ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC 8GB GDDR6 128-bit 14 Gbps PCIE 4.0 Gaming Graphics Card, IceStorm 2.0 Advanced Cooling, Freeze Fan Stop, Active Fan Control, ZT-A30500H-10M

The RTX 3050 is the newest card in Nvidia's Ampere series, and it is designed with PC players who want to push 1080p gameplay in mind.

The RTX 3050's support for Nvidia's newest proprietary technology is one of its main advantages. Even more taxing games like Metro Exodus, Control, and Guardians of the Galaxy performed flawlessly at 60 frames per second in Full HD with ray tracing and DLSS enabled. In many games, 1440p is also acceptable, though it's typically a trade-off between visual fidelity and performance as a 60 FPS average typically necessitates turning off ray tracing and relying more heavily on the DLSS upscaling options.

Although there are already some RTX 3050 units available for MSRP, there are just a few shops who actually have the GPUs in stock as of this writing. We advocate buying a brand-new GPU if you can locate one for between $250 and $300, but we don't suggest paying too much if more potent alternatives are available.