Hop, grab your tickets and head for China, where you can find some truly exotic graphics cards. Via ITHome, VideoCardz and Tom’s Hardware, we’ve learned of the existence of a truly original RTX 3050 in low-profile format!
RTX 3050: a low-profile version with a TDP of 65W in China!
Via reseller JD.com, you can find a small 3050 in low-profile format. What’s most surprising is the card’s configuration, halfway between a 3050 desktop and a 3050 laptop. That’s right, because the laptop version is based on a GA107 GPU with 2048 cuda cores, as opposed to the 2560 cuda cores of the desktop version’s GA106-150. Worse still, while the mobile GPU has just 4 GB of memory, the PCIe version is equipped with 8 GB.
And that’s when you should start to notice things happening. In fact, this Chinese version relies on a mobile GPU and is equipped with 8 GB of memory. The result is a card with a low thermal envelope of 65W. Remember that the desktop model is 130W. The board features a half-height PCB topped by a single-slot heatsink. Connectivity is therefore limited to an HDMI and DisplayPort output, while an auxiliary power supply is dispensed with – clever!
Of course, to operate, the card requires a modified bios to take advantage of the 8 GB of VRAM. In terms of frequency, the GPU reaches 1500 MHz on boost. All this for the equivalent of $278!