 15 different games at all setting levels as well as thermals,
battery life, content creator workloads and more to show you the differences.
These are the differences in specs between these two GPUs.
Both have 4 gigs of GDDR6 memory with the same speed, but the Ti has 25% more CUDA cores
and 25% more RT cores.
Both have the same power limit range of 35 to 80 watts, so performance will vary significantly
based on this, but even with the same power limit the Ti doesn’t clock as high as the
non Ti, presumably because the Ti has more CUDA cores to power.
I’m using the Core 17 from XMG to do all of this testing fairly.
I've got the exact same Tongfang chassis with the same specs including CPU and memory, same
cooling design, same battery, same everything, the only difference is one has the 3050 while
the other has the 3050 Ti.
Both laptops are able to run the GPU up to 80 watts plus 15 watts with dynamic boost,
so 95 watts best case on the GPU, but it will depend on the workload.
Unfortunately neither laptop lets us disable optimus, however that feature usually costs
more money, and given the 3050 is probably going to be found in cheaper laptops that
kind of makes sense.
That said this should still be a fair comparison, as both of these laptops force optimus, otherwise
both laptops were tested with the same version of Windows and same Nvidia drivers, so let’s
start out by comparing 15 different games followed by things like thermals afterwards.
If you get sick of me talking about games then just use those timestamps below.
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested with the exact same run through the game on both laptops.
I’ve got the 3050 results shown by the red bars and the 3050 Ti results shown by the
purple bars, along with all setting presets the game offers with lowest down the bottom
and highest up the top.
This game actually saw the biggest difference out of all 15 titles tested, with the Ti reaching
18% higher average FPS at ultra settings.
Although both can run ray tracing, even with DLSS enabled the results aren’t too impressive
in this game, but as you’ll see soon the Ti can offer bigger gains in ray tracing.
It’s not all big gains for the Ti though, take Assassin’s Creed Valhalla for instance.
This game gets limited harshly by the 4 gig VRAM and as a result ultra high and very high
settings are bottlenecked and scoring the same unplayable results with either GPU.
Even in the best case at low settings the Ti is only around 5% faster than the non Ti.
Let’s look at Watch Dogs Legion next, because it’s a more average result compared to the
previous two extremes.
At max settings the Ti was around 9% faster than the non Ti, though this only equates
to a less than 3 FPS difference, not really something you’re likely to notice, though
the frame rate difference was more than double this with lower setting levels.
Control was tested with and without ray tracing, let’s start with ray tracing off results.
The Ti was just 7% higher in average FPS at max settings, though this is just 3 FPS.
Either GPU was able to run the game at above 60 FPS with medium settings.
Performance drops back significantly with ray tracing enabled, however the Ti was now
38% higher in average FPS at max settings, quite a big difference, so it seems like for
ray tracing the Ti has quite an advantage, but that said these results aren’t really
playable so it hardly matters.
This is where DLSS comes in, it’s required if you want to use ray tracing on either the
3050 or 3050 Ti in this game.
The Ti still had a massive 22% higher average FPS at max settings here, even the 1% lows
from the Ti were ahead of the averages from the non Ti.
Red Dead Redemption 2 illustrated another example of where the 4 gigs of VRAM is a limit,
neither laptop GPU is able to run ultra settings because there’s not enough.
That said, high settings was about 7% faster with the Ti, which was only just below that
60 FPS sweet spot.
The differences in Microsoft Flight Simulator were much higher than expected, as I generally
consider this test to depend more on the processor, however at max settings the Ti was 15% ahead,
though again like previously, this is just a 3 to 4 FPS difference so nothing major when
looking at the actual results compared to percentage values.
Death standing only had minor differences for the 1% lows, while average FPS was 6%
higher at max settings with the Ti, or about 5 FPS or so.
Call of Duty Warzone on the other hand had one of the smallest differences at max settings,
the Ti was just 5% faster in terms of average FPS.
There was a larger 13% boost at minimum settings, but this game is harder to accurately compare
as the results may be skewed by the actions of other players, the fun of testing battle
royale style games I guess.
Fortnite on the other hand was tested using the same replay on both laptops, so directly
comparable.
The Ti was just 6% ahead of the non Ti at max settings in this one, but considering
the frame rates are so close together and still above 100 FPS from either GPU I doubt
this is a difference you’d be likely to notice when playing, plus you could always
enable dlss for a boost.
Metro Exodus had a well above average 16% boost to average FPS at ultra settings, but
we’ve got to be careful of these vanity numbers, because again it’s less than 4
FPS and nothing major, perhaps these frame rates aren’t even what you’d want to play
at and that’s exactly why I’ve spent the extra time showing the lower settings too.
Unlike the big differences we saw in control with ray tracing, the ray tracing preset didn’t
see big differences with the Ti.
The Witcher 3 also saw above average gains for the Ti, reaching 12% higher average FPS
at max settings here, slightly under 10 FPS difference or so, so again perhaps not something
you’d really notice in a side by side comparison but at least it’s more of a change compared
to some of the other games.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was reaching 9% higher average FPS with the highest setting
preset, but the 3050 non Ti was still easily surpassing 60 FPS in this test at max settings,
perhaps as it’s an older title and we’re dealing with modern hardware.
