MSI GeForce RTX 3050 GAMING X Video Card Review

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Overclocking MSI GeForce RTX 3050 GAMING X

Default

Before we find the highest stable overclock, we need to find out what the default GPU clock speed of the video card is first.  With both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs today, the GPU frequency is dynamic.  NVIDIA has GPU Boost, and AMD has its Game Clock and Boost Clock quoted frequencies.  Typically, GPUs today can exceed the “Boost Clock” dynamically.  We need to find out what it actually runs at, so we can compare the benefit of overclocking. 

To do this we will record the GPU clock frequency over time while playing a game.  We use Cyberpunk 2077 for this with a very long manual run-through at “Ultra” settings.  We also record GPU-Z sensor data to look at GPU temperature, Voltage, and Power.

MSI GeForce RTX 3050 GAMING X Video Card Review Default GPU Frequency Graph

The MSI GeForce RTX 3050 GAMING X has a factory overclock of 1845MHz set by MSI, this is represented by the green line on the graph.  Due to GPU Boost, the frequency is running well above that while gaming.  It seems to be running between 1965MHz-1985MHz while gaming.  That is about a 120MHz+ GPU Boost.

Overclocked

To overclock the MSI GeForce RTX 3050 GAMING X we are using the manufacturer-provided overclocking software.  In this case, it is MSI Afterburner.  This is our highest stable overclock shown below.

MSI GeForce RTX 3050 GAMING X Video Card Review MSI Afterburner Overclock Screenshot

In MSI Afterburner we can increase the Power Limit on the MSI GeForce RTX 3050 GAMING X by 7% from 100 to 107. We also maxed out the fan speed and managed to push the Core Clock up +170 in Afterburner. We could not adjust Core Voltage, but that wasn’t the limit of the card. We also managed to push the memory up +1200 which set the memory at 2050MHz (16.4GHz) versus 1750MHz (14GHz) default. At 16.4GHz the memory bandwidth increased to 262GB/s from the default of 224GB/s.

MSI GeForce RTX 3050 GAMING X Video Card Review Overclocked GPU Frequency Graph

With the Core Clock set at +170 it results in the overclock shown above. The GPU clock speed is now running between 2125MHz-2165MHz, and averages closer to around 2145-2150MHz. We are exceeding the 2100MHz mark quite well with this GPU. That is about a ~180MHz (within that range) over an overclock, or about a 9% GPU clock speed improvement. Therefore the final overclock is around 2145-2150MHz/16.4GHz.

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Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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