AMD has launched a new graphics card, the RX 9050. This is an entry-level graphics card with a slim provision of cores and VRAM, more of a match for the 890M than the RX 9060. It’s even more entry-level than initial rumours suggested, and while you’d hope for a great price to match, we’re not getting our hopes up yet.
Take a look at the specifications below, right from AMD’s website, and you’ll get an idea of the card. It’s using the same Navi 44 GPU as the more capable entry-level and mid-range graphics cards, but it’s been trimmed down to within an inch of its life. At 1,024 cores, it is actually a match for the 890M GPU found in Strix Point mobile chips, though it does have the big benefit of a desktop power budget, even if only 92 watts; RDNA 4 architecture, and 32 MB of Infinity Cache.
Compared to previous rumours, which my colleague Jacob Fox called “quite strange” when we published a story about them in May, it’s a lot less capable than expected. Look to the TFLOPs for a more holistic view of what’s going on, and the RX 9050 is actually rated to half the performance of the RX 9060. Bear in mind, TFLOPs does not directly correlate to game performance, but it’s a general idea of what to expect.
It’s tough to judge a graphics card without knowing the price. ASRock is the only partner to announce availability for the RX 9050, launching its own RX 9050 Challenger 8 GB card. There’s no clear price for the card yet and it’s set to launch only in LATAM and Asia Pacific.