NVIDIA's RTX 5050 arrives early in laptops from Acer, MSI and more

Engadget

4 days ago

NVIDIA's add-in board partners won't start selling the GeForce RTX 5050 until mid-July, but it looks like the company has given the early go-ahead to OEMs to start announcing laptops with the new entry-level GPU. Wccftech and Videocardz report that 5050-equipped laptops are available to order in China as of this morning from domestic manufacturers like Mechrevo.
Over in the US, companies like MSI and Acer have begun announcing their own RTX 5050 laptops. The former, for instance, will sell the Katana 15 for $999 through Walmart. Alongside the 5050, it features a Core i7-14650HX processor, 16GB of RAM and a 144Hz display. We've reached out to NVIDIA for more information on global availability, and we'll update this article once we learn more.
In the meantime, the Chinese listings give us a good idea of what to expect from the new GPU. It features 2,560 CUDA cores, 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM and a TDP of 115W. The memory spec is interesting. Before today's announcement, the desktop variant of the 5050 was rumored to include GDDR6 memory. The fact the laptop version has GDDR7 VRAM would suggests its sibling will as well since it wouldn't make much sense for NVIDIA to hobble the desktop card in that way. With a 128-bit interface, the RTX 5050 should have a memory bandwidth of 384 GB/s, putting on par with the 5060 mobile in that department.
As for performance, the 5050 laptop should land somewhere in the middle between the 4050 and 5060, with decent generational gains on offer but nothing too exciting. This being an entry-level card, the fact it only comes with 8GB of VRAM is more understandable, and it fits the bill for a GPU most people will only use for occasional gaming. If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission.