Budget GPU Battle: RTX 5050 vs 4060

Now that the latest Nvidia GPUs are officially out, considering an upgrade is only natural. Nvidia GPUs are offering the RTX 50-series cards, While the RTX 50-series cards are set to be released with Nvidia’s latest GPUs, the entry level cards should not be ignored. They are the RTX 5050 which is going to be sold at a cheaper price with the same specs as the aforementioned models.

New features include the enhanced machine learning upscaling systems, which greatly improves the performance of the 50-series cards. These include super capable AI cores that can push the limits when employing creative software. The 50 series cards are a strong willing upgrade for gamers and creators. The questions however still remains, is it worth the upgrade?

Evaluating the RTX 4060 and RTX 5050 suggests both GPUs are good choices for playing games at 1080p resolution and also quite cheap. Or, at least, not as expensive as a 5090. For gamers, the good reason to upgrade is the MSRP of GPUs has become more reasonable when compared to a few years ago. Besides that, upgrading a GPU makes more sense when the gaming performance boost expected is substantial. A strong, more consistent framerate is a safe bet when upgrading. But when upgrading doesn’t guarantee strong performance gains, what do you do?

The RTX 4060 is a better GPU

That’s not an opinion. It’s a fact. Based on head-to-head benchmarking, the RTX 4060 is a GPU that competes with Nvidia’s latest Ada Lovelace architecture GPUs. All the hype surrounding the Nvidia RTX 40 series reveal paid off, it seems.

When running the same game on 1080p with ultra or RT preset, the RTX 4060 outperformed the RTX 5050 card, proving that sometimes, newer GPUs are not better. For instance, playing “Baldur’s Gate 3,” the RTX 4060 performed at 109 FPS while 5050 was at 101 FPS. In “Red Dead Redemption 2” and “Grand Theft Auto V,” the 4060 outperformed by 6 FPS and 5 FPS respectively.

Indeed, the RTX 5050 either matched or outperformed the 4060 in “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” and “Cyberpunk 2077.” What is important to note, however, is that the 5050 is an overpriced, newer card that consumes more power. In terms of price, performance, and power consumption, the RTX 5050 on paper is inferior to 4060.

Upgrade to the RTX 5050 for latest features

Although the RTX 5050 is underpowered when compared to the RTX 4060, it is equipped with features that make it a compelling upgrade. Improve the RTX 5050’s 5th gen Tensor Cores for AI processing, giving 421 AI Trillions of operations per second (TOPS) versus the 4060’s 242 AI TOPS. This does not matter much for a NVIDIA 4060 high-end GPU used for gaming, but it is very helpful for creators using software like Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, and Blender.

Equally exciting is the new DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation. When combining these features, they can boost gaming performance tremendously by improving frame rates and overall stability. AI upscaling and frame generation can be a bit suspect when it comes to image quality. However, in the case of the RTX 5050, a jump in FPS is a guaranteed boon that makes up for any degradation in quality.

If the above does not grab you, then most likely you are perfectly happy with your RTX 4060. That said, the RTX 5050 is a compelling upgrade if users can accept a performance downgrade with the newest features.