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Replacement for 3050

hardware_failure

hardware_failure

[H]ard|Gawd
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Is there anything that is a best bang for the buck to replace my sons RTX 3050?

He mostly plays stupid kid games like roblox, minecraft and fortnite etc. It might not be a bottleneck. Maybe I should spend money on a better wifi system for him.
 
Bang for buck is anything between the RX 9060 XT 16gb, RTX 5060 Ti 16gb, RX 9070, RX 9070 XT and RTX 5070 Ti. Go with whatever fits your budget and use cases.

For the games you mentioned, the 9060 XT and 5060 Ti would be fine and at $320-380 Black Friday pricing this is probably the best deal you will get at that level of VRAM for a while. Either will get you roughly 2.5x the raw performance of the 3050 while also the most recent upscaling and frame gen tech, which would push relative performance even a bit higher.

As for wifi bottleneck, try doing a few speed tests to see if your router / network setup is lagging. Can easily be done by first testing at direct wired connection to modem, then wireless connection. Generally 100mbps down/20mbps up is enough for high FPS games which should be easily achievable even with 10yr old tech as long as there's not too much congestion/simultaneous connections
 
hardware_failure said:
Is there anything that is a best bang for the buck to replace my sons RTX 3050?

He mostly plays stupid kid games like roblox, minecraft and fortnite etc. It might not be a bottleneck. Maybe I should spend money on a better wifi system for him.
Click to expand...
Was it a RTX 3050 6GB or 8GB? The primary difference (other than VRAM) is that the 6GB is bus powered and some are low profile, which makes me wonder if either of those are a requirement.
 
On new gpu

If (big if) intel drivers work well for the games in question a $250 B580 12GB, $350 9060 xt 16GB, some $280 5060 if 8GB of vram is not an issue
 
Buy something used and cheap. My children are the same as OP's so they aren't demanding gamers... yet! This past Summer I paid $120 (USD) for a used RTX 2070 Super 8Gb which is more than enough for my 11 year old daughter's PC that I built for her birthday. My 8 year old son is playing on my ACER Predator laptop from 2017 with a GTX 1060 too.

You can also haggle or move on to other sellers to.
 
TangledThornz said:
Buy something used and cheap. My children are the same as OP's so they aren't demanding gamers... yet! This past Summer I paid $120 (USD) for a used RTX 2070 Super 8Gb which is more than enough for my 11 year old daughter's PC that I built for her birthday. My 8 year old son is playing on my ACER Predator laptop from 2017 with a GTX 1060 too.

You can also haggle or move on to other sellers to.
Click to expand...
Would somewhat agree with this, however if you try to rationalize relative pricing there really aren’t too many huge “deals” out there.

Will give a singular example. 3080ti is basically same performance as 5070 in raw raster and has same VRAM, yet runs at roughly 40% more power, has no frame gen and obviously no warranty support. Going price for a 3080ti is between $350-425 depending on model, condition, etc (say $375 avg) while the 5070 can be had for $480-580 (say $530 avg). Is the 40% raw price/performance gain buying used worth the loss of extra features, power efficiency, driver support and warranty?

If you plan on keeping the card for 3 years then the power savings alone is roughly $22 per year (4hrs day * 365 day * .1 KW (ie 100w) * $.15/kwh national avg elec price). Anf that’s not accounting for rising energy costs (which we all know is happening).

What I’ve found is if you do the same math for similar raw raster performance cards the math is similar. You’re maybe saving 10% over the lifespan of the cards use while taking on risk of warranty and losing features. Whether that’s worth the savings is totally the each their own.
 
yinzerniner said:
Would somewhat agree with this, however if you try to rationalize relative pricing there really aren’t too many huge “deals” out there.

Will give a singular example. 3080ti is basically same performance as 5070 in raw raster and has same VRAM, yet runs at roughly 40% more power, has no frame gen and obviously no warranty support. Going price for a 3080ti is between $350-425 depending on model, condition, etc (say $375 avg) while the 5070 can be had for $480-580 (say $530 avg). Is the 40% raw price/performance gain buying used worth the loss of extra features, power efficiency, driver support and warranty?

If you plan on keeping the card for 3 years then the power savings alone is roughly $22 per year (4hrs day * 365 day * .1 KW (ie 100w) * $.15/kwh national avg elec price). Anf that’s not accounting for rising energy costs (which we all know is happening).

What I’ve found is if you do the same math for similar raw raster performance cards the math is similar. You’re maybe saving 10% over the lifespan of the cards use while taking on risk of warranty and losing features. Whether that’s worth the savings is totally the each their own.
Click to expand...

You can find deals on Facebook marketplace if you look but also have patience. I spent a month waiting for the right card and price to show up which was the RTX 2070 Super I bought. OP's child's gaming demands is also a low bar as well.

Protip: Keep your children's gaming resolution at 1080p to save money, lol.
 
What's your budget?
Is he planning on playing heavier games in the future?

EDIT: Is the 3050 toast?
 
If he plays vanilla Minecraft it's probably more than enough, if he adds texture packs and other visual stuff... I mean it still looks like ass, but the water looks more like water, that can hit a gpu pretty hard.

I like to to give it the ear test, if you can hear the GPU fans spinning like crazy, then an upgrade may be in order. Or just load up GPU-Z before he plays to see how toasty the card gets.
 
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