RTX 3050 Crypto Mining Performance Is TERRIBLE--Great News For Gamers?

The RTX 3050's crypto mining performance is looking a little sub-par, according to early Ethereum mining tests.

An early leaked ETH mining benchmark from China allegedly reveals that the new NVIDIA RTX 3050 is not a good bet for cryptocurrency mining. TechRadar reports that the card can only manage a paltry 13.66 MH/s at 57W of power, with the maximum hash rate at a mere 20 MH/s.

The benchmark was leaked by Twitter user wxnod:

Furthermore, it is also stated that the card will likely ship with a Light Hash Rate (LHR) feature to further deter the miners from snapping up the card's stocks.

With a hash rate this low, using a 3050 to mine ETH at its current price won't be cost-effective. It will take a miner around well over a year (500 days, to be exact) just to recoup the card's original cost, considering its $249 MSRP.

Things could be even worse if the card starts retailing at a much higher price, say $350 in the US. That means you'll need to mine for two years just to recoup the card's original cost, according to VideoCardz.

Considering how the next card up in the tier (the 3060) can net you almost double the hashrate (24 MH/s), all without overclocking, this makes the 3050 a very unappealing card for cryptocurrency mining.

NVIDIA officially announced the 3050 during CES 2022, making it the first 50-class GPU to offer ray tracing capabilities, as per PCGamesN. The card is also touted to support DLSS for better performance with little to no visual quality loss.

For now, the only concern with the 3050 is its overall supply. Team Green is scheduled to launch it on January 27th, barring any further delays.

Weak RTX 3050 Crypto Mining Performance: Enough To Deter Miners And Keep Costs Down?

There's not a lot of confidence about NVIDIA's methods of trying to deter cryptocurrency miners from buying up every RTX card they could find. They've been doing so since the RTX 30 series was released late last year, to no avail.

Perhaps the biggest failure they had was the crypto mining lock and the "Lite Hash Rate" (LHR) versions of mid-range to high-end 30-series cards. Most notably, NVIDIA themselves circumvented the mining limiter on the 3060 (via Tom's Hardware), and the LHR versions didn't really deter the miners from buying.

If these situations are any indication, the RTX 3050's crypto mining performance won't be enough to keep miners away.

Furthermore, there's still the problem regarding the ongoing chip shortage. Last year, Team Green basically assured that gamers would get graphics cards this year as supply lines "looked lean." But since the shortage is still ongoing, the scalper issue remains: low supply means higher prices. That's how the market is as of this moment.

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Written by RJ Pierce