AMD's RX 9050 GPU comes up short in first review, but there's a good reason why it lags behind NVIDIA's RTX 5050 here

An initial review of AMD's new RX 9050 has popped up and the GPU doesn't fare that well in comparison to NVIDIA's RTX 5050, at least not at first glance - although there are issues with this evaluation as we'll see.

The RX 9050 has just arrived on the scene, and the 8GB graphics card has been tested by Japanese tech site Hermitage Akihabara (as flagged by VideoCardz).

Hermitage Akihabara put these AMD and NVIDIA GPUs through their paces in a head-to-head, comparing synthetic and real-world gaming benchmarks across a raft of titles.

There's a lot to unpick, but the upshot is that the RX 9050 was 18% off the pace of the RTX 5050 in synthetic tests, but it was a good deal slower with gaming benchmarks, with 30% less performance on offer from AMD. This excludes the Doom benchmarks that were clearly a bit all over the place, because at higher resolutions, the frame rate of the NVIDIA GPU cratered due to memory issues (with the frame generation being used).

And while this looks like a major stumble for AMD, in fact, you can't take some of these benchmarks at face value due to the use of the mentioned frame generation. The testers ran the RTX 5050 at 4x or 6x MFG in some cases, whereas that wasn't the case with the AMD GPU which used standard FSR - so this clearly isn't a level playing field.

Also, the worst losses for AMD in the synthetic benchmarks were ray tracing tests (as you might guess), but it's still not a great overall picture which is painted of the RX 9050. Especially considering that it retails for more than the RTX 5050 in the US (AMD has launched the new GPU at $279 compared to the $249 MSRP for the low-end NVIDIA rival).

Obviously we do need to wait for more benchmarks to be run and comparisons to be drawn, as we can't go off a single source anyway, especially given the way things have been skewed here with FG.

It's worth noting that where AMD does have a victory is with power usage, as the Radeon graphics card drew 10% less power idling (70W) and 16% less under load (182W), so that's a useful undercutting of the NVIDIA model.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Question #1

How did the RX 9050 compare to the RTX 5050 in synthetic benchmarks in the Hermitage Akihabara review?

Hermitage Akihabara found the RX 9050 was about 18% slower than the RTX 5050 in synthetic benchmarks. The review also noted the worst losses for AMD were in ray tracing tests, and that some comparisons were skewed because the RTX 5050 was run with 4x or 6x MFG while the RX 9050 used standard FSR.

Answered

Question #2

How much slower was the RX 9050 than the RTX 5050 in the gaming benchmarks reported?

In the gaming benchmarks reported, the RX 9050 delivered about 30% less performance than the RTX 5050. This figure excludes the Doom benchmarks, which were noted as unreliable due to frame generation and memory issues.

Answered

Question #3

Why are some Doom benchmarks in the review considered unreliable for comparing the two cards?

Click to reveal answer

Question #4

What caveats did the article suggest before drawing firm conclusions from this single RX 9050 review?

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As well as the 8GB incarnation of AMD's RX 9050, there is also a considerably watered down 4GB model, which is further hampered by its memory bus being cut in half. This variant is seemingly for OEM use only, and likely to be present in very cheap pre-built PCs.