While we’re looking at the older games, Battlefield V was reaching 7% higher average
FPS with the Ti at max settings, but again like a lot of the others, this is just a 3
to 4 FPS difference, though the gap widens at lower setting presets.
Medium settings for example was 10% faster on the Ti, granted 1% lows hardly differ.
I figured I’d throw in a racing game because some people have been asking for that.
F1 2020 was similar with an 8% boost to average FPS with the highest setting preset, though
either GPU is still easily surpassing 100 FPS in this test even maxed out.
Rainbow Six Siege was similar again, with a 7% boost to average FPS at max settings
on the Ti, but again with such high frame rates it’s not like you’re going to struggle
playing with the cheaper non Ti.
On average over all 15 games tested at 1080p with the highest setting preset, the RTX 3050
Ti was almost 9% faster than the RTX 3050.
As we can clearly see, results could vary significantly based on the particular game.
Worst case there was no change in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla due to a VRAM bottleneck, while
others like Cyberpunk in the best case had 18% gains, though in many cases once we actually
consider the differences in FPS it’s often not much.
Here’s what the differences look like if we instead use the minimum setting preset
rather than maximum.
Generally lower settings are less GPU bound, so the average difference is a little lower,
but still close to an 8% boost on average with the Ti.
Given many of the resource heavy games weren’t necessarily running at playable levels at
max settings, these results could be more practical.
Now let’s check out thermals and battery life.
The interior of both laptops is the same, same 62Wh battery and the cooling solution
is the same and both have the same i7-11800H with same power limits, only the GPU is different.
For these upcoming tests I’ve capped both laptops to 80 watts on the GPU so there’s
no dynamic boost here which was the case previously.
These are the clock speeds that were reported by hardware info by running the Heaven GPU
benchmark at max settings at 1440p for 30 minutes, and as per the specs shown at the
start the 3050 is able to clock higher.
The temperature results were interesting, both laptops were tested at the same time
in the same workload and the 3050 was slightly warmer.
Now it’s only a small difference, but I was still going into this expecting the higher
tier Ti GPU to run warmer.
It might be because the 3050 clocks higher or maybe its fewer CUDA cores are in a smaller
hot spot, but that’s just speculation.
Either way the difference is small and I wouldn’t pick one or the other based on this.
I’ve compared battery life in gaming, and the Ti was actually lasting a few minutes
longer, though it’s an extremely small amount and realistically I’d say within margin
of error, again I’d consider them the same here.
I’ve also tested some content creator workloads to see if there’s any difference compared
to the games just covered.
Adobe Premiere was tested with Puget systems benchmark, and no real difference here, the
GPU hardly seems to matter, the score is more based on the processor and both laptops have
the same one.
I’d expect DaVinci resolve to show a larger difference on the Ti but unfortunately the
Puget test kept failing due to the 4 gigabyte VRAM limit.
Blender was tested with the Open Data benchmark using CUDA, and the longer Classroom test
was around 8% faster with the Ti here, so quite similar to the average difference seen
in the games despite the Ti having 25% more CUDA cores than the non Ti.
The V-Ray test showed a slightly larger 10% gain with the Ti, but again given this is
a CUDA test I was expecting to see bigger differences owing to the 25% higher CUDA core
count that the Ti offers.
Now for price differences, XMG advised me that the 3050 Ti costs about 21% more money
compared to the 3050, but that’s in the context of the GPU alone, which you can’t
buy.
When you go to buy a laptop you buy the whole laptop with the GPU already included.
If a 3050 laptop was about $800 in this example then a 3050 Ti laptop would be about 6% more
money, but that’s just going on the raw cost of the GPUs, it’s likely that the OEM
would probably want to take some profit going to the higher model.
It’s worth noting that XMG offers the Core 17 with RTX 3060 graphics rather than the
two 3050 configurations I’ve got here, they just provided me with these models so I could
make this comparison.
You can check out the Core 17 with the links down in the description.
So yeah at the end of the day the 3050 Ti isn’t amazing or anything, and it’s going
to come down to the price difference, but if you’re in a situation where the 3050
Ti is say 10% more money compared to the 3050 then it could be worth it.
At least the price increase somewhat scales with the performance boost on offer, but yeah
again it just comes down to the price difference of the specific laptop as well as your performance
target.
As we saw in many of the games often there wasn’t too much of a difference.
Results could also of course vary based on power limits, I’ve basically tested the
best case 3050 and 3050 Ti here with maximum power limit.
According to the Nvidia spec you can get either with as low as a 35 watt limit, so with a
laptop that runs the GPU at 35 watts I would expect significantly lower results compared
to what I’ve shown here.
So which of these two laptop GPUs would you pick in your next laptop, the 3050 or would
you spend extra for the 3050 Ti?
Let me know down in the comments, and get subscribed for future laptop comparisons like
this one one.
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