NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The recorded data contains a single common benchmark between these two cards, and the result is decisively one-sided. In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM scores 60,740 points, while the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 manages only 13,300 points. That is a 356.7% advantage for the RTX 3050 OEM, a margin that dwarfs almost any generational comparison in the database. The GTX 480 does not win a single head-to-head benchmark in the recorded data, giving the RTX 3050 OEM a 1 to 0 win tally.

Contextualizing that OpenCL result through each card's nearest rivals makes the gap even more striking. The RTX 3050 OEM's average benchmark score of 15,199 places it within 0.2% of the AMD Radeon RX 7600, within 0.5% of the AMD Radeon 680M, and within 0.6% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060. Those are modern or near-modern parts, and the RTX 3050 OEM trades blows with them at the margins. The GTX 480, by contrast, sits at an average score of 13,300, with its closest comparators being the AMD Radeon Pro 555X at 0.2% behind, the AMD FirePro M6100 at 0.4% behind, and the AMD Radeon RX 5500M at 0.4% behind. The GTX 480's rivals are mobile and low-power parts from an entirely different era of hardware.

The percentile rankings reinforce the verdict. The RTX 3050 OEM sits at the 57th percentile among all GPUs in the database, while the GTX 480 sits at the 53rd percentile. A four-percentile gap understates the actual performance delta, but it does confirm that the newer card occupies a higher standing in the overall distribution. When a single OpenCL run shows a 356.7% difference, the average scores and percentile positions merely corroborate what the head-to-head already proves: the RTX 3050 OEM is in a different performance class entirely.

FAQ

Q: Which card has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM, with an average benchmark score of 15,199, compared to 13,300 for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480.

Q: How much faster is the RTX 3050 OEM in the only benchmark both cards share?

A: In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 3050 OEM scores 60,740 versus 13,300 for the GTX 480, a 356.7% difference.

Q: Does the GTX 480 outperform the RTX 3050 OEM in any recorded benchmark?

A: No. The head-to-head record shows zero wins for the GTX 480 and one win for the RTX 3050 OEM.

Q: What kind of memory does each card use?

A: The RTX 3050 OEM uses 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus with 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GTX 480 uses 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory on a 384-bit bus with 177.4 GB/s of bandwidth.

Q: Which card supports ray tracing and tensor cores?

A: Only the RTX 3050 OEM. It has 18 ray tracing cores and 72 tensor cores. The GTX 480 has neither.

Q: How do the power requirements differ?

A: The RTX 3050 OEM has a 130 W TDP and a suggested PSU of 300 W, using a single 8-pin connector. The GTX 480 has a 250 W TDP and a suggested PSU of 600 W, using a 6-pin plus an 8-pin connector.

Architecture Differences

The two cards belong to completely separate architectural lineages. The RTX 3050 OEM is built on the Ampere architecture, using the GA106 chip, manufactured on an 8 nm process at Samsung. The GTX 480 uses the Fermi architecture with the GF100 chip, fabricated on a 40 nm process at TSMC. The process gap alone explains a great deal: 8 nm versus 40 nm is a massive generational leap in transistor density and efficiency.

Transistor counts tell the story of architectural complexity. The GA106 chip packs 12,000 million transistors on a 276 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 43.5 million per square millimeter. The GF100 die is physically larger at 529 mm², but it contains only 3,100 million transistors, for a density of 5.9 million per square millimeter. The RTX 3050 OEM crams nearly four times as many transistors into roughly half the silicon area. That density advantage is what enables the newer card to deliver far higher compute throughput while consuming half the power.

The compute pipelines are fundamentally different in scale. The RTX 3050 OEM has 2,304 shading units, 72 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs, along with 18 ray tracing cores and 72 tensor cores. The GTX 480 has 480 shading units, 60 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, with no ray tracing or tensor hardware at all. The RTX 3050 OEM's shading unit count is nearly five times higher, which directly drives its FP32 throughput of 8.087 TFLOPS versus 1,345.0 GFLOPS for the GTX 480. The RTX 3050 OEM also supports FP16 at a 1:1 ratio, a feature the GTX 480 lacks entirely.

