AMD Radeon RX 9050 Benchmarks Show RDNA 4 Card Trailing RTX 5050

Performance test results for the AMD Radeon RX 9050 have been published. Testing used an ASRock AMD Radeon RX 9050 Challenger 8GB graphics card. The card is based on the RDNA 4 architecture's Navi 44 core but retains only one shader engine, with 16 CUs, 1,024 stream processors, 32 AI accelerators and 16 third-generation ray accelerators, giving it half the overall scale of the RX 9060 XT. Its game clock is 1,920MHz and its maximum boost clock is 2,600MHz, with the highest operating frequency monitored during testing reaching 2,701MHz.

The RX 9050 is equipped with 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, an effective frequency of 18GHz and 288GB/s of bandwidth, along with 32MB of third-generation AMD Infinity Cache. The card's nominal total board power is 92W, 68W and 40W lower than the RX 9060 XT and RX 9060 respectively. The ASRock non-reference card measured about 246mm in length and about 647 grams in weight, uses a dual-fan, dual-slot cooling design and has one 8-pin auxiliary power connector. Video outputs include two DisplayPort 2.1a and one HDMI 2.1b connectors.

3DMark testing shows the RX 9050 scoring about 55% to 66% of the RX 9060 XT in Fire Strike, trailing the RX 7600 by about 32% to 38% and lagging the RTX 5050 by about 16% to 27%. In Time Spy, its score is about 59% to 60% of the RX 9060 XT, with the gaps to the RX 7600 and RTX 5050 narrowing to about 20% and 10% respectively.

In Steel Nomad, the RX 9050 reaches about 53% of the RX 9060 XT while trailing both the RX 7600 and RTX 5050 by about 14%. In Speed Way, its score reaches about 65% of the RX 9060 XT, differs from the RX 7600 by only about 7%, but still trails the RTX 5050 by about 41%. In the Port Royal ray-tracing test, the gaps to the RX 7600 and RTX 5050 are about 20% and 33% respectively.

Game testing used 4K, 1440p and 1080p resolutions, with FSR enabled on Radeon cards and DLSS enabled on GeForce cards, and frame generation disabled in all cases. In Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, the RX 9050's average frame rate is about 48% to 55% of the RX 9060 XT, while trailing the RX 7600 by about 59% to 107% and also lagging the RTX 5050 by about 19% to 41%.