Thanks to several rumors and leaks, it is probably no surprise to you that NVIDIA will be releasing a new graphics card today. Today is the day that reviews for the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti goes live. And the first 3060 Ti that we have here is the Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC. It is quite an interesting graphics card since it is the smallest Ampere graphics card I have seen so far. NVIDIA claims that the RTX 3060 Ti is faster than the RTX 2080 Super. So, today we are going to find out if the 3060 Ti is faster than the RTX 2080 Super. Please continue reading our Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC review below and find out.
- Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC Graphics Card Review
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Reference Specs
- Packaging and Closer Look
- Zotac RTX 3060 Ti Test Setup
- Zotac RTX 3060 Ti Noise and Temperature
- Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Benchmarks
- Pricing and Availability
- Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC Review Conclusion
Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC Graphics Card Review
Today, NVIDIA officially adds the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti to the Ampere RTX 30 series family. NVIDIA claims that it runs faster than the previous-gen RTX 2080 Super (a $699 card); and “on average 40% faster” than its predecessor, the RTX 2060 Super. The new RTX 3060 Ti launches for $399; it’s $100 cheaper than the RTX 3070.
The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, like all of the Ampere GPUs, features 2nd generation RTX architecture. It offers 16.2 shader TFLOPs, 31.6 RT TFLOPs, and 129.6 Tensor TFLOPs (using the new sparsity feature). An 8nm NVIDIA custom process fabricated by Samsung, the GA104 GPU, is used to power the RTX 3060 Ti. The GA104 features 17.4 billion transistors.
Based on the specs sheet, the RTX 3060 Ti has 4864 CUDA cores, more than double the CUDA cores than its predecessor, the RTX 2060 Super, has. It’s also able to deliver a total of 47.8 effective TFLOPS of ray tracing performance. However, we are not seeing any increase or upgrade in the memory department. Just like the RTX 2080S and 2060S, the RTX 3060 Ti features 8GB GDDR6 memory with a 7GHz memory clock speed.
The Zotac RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC features a slightly faster boost clock speed of 1695MHz. It is only a 30MHz increase from the reference boost clock. I don’t expect it to have a much higher boost clock speed considering its small size and somewhat conservative heatsink.
In addition to those numbers, the RTX 30 series GPUs feature HDMI 2.1 that enables support for 4K@120Hz. It also features AV1 decode that provides better compression and quality compared to existing codecs like H.264, HEVC, and VP9. AV1 is said to provide 50-55% bitrate savings over H.264. You can check out more features of the 3060 Ti below.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Features
- Programmable Shader: Increased to 2 shader calculations per clock versus 1 on Turing – 16.2 Shader-TFLOPS compared to 7.2 TFLOPS for the RTX 3060 Ti.
- Second-gen RT Cores: For the RTX 3060 Ti, Ray-triangle intersection throughput is now doubled so that the RT Core delivers 31.6 RT-TFLOPs, compared to Turing’s 21.7.
- Third-gen Tensor Cores: For RTX 3060 Ti, New Tensor Core automatically identifies and removes less important DNN weights and the new hardware processes the sparse network at twice the rate of Turing—129.6 Tensor-TFLOPS with sparsity compared to Turing’s 57.4 TFLOPS.
- NVIDIA RTX IO: Enables rapid GPU-based loading and game asset decompression, accelerating input/output performance by up to 100x compared with hard drives and traditional storage APIs. In conjunction with Microsoft’s new DirectStorage for Windows API,(1) RTX IO offloads dozens of CPU cores’ worth of work to the RTX GPU, improving frame rates and enabling near-instantaneous game loading.
- NVIDIA Broadcast for AI-powered Video and Voice: Turn any room into a home studio with AI – taking your live streams and video chats to the next level with AI-powered audio and video effects like noise removal, virtual background, and webcam auto frame.
- Next-gen process technology: New 8N NVIDIA custom process from Samsung, which allows for higher transistor density and more efficiency.
- NVIDIA Reflex: Low Latency Technology: Acquire targets faster, react quicker, and increase aim precision through a revolutionary suite of new GeForce and G-SYNC technologies to optimize and measure system latency in competitive games.
- AI-Powered Video and Voice – NVIDIA Broadcast: You can now transform any room into a home broadcast studio—taking your live streams and video chats to the next level with AI-powered audio noise removal, virtual background effects, and webcam auto frame.
