According to a report from Igor's Lab -- A second model of the RTX 3050 8GB could launch sometime soon, featuring a new die. This die may be the GA107, one of Nvidia's smallest die that predominantly power its mobile Ampere GPUs -- namely the RTX 3050 mobile series. The introduction of another variant would help to bolster Nvidia's RTX 3050 production, as the SKU could arrive under two separate dies. As always, take these results with a grain of salt since this information isn't fully concrete and is subject to change.
Current RTX 3050 8GB models use a highly cut-down GA106 die with 20 of its 30 SMs enabled, making a total core count of 2,560 CUDA cores. Additional specs include a 128-bit memory bus and a boost frequency of 1.78 GHz. Power consumption of the reference spec maxes out at 130W.
Spec differences between the GA106 and GA107 versions of Nvidia's RTX 3050 remain largely the same, except for GPU power consumption, strangely. According to Wallossek, the GA107 version will feature a reduced power rating of 115W instead of 130W for the reference spec. For vendor-specific models, we could see a drop from 150W to either 140W or 130W.
Wallossek claims that the GA106 and GA107 silicon have the same pinouts, allowing manufacturers to recycle the PCB for the former. The GA107 variant reportedly retains the exact specifications as the original except for the lower power consumption. With a stricter TDP limit, the performance may deteriorate. Nvidia's GA107 die mainly powers mobile GPUs, and we assume this GPU may not scale well at higher power limits. However, Nvidia's GA107 die is allegedly more power-efficient, so we'll have to wait to see how that pans out. A performance disparity between the two RTX 3050 models is possible, depending on how efficient the GA107 die is.
In fairness to Nvidia, it has pulled similar stunts before, particularly with its GTX 1650 models. The original GTX 1650 arrived with GDDR5 memory, but Nvidia refreshed that card later in its life with GDDR6 models, which improved its performance. We see here is no different, with Nvidia changing performance characteristics of some versions, despite all cards having the same name.
Curiously, further evidence points to Nvidia having planned a second model of the RTX 3050 all along. For example, Wallossek notes how the RTX 3050 8GB strangely has half of its 16 PCIe lanes disabled, despite the GA106 core fully supporting all 16 like on the RTX 3060 .
But, when looked at in the context of a GA107 SKU, this strange configuration makes a lot of sense. First, the GA107 core only has eight PCIe Gen 4 lanes physically installed onto the chip. It caters to gaming laptops where the additional power consumption and performance of 16 lanes is overkill.
For reference, Nvidia rarely cuts PCIe lanes for any of its 50-series cards, with the previous 10-series and 16-series of 50 and 50 Ti cards having the full fat 16 lanes available to them. Logically Nvidia would only change this for the RTX 3050 if it knew it would introduce a new GPU die that only supports eight lanes.
Thankfully, this change shouldn't affect the RTX 3050 as it does with AMD's RX 6500 XT and its x4 lane configuration. The RTX 3050 has double the amount of bandwidth with eight physical lanes and has double the amount of VRAM with 8GB, reducing its reliance on PCIe bandwidth substantially over the AMD card.
The RTX 3050's power draw is something to be concerned about if you are a potential buyer in the coming months. Thankfully, Igor says Nvidia will only resort to making (potentially slower) GA107 variants if GA106 supply is lacking. So there is a chance Nvidia will produce relatively few of these cards or none as long as the graphics card shortage continues to de-escalate.