Feature support diverges sharply. The RTX 3050 OEM supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), Vulkan 1.4, and OpenGL 4.6. The GTX 480 supports DirectX 12 (11_0) and OpenGL 4.6, but has no Vulkan support listed. The API gap matters for modern games and compute workloads that lean on newer feature sets. The RTX 3050 OEM also brings hardware-accelerated ray tracing and tensor-based AI features, neither of which exist in the Fermi architecture. The GTX 480's display outputs are limited to 2x DVI and 1x mini-HDMI 1.3a, while the RTX 3050 OEM offers 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a. The bus interface also advances from PCIe 2.0 x16 on the GTX 480 to PCIe 4.0 x8 on the RTX 3050 OEM.

Specification Differences

The memory subsystems differ substantially in capacity, type, and bandwidth. The RTX 3050 OEM has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory running at 1750 MHz with 14 Gbps effective speed, delivering 224.0 GB/s across a 128-bit bus. The GTX 480 has 1536 MB of GDDR5 at 924 MHz with 3.7 Gbps effective speed, delivering 177.4 GB/s across a wider 384-bit bus. The newer card uses a narrower bus but compensates with faster memory technology and over five times the capacity.

Clock behavior also differs. The RTX 3050 OEM has a base clock of 1515 MHz and a boost clock of 1755 MHz. The GTX 480 has no base or boost clock listed, only a memory clock. The RTX 3050 OEM's clock rates are more than double what the Fermi card could reasonably achieve, and this contributes directly to its pixel rate of 56.16 GPixel/s and texture rate of 126.4 GTexel/s, versus 21.03 GPixel/s and 42.06 GTexel/s for the GTX 480.

Power and physical specifications show the efficiency leap. The RTX 3050 OEM draws a 130 W TDP with a 300 W suggested PSU and a single 8-pin connector. The GTX 480 draws 250 W with a 600 W suggested PSU and requires both a 6-pin and an 8-pin connector. Despite the lower power draw, the RTX 3050 OEM is shorter at 242 mm (9.5 inches) versus 267 mm (10.5 inches) for the GTX 480. Both cards are dual-slot designs. The RTX 3050 OEM's release date is listed as 2022-01-03, while the GTX 480 launched on 2010-03-25. The GTX 480 has a launch MSRP of 499 USD; the RTX 3050 OEM has no recorded launch MSRP.

The Verdict

The data points to one conclusion: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM is the superior card in nearly every measurable way. It wins the only shared benchmark by 356.7%, holds a higher average benchmark score of 15,199 versus 13,300, and sits at a higher percentile ranking of 57 versus 53. Its architecture is newer, its process node is dramatically smaller, its memory capacity is over five times larger, and its power draw is nearly half that of the GTX 480. The GTX 480's sole advantages are a wider memory bus (384-bit versus 128-bit), a higher ROP count (48 versus 32), and a larger physical die (529 mm² versus 276 mm²), none of which translate into competitive performance in the recorded data.

The choice is straightforward for anyone choosing between these two cards today. The RTX 3050 OEM offers modern API support, ray tracing, tensor cores, and a power profile that fits into a 300 W PSU recommendation. The GTX 480 is an end-of-life product from 2010 with no Vulkan support, no ray tracing, no tensor cores, and a 600 W PSU recommendation. The GTX 480 does retain the higher launch MSRP of 499 USD, but that reflects its historical positioning, not current capability.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX 3050 OEM wins in compute-heavy workloads, as demonstrated by its 60,740 Geekbench OpenCL score. That result, combined with its 8.087 TFLOPS FP32 throughput and 1:1 FP16 support, makes it the clear choice for general-purpose GPU compute, modern game engines, and any workload that leverages DirectX 12 Ultimate features. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory also gives it a decisive capacity advantage for texture-heavy applications and larger datasets, where the GTX 480's 1536 MB would become a bottleneck regardless of its wider bus.

The GTX 480 wins in one narrow sense: historical relevance. Its 48 ROPs and 384-bit memory bus are artifacts of a design philosophy that favored raw fill rate and bandwidth width over density and efficiency. In the recorded data, it has no benchmark wins and no modern feature support. The GTX 480 could still be of interest to collectors or those documenting the Fermi era, but for any practical workload measured in the database, the RTX 3050 OEM is the only rational pick. The single head-to-head result, the average score gap of 1,899 points, and the architecture differences all point the same way.