Power and Temperature
To test the power and temperature we perform a manual run-through in Cyberpunk 2077 at “Ultra” settings for real-world in-game data. We use GPU-Z sensor data to record the results. We report on the GPU-Z sensor data for “Board Power” and “GPU Chip Power” when available for our Wattage data. For temperature data, we report the GPU (Edge Temp of the GPU) as well as Hot Spot (Junction Temperature) when available for our temperature data.
The EVGA GeForce RTX 3050 XC BLACK GAMING with the higher clocked 3050 XC SKU BIOS at 1845MHz pulls 131W board power and 100W GPU chip power. This is higher than the GeForce GTX 1650 of course, but it’s massively faster. It’s also higher than the Radeon RX 6500 XT GPU chip power draw by 25%, but of course much faster. Overclocking the video card increases the board power draw by 10% and the GPU chip power draw by 8%. You could say the Radeon RX 6500 XT is more efficient on power, but it is also a lot slower in performance, they are very far apart in performance. Considering the performance of the 3050 these power numbers are not out of line.
All of these video cards shown here are custom video cards with custom cooling, no reference designs. The EVGA GeForce RTX 3050 XC BLACK GAMING is again running at the higher clocked 3050 XC SKU at 1845MHz GPU Boost remember. It has a GPU temp of 61c and Hot Spot of 75c, which is only slightly warmer than the 6500 XT GPU temp. But the Hot Spot temperature is a lot better on the EVGA video card. With the video card overclocked at 100% fan speeds the GPU still remains cool at a decent temperature even highly overclocked. Temperature is not holding back the GPU at all, they are all good on temps for these small GPUs.