NVIDIA RTX A500 Laptop GPU vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 6GB Laptop GPU

The NVIDIA RTX A500 Laptop GPU or A500 Mobile is a professional graphics card for mobile workstations. It is based on the GA107 Ampere chip and offers a slower performance than the GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU. It offers 2,048 CUDA, 16 Raytracing and 64 Tensor cores paired with a 64 Bit memory bus. It is available in different variants from 20 - 60 Watt (TGP) with different clock speeds (and performance). The GPU supports eDP 1.4b to connect the internal monitor and DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 for external connections.

There is no more Max-Q variant (formerly used for the low power variants) but every OEM can choose to implement Max-Q technologies (Dynamic Boost, WhisperMode).

The raw performance should be slower than the GeForce RTX 3050 for laptops at the same TGP level. Both GPUs depend heavily on good cooling and a high TGP for good performance. At a similar power consumption level the RTX A500 should be clearly faster than the old T500 and T550. 

The GA107 chip offers 2.560 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 1,280 INT32 ALUs). With Ampere all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The raytracing and tensor cores on the chip were also improved according to Nvidia. The A500 can only use 2048 CUDA cores. The Ampere chips also include an improved 5th generation video encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and a 7th generation decoder (for various formats now including AV1).

The GA107 chip is manufactured by Samsung in 8nm (8N), which is not quite able to keep up with the 7nm node at TSMC (e.g. used by AMD and also for the professional GA100 Ampere chip).

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 6GB Laptop GPU (mobile, GN20-P0-R, 2023 Refresh) is the refresh of the RTX 3050 4GB Laptop GPU (slowest RTX 3000 mobile card) and also based on the GA107 Ampere chip. The 6GB variant offers more CUDA cores (2,560, +25%) but a cut down memory bus to 96 Bit. The clock speed depends on the TGP variant and can range from 713 - 1530 (base) and 1058 - 1740 (boost) for the TGP variants of 35 to 80 Watt (see table below).

The performance is between the old 4GB RTX 3050 and the RTX 3050 Ti and therefore best suited for full HD gaming (1920 x 1080) in medium to high graphic settings. The performance is not sufficient to enable Raytracing in most games, but the Tensor cores can be used for DLSS in some games (and get performance boost with slight quality reduction). Beware, that the low TGP variants will offer a significantly lower performance.

The GA107 chip offers 3,072 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 1,536 INT32 ALUs). The RTX 3050 however maybe won't use all ALUs on the chip. With Turing all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The raytracing and tensor cores on the chip were also improved according to Nvidia. The Ampere chips also include an improved 5th generation video encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and a 7th generation decoder (for various formats now including AV1).

The GA107 chip is manufactured by Samsung in 8nm (8N), which is not quite able to keep up with the 7nm node at TSMC (e.g. used by AMD and also for the professional GA100 Ampere chip).