- NVIDIA Studio: RTX-Accelerated Content Creation: RTX 30 Series brings faster rendering and AI performance, more graphics memory, and exclusive NVIDIA AI tools such as Omniverse Machinima to help you finish creative projects in record time.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Reference Specs
RTX 3060 Ti | RTX 3070 | RTX 3080 | RTX 3090 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Fab Process | 8nm Samsung | 8nm Samsung | 8nm Samsung | 8nm Samsung |
Architecture | Ampere | Ampere | Ampere | Ampere |
CUDA Cores | 4864 | 5888 | 8704 | 10496 |
Base Clock | 1410 MHz | 1500 MHz | 1440 MHz | 1400 MHz |
Boost Clock | 1665 MHz | 1730 MHz | 1710 MHz | 1700 MHz |
Memory Size | 8GB | 8GB | 10GB | 24GB |
Memory Type | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6X | GDDR6X |
Memory Clock | 14 Gbps | 16 Gbps | 19 Gbps | 19.5 Gbps |
Memory Bandwidth | 448 GBps | 512 GBps | 760 GBps | 936 GBps |
Memory Interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 320-bit | 384-bit |
Max. GPU Temp. | ??? | 93° | 93° | 93° |
Power Connectors | 8-pin | 8-pin | 2x 8-pin | 2x 8-pin |
Graphics Card Power | 200W | 220W | 320W | 350W |
Recommended PSU | 600W | 650W | 750W | 750W |
Price | $399 | $499 | $699 | $1,499 |
Check latest pricing and availability: (#ad)
Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC is available on Amazon.com here
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC (White) is available on Amazon.com here
Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 (non-Ti) is available on Amazon.com here
Packaging and Closer Look
The RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC is the first Zotac Ampere card that we able to test and review. So, I am not sure if Zotac changed the packaging of their graphics cards for the new RTX 30 series cards. Usually, they have larger boxes for their graphics card. But this time, the box for the RTX 3060 Ti is quite small and compact. They still have that Zotac Yellow color theme on their packaging. And we can also read some of the features of the graphics card at the back of the box.
Zotac is also using a new design and aesthetics in their new RTX 30 series Ampere cards. It has a neutral color scheme; I think its gunmetal for the front color shroud and the backplate and fans are black. Speaking of the backplate, it is made of metal.
The RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC measures about 222.1mm in length; and about 115.6mm in height (not including the PCIe finger). It is also a two-slot graphics card. Considering the size of this card, I think it would be a good fit for small form factor builds.
On its output ports, it has three DisplayPorts 1.4a and one HDMI 2.1. It also a single 8-pin connector for power. There is no RGB lighting, but the “Zotac Gaming” logo on the front-side portion lights up in White.
I didn’t open the Zotac RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC to have a look underneath its PCB. But I think it’s using a similar PCB size and layout as the NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition you see above.
Zotac RTX 3060 Ti Test Setup
For our graphics card reviews, I’m using a Z490 motherboard powered with an Intel Core i7-10700K. It is paired it with a DDR4-4000 memory. Below are the rest of the specifications of the system:
Operating System | Windows 10 Pro 64bit version 2004 |
Processor | Intel Core i7-10700K (running stock) |
Motherboard | MSI MEG Z490 GODLIKE |
Memory | Crucial Ballistix MAX RGB DDR4-4000 |
Graphics Card | Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC |
OS Drive | WD Black SN750 with Heatsink |
Game Drive | Crucial MX500 2TB SSD, Kingston KC600 1TB SSD |
Power Supply | Seasonic Prime TX-1000 |
Chassis | Thermaltake Core P3 |
For this test, I used NVIDIA driver version 457.40 – an NVIDIA-provided driver for the RTX 3060 Ti. The graphics card was tested in three resolutions – 1920×1080 FHD, 2560×1440 WQHD, and 3840×2160 4K UHD.
For synthetic benchmarks, I used 3DMark’s benchmark suite. I also used the following games to test the graphics card: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Gears 5, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Horizon Zero Dawn, Monster Hunter World, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and The Division 2.
Below is the GPU-Z screenshot of the Zotac RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC.
Zotac RTX 3060 Ti Noise and Temperature
Due to the size of the graphics card, I didn’t expect that the Zotac RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC will have a superb cooling performance. I was a bit skeptical at first since the aluminum fin stack isn’t that thick and big. Well, perhaps the GA104 isn’t a hot chip in the first place.
Note that I captured the screenshot a little bit late since I already started stressing it when I took the screenshot. But during idle to light load situations, the fans didn’t spin resulting in a dead silent operation. On top of that, the GPU’s temperature was playing around 50° Celsius, give or take.
After I fired up FurMark and let it run for half an hour or less, the temperature settled at 70° Celsius. That’s not bad at all considering the size of its cooler. However, I noticed that the fans were running at 75% of their capacity. That’s a bit fast compared to the other cards we tested. But it didn’t produce any loud noise. I can hear some fan noise since I am using an open-air chassis, but I think the fan noise is generally acceptable.
Now time to see how many frames we can get out of the RTX 3060 Ti. Is it faster than an RTX 2080 Super or probably just on par? Perhaps NVIDIA’s marketing was exaggerating things again? Let’s find out.
Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Benchmarks
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Synthetic Benchmarks
Let’s see some synthetic benchmarks first. Some of you might not be interested in synthetic benchmarks, but others would like to see them. It also gives us an idea of the general performance of this graphics card and its standing or ranking.
For the synthetic benchmark results, I include 3DMark Fire Strike, 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme, 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra, 3DMark Time Spy, 3DMark Time Spy Extreme, and Port Royal (ray tracing). On the left-hand side are graphics scores, while on the right-hand side are the average frames per second (FPS). I also included benchmarks from Unigine’s Superposition. Below are the results:
Based on the synthetic benchmark results above, we can see that the RTX 3060 Ti is a bit faster than the RTX 2080 Super in general. The performance difference is not that significant at all, but it edges out the RTX 2080 Super FE. Perhaps the 3060 Ti’s performance is comparable to a heavily overclocked RTX 2080 Super card.
Now let’s see if we will get similar results with real games.
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 1080p Game Benchmark Results
Usually, the XX60 card of NVIDIA is geared towards 1080p gaming. Considering how graphics-intensive the latest game titles are, I think the RTX 3060 Ti would be a great graphics card for this resolution. Yes, the RTX 2080 Super was aimed at 1440p gaming resolution. But like I said, games back then are not as graphics-intensive as newer games today. Let see how the 3060 Ti fares in 1080p resolution.
For 1080p resolution, we can see that the RTX 3060 Ti performs quite well. It’s able to drive all games above 60 FPS. I’m positive that this card would be a great pair for some high refresh rate 1080p gaming monitors.
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 1440p Game Benchmark Results
Since the RTX 3060 Ti was able to handle games at 1080p quite well, I’m pretty sure it can also run games at 1440p resolution without any hiccups. Let’s check out the results below.
It looks like it can still handle games at 1440p resolution quite well. However, depending on how graphics-intensive the game is, you might want to lower the graphics settings to get higher frame rates.
If you have plans on getting a 1440p 120Hz~140Hz monitor, I recommend you get an RTX 3070 or RTX 3080 or equivalent graphics card instead. Like I mentioned earlier, the latest game titles are getting more and more graphics-intensive. For example, the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077. Not unless you don’t play these types of games.
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 4K UHD Game Benchmark Results
I wouldn’t consider getting an RTX 3060 Ti for 4K gaming at all. But if you are interested to see some numbers, below are the results:
While you can play games at 4K with the RTX 3060 Ti, the experience is not as smooth compared to playing the same game at 1080p or 1440p. Graphics quality needs to be sacrificed just to get playable frame rates at this resolution. Overall, I do not recommend the 3060 Ti for 4K gaming.
For 4K gaming, check out the best GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards in the market.
Pricing and Availability
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti comes with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $399 USD. I don’t have the MSRP for the Zotac RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC yet. But I don’t think it will be priced way higher than NVIDIA’s MSRP. My estimate is that it would be around $420 to $450. I wouldn’t pay more than $500 for this card since that is RTX 3070 territory already.
Check latest pricing and availability: (#ad)
Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC is available on Amazon.com here
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC (White) is available on Amazon.com here
Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 (non-Ti) is available on Amazon.com here
Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC Review Conclusion
The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is a nice addition to NVIDIA’s RTX 30 series family. It’s great for 1080p (high refresh rate) gaming and it’s power-efficient as well. Zotac’s RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC offers a slightly faster factory overclock speed of 1695MHz from the reference model. But it’s not a big deal since thanks to NVIDIA’s GPU Boost technology, the graphics card will eventually boost higher than that.
During my tests, I observed that the Zotac RTX 3060 Ti’s maximum boost clock speed plays around 1800MHz to 1900MHz+. I think the GPU is limited to the cooling performance of this graphics card. As you have seen from the photos above, Zotac’s Twin Edge OC is a small and compact graphics card. You’ll have to decide if this specific card would be a good fit for your system or build.
Thanks to its small and compact size, it would be an ideal graphics card for small form factor builds. Its aesthetics and color scheme is quite neutral as well. And the graphics card feels solid overall, thanks to its metal backplate.
On the other hand, due to its size, it won’t be the fastest RTX 3060 Ti in the market. I’m pretty sure that any tri-fan cooled RTX 3060 Ti would easily outperform this Twin Edge OC by a few frames more. Not that this graphics card runs hot. But since it has a smaller heatsink area, the two fans will have to work harder to cool the GPU. And it may not boost as high or sustain a higher boost clock longer compared to other cards with a chunky cooler.
Overall, I think the Zotac RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC is a good solid graphics card. And if you are (still) gaming at 1080p resolution, you might want to consider this on your top list; especially for small form factor builds.