Update: The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 may be available in two desktop versions in January.

PC gamers have been very frustrated with the lack of availability of Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards for a year since their release, and Intel is trying to take advantage early next year with the release of its own Arc Alchemist GPUs. It is trying to stand on its own feet.

According to the somewhat reliable leaker Kopite7kimi on Twitter, the first Intel GPU, the A380, will offer low-end performance comparable to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super, which would normally make RTX 30 series GPUs companies eager to push will have nothing to worry about.

But these are not normal times, and GPUs of all kinds are in super short supply, even if only as a stopgap, forcing even older graphics cards to retire in order to offer gamers something to put on their PCs.

With this in mind, Kopite7kimi believes that Nvidia will try to rebuff any possible threat from Intel with its new GeForce RTX 30 series cards (the desktop version of the RTX 3050).

To be clear, the GeForce RTX 3050 already exists as a laptop GPU, but RTX 30 series cards for desktops have so far only started with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060.

According to Kopite7Kimi's sources, the desktop RTX 3050 will feature a GA106-150 GPU and 8GB of GDDR6 video memory, compared to 3,584 and 4,864 in the RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti cards, respectively. 072 CUDA cores.

As our sister site Tom's Hardware points out, the desktop RTX 3050 cards appear to be very different from the versions currently found in entry-level gaming laptops. The mobile RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti GPUs use the GA107 GPU, which features a 128-bit interface and up to 2,560 CUDA cores. So, if the leak is accurate, Nvidia could have a 2GB GDDR6 chip with the same 128-bit interface or a 1GB chip with a 256-bit interface.

Of course, this is a big "if"; even Kopite7Kimi feels the need to note "rumor" in big capital letters in this tweet. In other words, given the existence of the mobile RTX 3050 and the need to forego Intel's first big entry into the GPU market, we need to take this with a grain of salt, even if it seems reasonable.

However, this is not likely to be Nvidia's only GPU for 2022. Rumor has it that the company plans to introduce a powerful GeForce RTX 40 series graphics card in 2022. The rumored GeForce RTX 4090 flagship is said to have a clock speed of 2.5 GHz, 18,423 CUDA cores, and a massive 92 teraflops of computing power. [Even if this information is correct, stock of GeForce RTX 3060, 3070, 3080, and 3090 cards is extremely hard to come by, thanks to the double punch of the global pandemic and soaring cryptocurrency prices.

So far, Nvidia's attempts to make RTX 30 cards less attractive to crypto miners have proven fairly ineffective. However, one hopes that the company has something in mind for future cards to ensure that they actually power gaming PCs and not bitcoin farms.