[Comparison] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 (60W) vs GeForce GTX 1650 Ti – the GTX 1650 Ti puts up a good fight

LaptopMedia.com Comparisons [Comparison] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 (60W) vs GeForce GTX 1650 Ti - the GTX 1650 Ti puts up a good fight

From: Severin Kolakov 16 September 2021 / 06:00 | 0

With the entry-level RTX Ampere GPUs hitting the market, we finally have some new budget GPU hardware that many people will get to appreciate. The budget and mid-range gaming laptop markets are by far the biggest, as most gamers don’t have 2000$+ to shell out for a laptop. That is why the RTX 3050 and 3050 Ti have a lot of hype and fans behind them.

The last time we had a budget gaming GPU from NVIDIA was the GTX 1650 and 1650 Ti, which was way back in 2019. To measure the performance of these new GPUs, we are putting them against their predecessors, with today’s battle being between the RTX 3050 and the GTX 1650 Ti.

Here is our Top Laptop Graphics Ranking, where you can find the best laptop graphics.

You can find more information about both GPUs here: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 (Laptop, 60W) / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti (Laptop)

Specs table

	RTX 3050 (Laptop, 60W)	GTX 1650 Ti (Laptop)
Architecture	Ampere	Turing
Lithography	8 nm	12 nm
Base / Max Frequency	713MHz / 1545MHz	1350MHz / 1450MHz
Memory Type	GDDR6-1500MHz	GDDR6-12000MHz
Memory capacity	4GB	4GB
Cores	2048	1024
Power Consumption	60W	55W
Memory bus	128-bit	256-bit
Memory bandwidth	224 GB/sec	128 GB/sec

GPU benchmarks

The RTX 3050 was faster in our synthetic benchmarks, with performance leads of 22%, 23%, and 43% in 3DMark Fire Strike, Unigine Heaven 4.0, and Unigine Superposition, respectively.

3DMark Time Spy (G)

The results are from 3DMark Time Spy (Graphics). Higher is better.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 (Laptop, 60W) MSI Katana GF66

4693

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti (Laptop) Lenovo Legion 5i 17

3689

3DMark Fire Strike (G)

Results are from 3DMark Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 (Laptop, 60W) MSI Katana GF66

12540

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti (Laptop) Lenovo Legion 5i 17

10253

Unigine Superposition

Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 (Laptop, 60W) MSI Katana GF66

2729

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti (Laptop) Lenovo Legion 5i 17

1903

Gaming tests

Far Cry 5	Full HD, Normal (Check settings)	Full HD, High (Check settings)	Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
GeForce RTX 3050 (Laptop, 60W)	83 fps (+19%)	78 fps (+20%)	72 fps (+18%)
GeForce GTX 1650 Ti (Laptop)	70 fps	65 fps	61 fps

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)	Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)	Full HD, Medium (Check settings)	Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
GeForce RTX 3050 (Laptop, 60W)	115 fps	96 fps (+9%)	53 fps (+20%)
GeForce GTX 1650 Ti (Laptop)	119 fps (+3%)	88 fps	44 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)	Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)	Full HD, Medium (Check settings)	Full HD, High (Check settings)
GeForce RTX 3050 (Laptop, 60W)	82 fps	70 fps (+15%)	64 fps (+19%)
GeForce GTX 1650 Ti (Laptop)	95 fps (+16%)	61 fps	54 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands	Full HD, Medium (Check settings)	Full HD, High (Check settings)	Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
GeForce RTX 3050 (Laptop, 60W)	76 fps (+21%)	69 fps (+19%)	59 fps (+13%)
GeForce GTX 1650 Ti (Laptop)	63 fps	58 fps	52 fps

Conclusion

Obviously, the RTX 3050 has better performance in synthetic benchmarks. However, once we enter the real-life gaming tests, we see that the 1650 Ti is plenty powerful, managing to snag Ws in some scenarios, mainly when the games are set to low or medium settings. The RTX 3050 offers a nice upgrade, albeit not on the level of the RTX 3050 Ti, which, in our opinion, is the sweet spot in the RTX Ampere family of GPUs. Still, if you find a good deal on a laptop with the 1650 Ti, and the performance that it offers satisfies you, go ahead and buy it, as it has stood the test of time and will continue to offer reliable performance.