Introduction

The Zotac GeForce RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC in today's review is a mid-range graphics card for 1080p Full HD gaming. It is based on the recently announced RTX 3050 "Ampere." This particular card builds on Zotac's philosophy of simple, functional designs and targets those who simply want to plug and play a GeForce RTX 3050 and don't really care about RGB or other frills. The RTX 3050 was announced at the 2022 International CES, as the most affordable (in relative terms) of the current generation of graphics cards from NVIDIA with all the features and technologies NVIDIA brings to the table, including support for ray tracing. It has no real predecessor as NVIDIA was selling the GTX 16-series below the RTX 2060—the closest parallel we could draw to this card is the GTX 1660 Super.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 shares its underlying silicon with the RTX 3060, the 8 nm GA106 graphics processor. While the latter almost maxes it out, the RTX 3050 only enables two-thirds of the SMs (streaming multiprocessors) on the silicon, resulting in 2,560 out of 3,840 CUDA cores. What's more, the RTX 3050 comes with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 128-bit wide memory interface, even as the GA106 is capable of 192-bit. The memory chips are slower, too, running at 14 Gbps compared to 15 Gbps for the RTX 3060. Yet another interesting difference between the two cards is the PCI-Express bus width. The RTX 3050 uses the PCI-Express 4.0 x8 host interface, even as the RTX 3060 has the full x16 interface. Gen 4 x8 seems like plenty of bandwidth for a graphics card of this class. Even when it falls back to Gen 3 on older platform is the bus no wider than x8.



Another interesting fact about the RTX 3050 is that its specifications fit within what the smaller GA107 silicon offers (up to 3,072 CUDA cores, 128-bit memory bus), and a few RTX 3050 cards are in fact based on the smaller chip, albeit with slightly lower board power. The Zotac Twin Edge OC card in this review is based on the GA106 (we checked), but it's possible that some cards from Zotac and others could be based on the GA107. We don't expect any performance difference between the two since the SKU-level hardware specifications are the same.

The Zotac RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC features a compact design meant for maximum compatibility in congested cases. It only needs one 8-pin PCIe power connector. The IceStorm 2.0 cooling solution features a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink ventilated by a pair of 80 mm fans, including the idle fan-stop feature. As a factory-overclocked card, its GPU ticks at a boost frequency of 1807 MHz, compared to 1777 MHz reference. The card is currently listed at $400, making it one of the most affordable RTX 3050 variants.

Packaging

The Card

The Zotac GeForce RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC is clearly recognizable as a Zotac graphics card from the GeForce 30 Series. The primary color is gray, with silvery highlights on the fan hubs. On the other side of the card, you'll find a high-quality metal backplate.


Dimensions of the card are 22.5 x 11.5 cm, and it weighs 605 g.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include one HDMI 2.1 and three DisplayPort 1.4a ports.


The card has one 8-pin power input. This configuration is rated for up to 225 W of power draw.


The GeForce RTX 3050 does not support SLI.

Teardown

Zotac's thermal solution uses three heatpipes. The heatsink base provides cooling for the memory chips and VRM circuitry.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles, videos or forum posts.



High-res versions are also available (front, back).

Circuit Board (PCB) Analysis

The GPU VRM is a four phase-design controlled by a Richtek RT8848A controller.


For the GPU voltage, OnSemi NCP252160 DrMOS are used; they are rated for up to 60 A output current.


The memory VRM is single-phase and managed by a uPI uP1666Q controller.


For memory, M3828N MOSFETs are used.


The GDDR6 memory chips are made by Micron and carry the model number D9ZPM, which decodes to MT61K512M32KPA-14:C. They are specified to run at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps GDDR6 effective).


NVIDIA's GA106 graphics processor is made using Samsung's 8 nanometer node and has a transistor count of 12 billion with a die size of 276 mm².