We’re just testing with available performance boosting settings in these games that people with these GPUs would likely use. Just before we get to the all important price differences, in 3DMark we can see that the 3050 shown in red was ahead of the 1650 shown in purple in the graphics related tests. The CPU tests were scoring closer together, as expected given both laptops have the same i5-11400H.

SPECviewperf tests out various professional 3D workloads, and again the 3050 in red was always ahead, though the amount varies depending on the specific test. V-Ray had a massive 98% higher score in the CUDA test with the 3050, which kind of makes sense when you consider that the 3050 has double the CUDA core count compared to the 1650. The 1650 can’t run the ray tracing test either.

Speaking of ray tracing, we didn’t bother testing that on the RTX 3050 because it just doesn’t offer a great experience there in my opinion. But at least it can technically run RT workloads while the GTX 1650 cannot. The way I see it, RT is just meant to be icing on the cake. If you’re already struggling to run games at higher settings, I don’t think it makes sense to try and trace those rays. Turning ray tracing on but having to step down to low settings seems a bit pointless to me.

Pricing is kind of weird, because the GTX 1650 first launched in 2019, so to actually buy it right now brand new is kind of a rip off at around $675 USD, I guess because they sell less of them now, though there’s also a refurbished one with a slightly older 10th gen CPU for $550. I say the brand new one is a rip off because you can get the same 3050 GF63 I’ve tested for $680 on Newegg through Ant Online. Actually I checked their site directly and it’s even cheaper there, I guess because Newegg isn’t taking a cut, just $620, so cheaper compared to a brand new 1650 laptop. Even other options like Acer’s Nitro 5 which has typically been the cheapest 1650 machine is still $630.

In terms of cost per frame, the 3050 is clearly offering the best value. Even in the cases where it costs more compared to say a cheaper refurbished 1650 machine, the extra performance from the 3050 is still enough to give it the win. This doesn’t even include the gains we just saw with DLSS either, because further boosting some games with this feature would result in higher FPS, which means more frames per dollar and therefore even better value for the 3050.

3050 laptops might have been more expensive when they first came out earlier this year, but right now today, the 1650 just doesn’t seem worth it comparatively. This is even considering the fact that both my 1650 and 3050 have the same 40 watt power limit. Don’t forget that some laptops can max the 3050 out at 80 watts while some 1650 laptops only go up to 50 watts. So with other laptops like those, the 3050 could potentially be even further ahead than what we’re seen here.

Basically unless you can get a refurbished, second hand, or otherwise great deal on a 1650 gaming laptop, a new 3050 laptop just seems to be cheaper while also performing much better in games, as we’ve just seen. So then is it worth spending more money to go from the 3050 to 3050 Ti? Check out this video next where I’ve compared the 3050 and 3050 Ti, I’ll see you over in that video next!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enThere’s almost no reason why you should buy Nvidia’s older  GTX 1650 compared to the newer RTX 3050 today.We’ve tested 15 games to show you the differences before you spend  your hard earned money on a gaming laptop with either of these GPUs!But first, you can get great deals on both laptop and desktop PCs with  the Intel Gamer Days sale at HP, who have sponsored this part of the video.Prices have already been reduced, but you can save even more with these coupon codes.With Intel’s Core i7-12700K processor, HP’s Omen 45L gaming desktop is  ready to run whatever you throw at it, with more than a $500 discount!If you’re after more portability, HP’s Victus gaming laptop starts at $750  with Intel’s Core i5-12500H, but both can be customized and upgraded with the  sponsored link below the video, so check that out for these limited time sales!Back to our comparison.These are the differences in specs between the two laptop GPUs.  