The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card has been around for almost 2 years now. The standard GTX 1050 and the GTX 1050 Ti both came around November 2016. The former has a memory capacity of 2 GB while the latter has 4 GB. The GTX 1050 by Nvidia has been regarded as a very capable budget card, however, just recently a rumor has surfaced whereby Nvidia might be looking to launch a new version of the GTX 1050, the Geforce GTX 1050 3GB.
While the GTX 1050 is a good budget card, the 2 GB video RAM, however, can prove to be insufficient for most modern games. The GTX 1050 Ti takes care of this problem by providing a solid 4 gigs of Vram. The problem, however, is that there is a price gap of about 100 to 150 USD between the two versions depending on the manufacturer.
Will The Upgraded GTX 1050 3GB Be Faster Than The Original GTX 1050?
The rumor emerged on the Chinese website Expreview where it was stated that Nvidia is working on a 3 GB version of GTX 1050. The GTX 1050 3GB is rumored to have a memory bandwidth of 96-bits which is lower than the 128-bit memory bandwidth of GTX 1050 2 GB and the GTX 1050 Ti. This move conjures up doubts as to how effective the increased 1 gig of memory will be when the memory bandwidth is not maintained at 128-bit.
Assuming that Nvidia keeps the same memory bandwidth as the previous 2 versions or maybe even increase the other specs such as the memory clock and the core clock, it could be argued that the GTX 1050 3GB will be faster in performance than the original GTX 1050 2 GB. However, if the memory bandwidth is decreased, the additional 1 gig of Vram may not amount to much.
GTX 1050 3GB Pricing and Release Date
The price for the GTX 1050 3GB is expected to be around 200 USD. However, not much is known about the release date yet.
Let us know what you think about the upcoming 3 GB version of GTX 1050 down in the comments.