Nvidia RTX 5050 GPU spotted in Acer gaming laptops, so it could arrive soon – but I’m becoming more doubtful about a desktop variant

• Acer accidentally listed RTX 5050 GPUs in some gaming laptops
• The spilled details showed power usage and clock speeds
• We didn’t get any other specs shared, though, and chatter about the desktop variant of the RTX 5050 has gone quiet, too

Acer has leaked the Nvidia RTX 5050 mobile GPU, giving us a glimpse of some of the key specs of this laptop graphics card.

Not so long ago, Nvidia introduced RTX 5060 models (the 5060 Ti spin came first), and before those arrived, there were rumors flying around about them and the RTX 5050, too.

While the RTX 5050 hasn’t been officially announced, we’ve been seeing numerous leaks about it recently. VideoCardz reports that the latest leak comes from Acer, courtesy of a list of GPU specs for Predator and Nitro gaming laptops.

This mentioned an RTX 5050 in quite a few of the Nitro notebooks, and I use the past tense there because Acer has caught the error and deleted the offending listings – but not before VideoCardz took a screenshot as evidence. Other sources have also taken note, so this is likely genuine – although still take it with a grain of salt, as with all rumors.

We can see from this screengrab that Acer is set to offer the RTX 5050 in five different power options, ranging from 50W up to 100W, with correspondingly faster clock speeds for each, from 1500MHz up to 2550MHz. Note that there’ll also be an ‘Acer OC’ (overclocked) boost of 15W with these models, meaning the most powerful model will be able to provide 115W in a pinch.

Sadly, we don’t see any specifications other than power usage and clocks, which are tied together in a direct relationship – the faster the clocks are pushed, the more wattage the GPU will consume.

Analysis: A laptop RTX 5050 feels imminent – but what about the desktop model?

The specs we see here don’t give us much of a clue as to how powerful the RTX 5050 will theoretically be. That said, the maximum power envelope advertised is quite substantial at 115W, but we don’t know enough about this mobile GPU to draw any definitive conclusions. Key factors will include the core count, which isn’t disclosed, and the type of video memory (VRAM) used.

I should note that on the latter front, there were rumors that Nvidia could opt for slower GDDR6 VRAM, rather than the GDDR7 employed elsewhere with the Blackwell generation. However, more recent rumors have suggested Nvidia will stick with GDDR7 (8GB of this VRAM, which is an expected configuration for an entry-level GPU).

At any rate, what this apparent mistake from Acer does indicate is that the RTX 5050 laptop graphics card could be close to arriving, otherwise it wouldn’t be popping up on spec sheets – and this is backed up by the fact that we’ve had a lot of leaks around this GPU recently. Indeed, one of those mentioned a planned launch date of Q2 for the RTX 5050, and so a June release appears to be a distinct possibility at this point.

In other words, we might be seeing the revelation of the Nvidia RTX 5050 for laptops in the next week or two. What about the desktop RTX 5050? Yes, it’s rumored Nvidia is going to produce a desktop flavor of this bottom-tier Blackwell GPU, which runs counter to what happened with the previous Lovelace generation (there was no desktop RTX 4050, only a laptop variant).

However, any gossip around the desktop RTX 5050 seems to have dried up, giving me pause for thought on whether Nvidia might have abandoned that idea, at least for the time being. Or maybe it was never happening in the first place; we never know with rumors.

I’m really hoping Nvidia can provide a more affordable desktop GPU for budget gaming PCs this time around, though, but whether that’ll actually happen is something I’ve always been doubtful about. Simply because of how Nvidia has neglected the budget end of the graphics card spectrum in more recent times.

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