RTX 3050 or Used GPU – Better to buy a USED GRAPHICS CARD instead?

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Trying to build a gaming PC, hell even trying to upgrade your older rig, sucks right now. Graphics cards in particular are almost impossible to get your hands on, and certainly not for any reasonable amount of money. Luckily NVIDIA just launched this, their RTX 3050, which promises to be an ‘affordable’ card you might actually be able to buy. But, is it better to pick up an older or used card like one of these instead? Let’s test them and find out!

First, the 3050. This is the OC Dual model from Asus, meaning while it still has the same base specs as any other RTX 3050, the same 2560 CUDA cores, 128 bit memory bus, 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM and PCIe Gen 4 connection, it offers slightly higher boost clocks allowing it to eek out a touch more performance than “stock”, running at 1852MHz in OC mode or 1822MHz in Gaming mode, compared to 1780MHz on the “stock” specs.

It’s actually a rather small card, it’s relatively low 130W (stock) power rating means the cooler doesn’t have to be all that large and it only needs a single 8 pin PCIe power connector. Technically it only needs a single 6 pin as the PCIe slot can provide 75W and a 6 pin offers another 75W rather than an 8 pin’s 150W, but it’s no problem to include it anyway especially for a bit of extra headroom. Despite its small size, it still manages to include a nice metal backplate, and rather strangely a 304 stainless steel rear I/O plate. I’m really confused why they included this, they printed it right on the piece, and list it as one of the key selling points on their site – “A stainless steel bracket is harder and more resistant to corrosion.” I didn’t know rear I/O shields corroding was a significant problem that needed solving! Seems like a weird decision on a card specifically designed to cut costs.

Of course, this is far from being as cost-cutting as AMD’s latest offering, the RX 6500 XT, which I discussed in a video I’ll link in the cards above for you to check out after this one, but that doesn’t mean the 3050 is an instant win. The market is so crazy that even multiple year old cards are selling for above their launch price which is ridiculous, but it invites the opportunity to buy older or used cards instead of the inflated prices of new ones. Cards like the RTX 2060 6GB, GTX 1660 Ti, or even AMD’s RX 5600 XT are all options that can be found for effectively the same price as the RTX 3050, but how do they compare in performance?

Starting with Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p on high settings, I’ve listed the game average, GPU average and GPU 95% here, and you can see that on all counts the 3050 is the slowest. Not by much, just 5 FPS to the 1660 TI, but the 2060 is almost 20% ahead right in the performance range you are likely to notice and benefit from. I thought I’d throw in 1440p results too, although not much changes, the gaps just get a little closer in actual FPS even if the percentages remain similar with the 2060 still offering around 17% more performance than the 3050, the 5600 XT not being far behind with 12.5% more, and the 1660 Ti offering about 5% more.

In Watchdogs Legion the gap is a little tighter with the 3050 still being the slowest, closely followed by the 1660 Ti then a gap to the 5600 XT then 2060 at 1080p medium settings. The spread is tighter at 12FPS, or 13.5% faster than the 3050, although the gap between the 3050 and 1660 Ti, and 5600 XT and 2060 is in the same proportions. The same goes for 1440p where the 3050 and 1660 Ti tie for average FPS, with a single FPS lead going to the 1660 Ti in the 1% lows, then a decent jump to over 70 FPS for both the 5600 XT and 2060.

You probably won’t believe this, but Cyberpunk performs identically too, with the 3050 at the bottom of the pack, followed by the 1660 Ti that’s incredibly close with a single FPS difference, then a reasonable gap to the 5600 XT and 2060. Same again at 1440p, this time with the 3050 taking half an FPS lead over the 1660 Ti, but functionally identical across the board.

CSGO, a much more CPU bottlenecked game, does shake things up, with the 1660 Ti taking a reasonable (if completely imperceptible and honestly within margin for error in this game) lead. The 3050 is still at the back of the pack, but as a percentage the complete spread is only 6% so I wouldn’t be too worried. At 1440p things are reversed somewhat, with the 5600 XT this time taking the lead, and the 1660 Ti put back in place just ahead of the 3050.

Microsoft Flight is back to the usual order, this time with a slightly larger lead over the 3050 than usual although still within 3 FPS so not too substantial. The other two are a full 10 FPS up on the lower two respectively, again right in the noticeable window. At 1440p the two lower end cards iron themselves out to identical, with the two higher end cards still running a touch faster.

And finally in Fortnite, finally the 3050 gets to not be last across the board! Only by 2 FPS at 1080p high settings, but it’s not on the bottom. Again the 2060 and even the 5600 XT offer a potentially significant uplift over the 3050 with the 2060 actually breaking out of the 144 FPS limit of many gaming monitors. At 1440p it’s the same lineup, and actually very similar numbers too thanks to Fortnite changing the render scale to 75% at 1440p high settings.

So, the 3050 almost exclusively comes last across the board. That’s somewhat disappointing – normally a new generation of GPUs will match or outperform the last gen tier up card, ie the 3050 should at least match the 2060 but it doesn’t – however especially with the market the way it is right now, the £239 MSRP makes up for that a fair bit. But that’s the MSRP, and we all know you can’t buy one for that – I’m not sure you could even in a normal market as there are only AIB models available which, thanks to the addition of stainless steel I/O shields, tend to be more expensive than the MSRP anyway. So, how much will you be parting for one?

It seems like £400 from most retailers that have any stock left. A quick check on eBay will find you some for more like £350 which is definitely better, but still far from the £240 we were promised. What about the other cards then? Well I can’t find a 5600 XT new, but on the used market it seems like £400 is a common buy-it-now price. The 1660 Ti can just about be found new, but for insane £400 price tags, so used is likely best where £340 seems plausible. And finally the 2060 – this can be had new for £420, or if you are lucky you can find deals like these where the buy-it-now price for a used card is £340. If you must buy new, the 2060 is the best deal. It’s only £20 more for, on average, around 20% more performance and puts it in a position to both last longer and provide viable 1440p performance if that’s what you need or high refresh rate 1080p instead.

If you are happy to buy used, at £340 the 2060 is still by far the best deal there. I think pretty much up to £400 it’s still the best performance per pound, with the only catch being the 6GB of VRAM compared to the 3050’s 8GB, but especially if you are sticking to 1080p I would generally expect that to not be a significant bottleneck by comparison for a while yet – ie the weaker GPU core in the 3050 will continue to be the bottleneck more than VRAM capacity on the 2060.