The 3050 has double the CUDA cores compared to the original 1650 that launched in 2019,  but Nvidia quietly refreshed the 1650 in 2020 with fewer CUDA cores,  and it’s that newer but worse 1650 that’s in my laptop. Considering that worse 1650 is newer,  it’s more likely what we’re actually going to see in current 1650 laptops on the market.Both GPUs both have 4 gigs of GDDR6 memory with the same memory bus,  though the 3050’s memory is faster with more bandwidth. Clock speeds will depend  on the power limit, but my 1650 goes a bit higher than the 3050, as you’ll see soon.To make this testing as fair as possible, I’ve bought two MSI GF63 gaming laptops with the same  Intel Core i5-11400H CPU. Literally the only difference between these two laptops is the GPU,  so we’re in for a perfect apples to apples comparison!The exact same physical kit of memory was used in both machines too.Neither of these laptops have a MUX switch, as that’s a feature that’s generally found on  more premium higher more expensive laptops. And as this is typically going to be the case  for both 1650 and 3050 gaming laptops, both of them have been tested with the laptop’s screen,  so optimus enabled. You could absolutely boost FPS even higher by connecting an external screen to  either of these laptops and bypassing optimus, but I wanted to show what you would actually  expect if you were to buy either of these laptops and just use them normally as a regular laptop.Now MSI’s GF63 runs both of these GPUs with a 40 watt power limit,  which is perfect for our fair comparison, but according to Nvidia’s spec sheet,  the 1650 can run between 35 and 50 watts, while the 3050 has a larger range of 35 to 80 watts.Basically this means that some 3050 laptops out there will be able to run the GPU at double the  wattage of what this one is capable of, and that will result in higher FPS. Though more  power does also mean higher temperatures, it’s a tradeoff. My point is, say you were  comparing a maxed out 1650 running at 50 watts with a maxed out 3050 running at 80 watts,  then the performance gap would be even bigger than what I’m showing in this fair comparison.With our 40 watt GPUs, the 3050 was running around 8 degrees Celsius warmer compared to the  1650 in a game. Not that much of a difference, and honestly these temps are far from being a problem.Despite running warmer, the 3050 wasn’t quite reaching as high GPU clock speeds  while running this test, granted the difference is very small. There’s more  to life than clock speeds though, don’t forget the 3050 has more CUDA cores.More cuda cores require more power to run, so it’s not too surprising to see that the 3050  laptop was drawing 19% more power at the wall. We’ll get to the game FPS results very soon,  but in this specific game, the 3050 was also running with a 19%  higher average FPS, so right in line with the power draw increase.Battery life was a bit different, with the 3050 lasting longer in a game compared to the 1650.  The difference was surprisingly big considering both laptops have the same sized battery,  and both were tested with Nvidia’s default 30 FPS frame cap.Both laptops have 8 lanes of PCIe Gen 4 connectivity between the CPU  and GPU, so no differences in PCIe bandwidth here.Alright with that out of the way, let’s get into the game benchmarks. We’ve compared 15  different games, and if the game supports DLSS or FSR then we’ve used it. And this  is simply because these are objectively great features that give a nice FPS boost,  which is definitely welcome with lower end GPUs.Now DLSS only works with Nvidia’s RTX series GPUs, which means the 3050. The GTX 1650  cannot use DLSS though. AMD’s FSR doesn’t really care though, it works just fine on the GTX 1650  and just fine on the RTX 3050. But as the 3050 can also use DLSS, it gets the best of both worlds.It’s important to note that we will see FPS differences between DLSS and FSR in games  that support both. But we’re not comparing the visual quality differences between the  two here. From the comparisons that I’ve seen so far from channels like Hardware Unboxed,  generally speaking it seems like DLSS has a bit of an edge over FSR.  But it does depend on the game and it can be quite close. I’ll leave some links to their  quality comparisons in the description below the video that you can check out after this one.Alright, let’s get into those game benchmarks!Starting out with Apex Legends, I’ve got the GTX 1650 underneath the RTX 3050,  and in this game the 3050 was reaching a 37% higher average FPS. This was one of  the bigger differences out of the 15 games tested,  but the 1650 was still able to run at around the magic 60 FPS sweet spot with medium settings.Call of Duty Warzone was reaching a 26% higher average FPS with the RTX 3050, but this game  also has DLSS support. We’ve tested with DLSS set to quality mode, because this is what both  Nvidia and Hardware Unboxed have recommended to me for most games at 1080p. With DLSS on,  the 3050 is reaching a 61% higher average FPS compared to the 1650, quite a big boost.Fortnite also has DLSS, though it wasn’t giving us quite as big of a boost compared to the last game.  