GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs in RTX 3050? Recycling will reach new heights in NVIDIA's mobile lineup!

When the NVIDIA GeForce 560.70 WHQL graphics driver arrived on July 17, 2024, not everyone noticed one piece of information: the addition of a new supported graphics card, theNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 A Laptop GPU“, with PCI ID 2822. It must be said that the launch of another mobile version of the RTX 3050 is not enough to excite the masses… However, that “A” at the end is enough to raise eyebrows and for good reason: it could mean the use of a GPU from this generation. Ada Lovelaceand hence RTX 40, in a card sealed after RTX 30!

Information is already starting to spread. When it appears on the PCI ID site (Discovered by our colleagues from VideoCardz) with the following complete phrase:AD106M [GeForce RTX 3050 A Laptop GPU]“. GeForce RTX 3050 A mobile device with GPU M106 ? Really? It's really surprising not only because it would confirm the use of the Ada Lovelace GPU in a consumer RTX 30 card, but also because the AD106 is the GPU we find in the desktop RTX 4060 Ti or even in the mobile RTX 4070, we are far from the RTX 3050 with asthmatic performance in the game! However, a message that tends to confirm it was quickly posted on the PCI ID website:

If confirmed, it would be clear that the AD106 would be heavily castrated before being integrated into this GeForce RTX 3050 A laptop, no doubt for the purposes of recycling the partially defective chips. Our colleagues from Notebookcheck asked NVIDIA about this. We were able to gather some information. The mobile RTX 3050 A will feature the Ada Lovelace generation GPU, with 1792 CUDA Cores activated. It will be accompanied by 4GB of GDDR6 on a 64-bit bus, with a TDP of 35 to 50W. However, they were unable to get confirmation that the AD106 GPU will be used specifically. If all of this is confirmed, it would result in the following mobile GeForce RTX 3050 range:

There doesn't seem to be much to hope for in-game performance from the newcomer because even if the Ada Lovelace architecture is more efficient than the Ampere architecture with an equivalent number of shader units, here we're down to 1792 CUDA cores that are too small to sell dreams. Above all, it's the presence of a 64-bit bus that makes you jump and will be synonymous, again if confirmed, with ridiculously low memory bandwidth that will significantly reduce in-game performance, no matter what.

With the Ada Lovelace mobile RTX 40 generation, NVIDIA has for the first time signed a fully functional gaming range, even the mobile RTX 4050 behaves well in games, with performance similar to the RTX 3060 that was a “must-have” from the previous generation. For those who wanted to play in good conditions, without breaking the bank. So it seems that NVIDIA has no intention of tarnishing that by recycling its Ada Lovelace GPUs under the name of its old range!