Power and Temp
On this page, we are going to look at the power utilization and video card temperatures. We will utilize GPU-Z and HWiNFO64 and real-world gaming in Cyberpunk 2077 with a manual run-through at demanding settings; these results are based on real-world in-game testing. The temperature readings are relevant only to the make and model of the video card we are using for testing, which is the: ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 5050 SOLO, GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 OC Low Profile 8G, PNY GeForce RTX 3050 8G VERTO Dual Fan, and AMD Radeon RX 7600 reference.
Power
The default TDP of the GeForce RTX 5050 is 130W. In our board power testing, we are hitting 133W, so it is right on par with where it is expected. At this power level, it puts it on a similar power profile to the previous two generations GeForce RTX 3050. Since we know the GeForce RTX 5050 is much faster, at least 50% faster or more, we can see that it is producing a lot more performance per Watt, much better performance at the same power profile, which is great news.
The GeForce RTX 5050 uses about 9% more power than the GeForce RTX 4060, though, and the GeForce RTX 4060 was a lot of times just a bit faster. The GeForce RTX 5050, though, uses 24% less power than the Radeon RX 7600, and the RTX 5050 was much faster than it, proving it is much more efficient than the RX 7600. Looking solely at GPU chip power, the GeForce RTX 5050 actually does use a bit more power than the GeForce RTX 4060, but 22% less power than the GeForce RTX 3050.
Temperature
Remember, these are all custom manufacturer video cards, except for the AMD Radeon RX 7600. The ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 5050 SOLO was running the coolest, at just 66.6c GPU temp, it had the lowest GPU temperature, with the GeForce RTX 3050 slightly warmer, and the GeForce RTX 4060 warmer still. The Radeon RX 7600 ran the warmest. None of these temperatures are concerning; however, even on the small, compact, low-profile RTX 4060 and the small ZOTAC SOLO video card, temperatures were great.