You could of course run with a lower DLSS quality level to further boost performance though,  but at the expense of lower visual quality, and I didn’t want to lower it too much here.  The 3050 was reaching a 26% higher average FPS compared to the 1650 under normal circumstances,  but if we turn on DLSS for the 3050 then it’s instead got a 37% lead over the 1650.God of War is a game that has both AMD’s FSR and Nvidia’s DLSS,  so we’ve tested both. We haven’t bothered testing without these features, because let’s be real,  if you’ve got either a GTX 1650 or RTX 3050 laptop you’re going to want to use these great tools to  get a better experience. With FSR enabled on both, the 3050 was 31% faster than the 1650,  but the 3050 was performing about the same with either DLSS or FSR turned on. Just because the  FPS is about the same doesn’t mean both look the same in terms of visual quality though.That wasn’t always the case though. Take Cyberpunk 2077 for example, both the 1650  and 3050 were basically performing the same in this test with FSR enabled at a little over 50  FPS with medium settings. DLSS enabled on the 3050 was able to give it a little further boost  compared to using FSR though, putting the 3050 with DLSS on 8% ahead of the 1650 with FSR on.Dying Light 2 is our third game that supports both FSR and DLSS.  With both laptops running with FSR enabled, the 3050 was 44% ahead of the 1650,  but with DLSS turned on for the 3050 it had a smaller lead at 29%. Don’t get me wrong,  that’s still a decent gain, but in this test we found that FSR was performing better on the 3050,  though of course that doesn’t mean that it necessarily looks better compared to DLSS.Microsoft Flight Simulator had the second biggest win for the RTX 3050 out of all  games tested. Even the dips in performance, as measured by the 1% low, were ahead of the  average FPS coming out of the 1650. The 3050 was reaching a 37% higher average frame rate here.Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a game I’m currently playing through for a second time,  and while it doesn’t need a super high frame rate to enjoy, the 3050 was still  able to offer a 36% higher average frame rate, a decent difference.The difference in Forza Horizon 5 on the other hand was one of the smaller ones  out of all 15 games tested, with the 3050 just 12% ahead of the 1650, or in this case  about 8 FPS. Nothing major here, and the 1650 was still running the game above 60  FPS with high settings, so it’s not as if it’s unplayable or anything.Red Dead Redemption 2 has DLSS support, but no FSR, so the 3050 is able to get a decent speed  boost simply by turning on this one setting. The 3050 was already 23% ahead of the 1650 without  DLSS, which was 10 FPS or so, but then with DLSS on the 3050 ends up with a 40% lead over the 1650.Far Cry 6 on the other hand has FSR support but no DLSS, so both laptops are able to get  a performance boost with this enabled. With FSR on the dips in performance shown by the 1% lows  were basically the same, and although the 1650 was still running above 60 FPS at high settings,  the 3050 was still about 14% ahead, or around 10 FPS.Watch Dogs Legion has DLSS support but not FSR, so there’s no boosting the 1650 at all  here. The 3050 was reaching a 23% higher average frame rate compared to the 1650 without DLSS,  but when DLSS kicks in the 3050 ends up 57% ahead of the 1650.Control sees massive gains with DLSS enabled. We’re talking about a 106%  boost to average FPS with the 3050 and DLSS on compared to the 1650, the biggest difference out  of all games tested. Without DLSS though, the 3050 was still about 19% faster than the 1650.Shadow of the Tomb Raider has DLSS too. The gains aren’t quite as large here,  but are still quite nice. The 3050 is still 58% ahead of the 1650 with DLSS on,  but even without it, we’re looking at a 30% or 15 FPS boost with the 3050.Last game before we get into the good stuff. Rainbow Six Siege had an above average gain  with the 3050, reaching a 33% higher average frame rate compared to the 1650.On average over all 15 games tested at 1080p, the RTX 3050 was reaching a 26%  higher average frame rate when compared against the GTX 1650. The difference can  really vary quite a bit depending on the specific game though, as shown here.  