Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 A: Ada Lovelace-based laptop GPU makes tepid Geekbench debut

Some time ago, a curiously-named Nvidia laptop graphics card showed up online called the GeForce RTX 3050 A. Despite its '3xxx' branding, it actually ran an Ada Lovelace chip (presumed to be an AD106). The letter 'A' at the end is how it differentiates itself from its Ampere counterparts. It has now shown up on Geekbench's OpenCL benchmark database.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 A scores 57,138 points in the benchmark. That is higher than the GeForce RTX 3050 6 GB (53,590) and GeForce RTX 3050 4 GB (48,462), but lower than the GeForce RTX 4050 (80,921). In essence, it seems to be a marginally faster GeForce RTX 3050 and one can understand why Nvidia decided to call it that.

Geekbench also confirms the GeForce RTX 3050 A comes with 4 GB of VRAM and 14 Streaming Multiprocessors (128 CUDA cores per SM), for a total of 1,792 CUDA cores. Its boost at around 1,935 MHz, which is acceptable for a xx50 class GPU. The GPU was tested alongside a new HP Victus gaming laptop with an Intel Core i7-12650H and 16 GB of RAM, heralding its imminent launch.

Lackluster Geekbench performance notwithstanding, the GeForce RTX 3050 A could shine in a low-power environment thanks to the platform's power efficiency, AI-driven features like DLSS and Frame Generation and a low 50 Watt TDP. Nvidia confirmed to us earlier that this SKU would be limited to a handful of markets such as India.