From DDR5 to the new RTX 3050 graphics card, there is a lot to be excited about in 2022 if you’re a PC gamer on a tighter budget.
With CES 2022 winding down, we saw a lot of exciting products from new TVs to smart toothbrushes to new computing hardware. The latter, in particular, caught my attention since a lot of the best products – or at least most important, in my opinion – weren’t necessarily the flashiest or most luxurious. From the new Nvidia RTX 3050 to new gaming laptops with 12th-gen Intel Alder Lake chips, there is a lot here for PC gamers to be excited about, especially if you’re on a tighter budget this year. Although the new RTX 3090 Ti is getting a lot of attention, few of us will ever see this graphics card. It’s already all but impossible to find high-end graphics cards, and if you can find them, you’re likely being gouged on the price. And the new Razer Blade laptops and Alienware Concept Nyx definitely received their share of publicity, budget gaming laptops and desktops still got a few major upgrades this year, which makes me more excited than ever for the budget PC gaming scene. Yeah, the RTX 3090 Ti is impressive, but who cares? You’re never getting your hands on that card. What’s more, for the price of that graphics card, you could buy a whole new gaming PC with some decent specs. But after nearly two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, money is going to be tight for a lot of people, and even the RTX 3060 is probably out of reach for a lot of PC gamers who want to upgrade their rigs. The RTX 3050, on the other hand, might be hitting as close to a sweet spot as budget gamers can really hope for out of this generation. Starting at $249 (about £190/AU$350), this won’t be a cheap graphics card (assuming you can find it), but it might still be something builders can splurge on and not blow a hole in a limited budget. Even better, pre-built budget gaming PCs with an RTX 3050 will be a good bit cheaper than those with an RTX 3060 or RTX 3060 Ti, which will give more gamers access to the Ampere architecture and everything that brings with it. Now, this likely won’t be glorious ray-traced graphics like you’d get on an RTX 3090 Ti – at least not at an acceptable frame rate – but with some aggressive settings tweaks, it’s not out of the question, especially with the real reason the RTX 3050 is literally going to be game-changing: DLSS.
