AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile Comparison

The data shows a total mismatch. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile is a low-power laptop part, while the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE is a high-end desktop card. The benchmark results reflect this chasm, with the AMD card winning every single head-to-head comparison by a massive margin. One card is at the end of its life, the other is a current flagship; their performance envelopes do not overlap.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The most lopsided result appears in the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 test. The AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE scores 4814 points, while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile manages only 421 points. This translates to a delta of -91.3% for the NVIDIA part, meaning the AMD card is roughly 11 times faster in this synthetic DirectX 12 workload. In absolute terms, the RX 7900 GRE delivers over 4,000 additional points, a gap that signifies an entirely different class of rasterization performance. This is not a close contest; it is a generational and tier-based annihilation.

The Geekbench OpenCL test shows a similar, though slightly less extreme, story. The RX 7900 GRE posts a score of 175,758, dwarfing the RTX 3050 Mobile's 50,038. The deltaPct here is -71.5%, indicating the AMD card is about 3.5 times faster in this compute-oriented benchmark. This metric is particularly important for users who might use their GPU for tasks beyond gaming, such as rendering or machine learning workloads. The sheer compute throughput of the RX 7900 GRE, driven by its 45.98 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, leaves the 5.501 TFLOPS of the RTX 3050 Mobile in the dust.

The narrowest margin of victory for the AMD card is in the Geekbench Vulkan test. Here, the RX 7900 GRE scores 99,850, while the RTX 3050 Mobile scores 49,051, a delta of -50.9%. While this is still a decisive win for the AMD card, the halved performance gap compared to OpenCL suggests that the NVIDIA driver or architecture handles Vulkan's low-level API relatively more efficiently. Even so, the RX 7900 GRE is fundamentally twice as fast. This is the only benchmark where the RTX 3050 Mobile manages to get within striking distance of being half as fast, which is a stark indicator of its disadvantage.

Where Each One Wins

The data is unambiguous: the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE wins every category. There are zero benchmark wins for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile. The RX 7900 GRE wins in raw rasterization (3DMark Steel Nomad), general compute (OpenCL), and modern graphics APIs (Vulkan). For any use case that involves gaming at high resolutions, content creation, or heavy compute tasks, the RX 7900 GRE is the only viable option based on this data.

The only possible "win" for the RTX 3050 Mobile is outside of raw performance. Its 45 W TDP and "IGP" slot width indicate it is designed for thin-and-light laptops. The RX 7900 GRE, with a 260 W TDP and a dual-slot design requiring two 8-pin power connectors, is a desktop-only component. Therefore, the RTX 3050 Mobile is the only choice for a portable system, but that is a form-factor distinction, not a performance one. In every measurable performance metric, the AMD card is the victor.

FAQ

Q: How much faster is the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE in the 3DMark Steel Nomad test?

A: The RX 7900 GRE scores 4814, while the RTX 3050 Mobile scores 421. This gives the AMD card a 91.3% lead, making it over ten times faster in this specific DirectX 12 benchmark.

Q: Is the NVIDIA card competitive in any modern graphics API?

A: The closest result is in the Geekbench Vulkan test. The RTX 3050 Mobile scores 49,051, which is half of the RX 7900 GRE's 99,850, resulting in a 50.9% performance deficit. It is still a decisive loss for the NVIDIA card.

Q: Which GPU has a higher average benchmark score?

A: The RTX 3050 Mobile has a higher average benchmark score of 33,170 compared to the RX 7900 GRE's 32,456. This is an anomaly, as the RX 7900 GRE wins all head-to-head tests; the average score is likely skewed by the RTX 3050 Mobile having fewer, but higher-scoring, benchmark entries.

Q: What is the performance difference in compute workloads?

A: In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the RX 7900 GRE scores 175,758 versus the RTX 3050 Mobile's 50,038. This represents a 71.5% advantage for the AMD card, indicating significantly higher compute throughput.

Q: How do their percentiles compare against all GPUs?

A: The RTX 3050 Mobile is in the 78th percentile of all GPUs, while the RX 7900 GRE is in the 77th percentile. Despite the massive performance gap, their percentile rankings are nearly identical, suggesting the RTX 3050 Mobile is well-regarded among its low-power peers, whereas the RX 7900 GRE faces stiffer competition at the high end.

Q: Which card is currently in production?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE is marked as "Active" in production, while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile is listed as "End-of-life."

Specification Differences

The specification sheets tell a story of two completely different product tiers. The most critical difference is memory: the RTX 3050 Mobile has 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus, yielding 192.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The RX 7900 GRE offers 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, providing 576.0 GB/s—three times the bandwidth. This alone determines that the RX 7900 GRE is for high-resolution textures and modern game requirements, while the RTX 3050 Mobile is suited for e-sports and older titles.

The compute resources are equally mismatched. The RTX 3050 Mobile has 2048 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. The RX 7900 GRE has 5120 shading units, 320 TMUs, and 160 ROPs. This results in a pixel rate of 359.2 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 718.4 GTexel/s for the AMD card, compared to 42.98 GPixel/s and 85.95 GTexel/s for the NVIDIA part. The FP32 compute is 45.98 TFLOPS for AMD versus 5.501 TFLOPS for NVIDIA.

The power requirements are also starkly different. The RTX 3050 Mobile has a 45 W TDP and uses no external power connectors. The RX 7900 GRE has a 260 W TDP, requires two 8-pin power connectors, and needs a 600 W suggested PSU. Physically, the RX 7900 GRE is a 276 mm long, dual-slot card, while the RTX 3050 Mobile is an IGP (integrated graphics package) meant for soldering onto motherboards. The bus interface differs as well: PCIe 4.0 x8 for NVIDIA versus PCIe 4.0 x16 for AMD.

Architecture Differences

These GPUs are built on fundamentally different architectures and process nodes. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile uses the GA107 chip on Samsung's 8 nm process, based on the Ampere architecture. It contains 8,700 million transistors on a 200 mm² die, resulting in a density of 43.5M transistors per mm². It includes 16 RT cores and 64 tensor cores, but lacks the raw compute density of its rival.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE uses the Navi 31 chip, codenamed "Plum Bonito," on TSMC's 5 nm process, based on the RDNA 3.0 architecture. This is a massive chip with 57,700 million transistors on a 529 mm² die, achieving a density of 109.1M transistors per mm²—more than double that of the NVIDIA chip. The AMD card has 80 RT cores and no dedicated tensor cores, relying on its massive FP32 and FP16 compute (91.96 TFLOPS FP16) for AI tasks instead. The process node advantage (5 nm vs 8 nm) is a key factor in the RX 7900 GRE's ability to deliver such high performance within a 260 W envelope, despite having over six times the transistor count.

The Verdict

The data makes the decision trivial. Choose the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE if you need any semblance of modern gaming or compute performance. It wins every benchmark by a margin that is not just a percentage point but a multiple. Its 16 GB of memory and 576.0 GB/s of bandwidth are essential for current and upcoming titles, and its 45.98 TFLOPS of compute power is in a different league. The launch MSRP is 549 USD, and it is an active product, meaning it is a future-proof investment for a desktop system.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile is a product for a specific, limited purpose: a low-power laptop. Its 45 W TDP is its only saving grace. If you are building a portable machine and have no other option, it will play games at low settings, but the benchmark results show it is 50-90% slower than the RX 7900 GRE in every test. It is end-of-life and offers no upgrade path. Based on this data, there is no performance-based reason to select the RTX 3050 Mobile for a desktop, and the RX 7900 GRE is the clear choice for anyone who values frame rates and compute throughput.