First up is A Plague Tale. The 5050 comes in bottom of our standings with 18% less performance than the ageing RTX 3060 Ti and 27% behind its bigger brother, the RTX 5060 8GB. It also shows that two years later and a $50 hair cut, it’s comparable to the RTX 4060, which isn’t a great look.
In Alan Wake 2, the RTX 5050 just misses the mark if you’re looking to play at 1080p on the high preset, coming in at 57 FPS, which nigh on matches the RTX 4060 identically. This shows that by spending a little more, for instance, for the RX 9060 XT, you can net yourself another 74% more performance for 40% more cash.
Moving over to Baldur’s Gate 3 and again, the 5050 isn’t looking great. Sure, it gives us playable framerates at 1080p on Ultra settings, though it’s not that demanding in terms of GPU performance, but it paints a better picture as to the generational improvements compared to the RTX 4060, or should I say, the lack thereof as it sits 11% behind the Ada Lovelace-based card.
In Black Myth: Wukong, the RTX 5050 finally starts to move up our chart, sitting 4% ahead of the RX 7600 XT, but again coming in matching the RTX 4060’s performance at 51 FPS, though it does improve on the 1% lows, where the Ada-based card seems to have some issues, and retesting did garner the same result. Dialling settings in could help to bring performance up, but it still feels like a bit of a hollow victory when we think about gen-on-gen improvements.
In Counter-Strike 2, the RTX 5050 comes in 7% faster than the RX 7600 XT, which shows that VRAM isn’t everything, considering this new Blackwell-based GPU comes packing half the amount. What is sad to see is that there’s no tangible difference for the most part between this card, the 3060 Ti and the RTX 4060 in the averages, as they all fall within a few percent of each other, though to not be overly critical, the 1% lows are much better, so at least there’s a silver lining.
Moving over to Cyberpunk, the RTX 5050 is starting to actually look pretty decent and well worth the money. It’s here where we find the 5050 actually rubbing shoulders with its bigger brother, the RTX 5060, separated by a single FPS in both the averages and the 1% lows, and sitting 34% ahead of the RTX 4060 from last generation, and even coming in 5% faster than the 4060 Ti. If we start to see more results like this, we could be onto a winner.
Sadly, we don’t, because as we move over to F1 24, the RTX 5050 is back on the bottom of our charts, coming in with 162 FPS, which again, puts it behind the RTX 4060, which again, doesn’t feel like it’s enough, as a next-generation card coming in with 12% less performance almost shows us why NVIDIA didn’t sample this card. I get that the RTX 4060 came in $50 more expensive at launch, but we’re two years on, and this essentially is the lowest-tier card of the 50 series, against the lowest-tier card from the 40 series.
Now Indiana Jones is an interesting one, because it scored precisely 0. Not because it performed so badly, but because it simply didn’t run. For anyone who has played the game, you’ll know that the menu forms part of the game, and with this card, we couldn’t even get into it. This is a common occurrence we’ve seen with 8GB cards, and the only way to save it is to drop the texture pool size right down, which we could have done, though then it would make the comparative tests unfair, so it’s easier to give it a “did not finish”, or in this case, a “did not even start”.
Again, if you hadn’t guessed by now, the RTX 5050 hugs the bottom of our chart again in Starfield, sitting below that 60 FPS threshold that most gamers crave, and falling 16% behind the RTX 4060, though the averages are definitely improved on the newer card, which will certainly help in the dips and lead to a smoother experience overall. But seeing above 60 FPS would have at least given a talking point, and something to use for marketing.
Then in War Thunder, it’s much of the same again. The RTX 5050 sits narrowly behind the RTX 4060, sitting at a 5% margin behind, and while it’s enough to beat out the RX 7600 XT, I think gamers are just expecting more for their money. Looking at how this performed across the board, and the other 8GB cards there, it’s definitely showing that the lack of VRAM is holding this and other cards back.
