GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB vs GTX 660M Mac Edition

Place in the ranking	964	164
Place by popularity	not in top-100	11
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	no data	69.09
Power efficiency	2.17	17.48
Architecture	Kepler (2012−2018)	Ampere (2020−2024)
GPU code name	GK107	GA106
Market segment	Laptop	Desktop
Release date	1 April 2013 (11 years ago)	4 January 2022 (2 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	no data	$249

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

no data

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	384	2560
Core clock speed	950 MHz	1552 MHz
Boost clock speed	no data	1777 MHz
Number of transistors	1,270 million	12,000 million
Manufacturing process technology	28 nm	8 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	50 Watt	130 Watt
Texture fill rate	30.40	142.2
Floating-point processing power	0.7296 TFLOPS	9.098 TFLOPS
ROPs	16	32
TMUs	32	80
Tensor Cores	no data	80
Ray Tracing Cores	no data	20

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Interface	MXM-B (3.0)	PCIe 4.0 x8
Length	no data	242 mm
Width	no data	2-slot
Supplementary power connectors	None	1x 8-pin

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR6
Maximum RAM amount	512 MB	8 GB
Memory bus width	128 Bit	128 Bit
Memory clock speed	1250 MHz	1750 MHz
Memory bandwidth	80 GB/s	224.0 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors	No outputs	1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a
HDMI	-	+

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	12 (11_0)	12 Ultimate (12_2)
Shader Model	5.1	6.6
OpenGL	4.6	4.6
OpenCL	1.2	3.0
Vulkan	1.1.126	1.3
CUDA	3.0	8.6

Gaming performance

Let's see how good the compared graphics cards are for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in FPS.

Pros & cons summary

Performance score	1.56	32.69
Recency	1 April 2013	4 January 2022
Maximum RAM amount	512 MB	8 GB
Chip lithography	28 nm	8 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	50 Watt	130 Watt

GTX 660M Mac Edition has 160% lower power consumption.

RTX 3050 8 GB, on the other hand, has a 1995.5% higher aggregate performance score, an age advantage of 8 years, a 1500% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 250% more advanced lithography process.

The GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB is our recommended choice as it beats the GeForce GTX 660M Mac Edition in performance tests.

Be aware that GeForce GTX 660M Mac Edition is a notebook card while GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB is a desktop one.

Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.