Performance test results for AMD's entry-level graphics card, the Radeon RX 9050, have been released. This graphics card has a low nominal power consumption, but lags behind the GeForce RTX 5050 in most benchmarks and game tests, with overall performance being about 60% of the Radeon RX 9060 XT.
This test used the ASRock AMD Radeon RX 9050 Challenger 8GB. The card is based on the Navi 44 core with RDNA 4 architecture, but retains only one shader engine, featuring 16 CUs, 1024 stream processors, 32 AI accelerators, and 16 third-generation ray accelerators, making its overall scale exactly half that of the RX 9060 XT.
The RX 9050 has a game frequency of 1920MHz and a maximum boost frequency of 2600MHz; the highest operating frequency monitored during testing reached 2701MHz. The graphics card is equipped with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, using a 128-bit bus width, an effective frequency of 18GHz, a bandwidth of 288GB/s, and also features 32MB of third-generation AMD Infinity Cache.
The card has a nominal total board power of 92W, which is 68W and 40W lower than the RX 9060 XT and RX 9060 respectively. This non-reference ASRock graphics card measures approximately 246mm in length and weighs about 647 grams, adopting a dual-fan, dual-slot cooling design and equipped with an 8-pin auxiliary power connector. Video outputs include two DisplayPort 2.1a ports and one HDMI 2.1b port.
3DMark tests show that the RX 9050's scores in Fire Strike were about 55% to 66% of the RX 9060 XT, trailing the RX 7600 by about 32% to 38%, with a gap of approximately 16% to 27% compared to the RTX 5050. In Time Spy, its performance was about 59% to 60% of the RX 9060 XT, with the gaps narrowing to about 20% and 10% against the RX 7600 and RTX 5050 respectively.
In the Steel Nomad benchmark, the RX 9050 scored about 53% of the RX 9060 XT, while trailing the RX 7600 and RTX 5050 by approximately 14%. In the Speed Way test, its performance reached about 65% of the RX 9060 XT, differing from the RX 7600 by only about 7%, but still lagging behind the RTX 5050 by roughly 41%; in the Port Royal ray tracing test, the gaps were approximately 20% and 33% respectively.
Game tests were conducted at 4K, 1440p, and 1080p resolutions, with FSR enabled for Radeon cards and DLSS for GeForce cards; frame generation was disabled in all tests. In Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, the average frame rate of the RX 9050 was about 48% to 55% of the RX 9060 XT, while trailing the RX 7600 by approximately 59% to 107%, and showing a gap of about 19% to 41% compared to the RTX 5050.