Dying Light 2 at the top of the graph for example was nearly 44% faster on the 3050,  while Cyberpunk 2077 down the bottom had basically no real difference.Now here’s how much of a gain being able to use DLSS with the 3050 gets us.  We’ve only got 9 games here now as only 9 of the games tested had DLSS support. The red  bars show the performance gain with DLSS on with the 3050 compared to whatever the 1650  was tested with. Take god of war for example, the 1650 was still tested with FSR on so using  DLSS wasn’t that much different. Dying Light 2 on the other hand was running better with FSR,  which is why the DLSS score in red is lower there. On average out of these 9 games, DLSS  was allowing the 3050 to reach nearly 48% higher average FPS compared to the 1650. Without DLSS,  the 3050 was 25% faster in these same 9 games, so this is definitely an argument  in favor of the 3050 as DLSS was usually, but not always, performing better than FSR.You could definitely argue that as we’re mixing FSR and DLSS results  then we should also be comparing the quality difference between them,  and that’s fair but not the goal of this video. We’re just testing with available  performance boosting settings in these games that people with these GPUs would likely use.Just before we get to the all important price differences, in 3DMark we can see that the 3050  shown in red was ahead of the 1650 shown in purple in the graphics related tests. The CPU  tests were scoring closer together, as expected given both laptops have the same i5-11400H.SPECviewperf tests out various professional 3D workloads,  and again the 3050 in red was always ahead, though the amount varies depending on the specific test.V-Ray had a massive 98% higher score in the CUDA test with the 3050,  which kind of makes sense when you consider that the 3050 has double the  CUDA core count compared to the 1650. The 1650 can’t run the ray tracing test either.Speaking of ray tracing, we didn’t bother testing that on the RTX  3050 because it just doesn’t offer a great experience there in my opinion.  But at least it can technically run RT workloads while the GTX 1650 cannot.The way I see it, RT is just meant to be icing on the cake. If you’re already struggling to  run games at higher settings, I don’t think it makes sense to try and trace those rays.  Turning ray tracing on but having to step down to low settings seems a bit pointless to me.Pricing is kind of weird, because the GTX 1650 first launched in 2019,  so to actually buy it right now brand new is kind of a rip off at around $675 USD,  I guess because they sell less of them now, though there’s also a refurbished one with a  slightly older 10th gen CPU for $550. I say the brand new one is a rip off because you can get  the same 3050 GF63 I’ve tested for $680 on Newegg through Ant Online. Actually I checked their site  directly and it’s even cheaper there I guess because Newegg isn’t taking a cut, just $620,  so cheaper compared to a brand new 1650 laptop. Even other options like Acer’s  Nitro 5 which has typically been the cheapest 1650 machine is still $630.In terms of cost per frame, the 3050 is clearly offering the best value. Even in the cases  where it costs more compared to say a cheaper refurbished 1650 machine, the extra performance  from the 3050 is still enough to give it the win. This doesn’t even include the gains we just saw  with DLSS either, because further boosting some games with this feature would result in  higher FPS, which means more frames per dollar and therefore even better value for the 3050.3050 laptops might have been more expensive when they first came out earlier this year,  but right now today, the 1650 just doesn’t seem worth it comparatively.This is even considering the fact that both my 1650 and 3050 have the same 40 watt power  limit. Don’t forget that some laptops can max the 3050 out at 80 watts while some  1650 laptops only go up to 50 watts. So with other laptops like those,  the 3050 could potentially be even further ahead than what we’re seen here.Basically unless you can get a refurbished, second hand,  or otherwise great deal on a 1650 gaming laptop, a new 3050 laptop just seems to  be cheaper while also performing much better in games, as we’ve just seen.So then is it worth spending more money to go from the 3050 to 3050 Ti? Check out this video  next where I’ve compared the 3050 and 3050 Ti, I’ll see you over in that video next!\n"