Introduction

We review the new Zotac GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge OC, which is yet another of Zotac's performance-segment graphics cards designed to be as small and inexpensive as possible, optimized for the huge DIY market. Dating all the way back to its GTX 970 Twin Fan, Zotac has been developing compact graphics cards based on middle-of-the-market graphics cards that are of a short length, convenient to install, and have just the right custom-design bits to allow Zotac to sell the cards at close-to-reference pricing. The GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge OC in this review is no exception. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 itself is arguably the most important of the three RTX 30-series GPUs launched by NVIDIA thus far as it puts 4K-capable premium gaming performance into the hands of a much larger segment of the market.

With the RTX 3070, NVIDIA is debuting its second silicon based on the GeForce "Ampere" architecture, the 8 nm "GA104." This chip has lighter specs than those of the RTX 3080, but close to double the SIMD muscle as its predecessor, the RTX 2070. NVIDIA put an emphasis on the RTX 3070 being faster than the previous generation flagship, the RTX 2080 Ti. This would mean the RTX 3070 can not only give you maxed out 1440p performance with RTX cranked up, but is also capable of 4K Ultra HD gaming with high settings. It should also cater to high refresh rate e-sports gaming at 1440p and Full HD 1080p. For the full details on the RTX 3070 technology and architecture, refer to our RTX 3070 Founders Edition article.



The Twin Edge OC from Zotac is the most compact of the five RTX 3070 graphics cards we're reviewing today, with dimensions that make it better suited for mid-tower and mini-tower cases, and is strictly two slots thick, just like the Founders Edition. The card is designed for those who just want to game and don't care all that much about RGB bling to revel through their huge tempered glass panels. The company did direct efforts towards making the card quiet by using a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink and two large fans of different diameters, along with a 3D backplate. You don't miss out on essentials such as idle fan stop. It also features a pair of common 8-pin PCIe power inputs, which means you don't have to deal with NVIDIA's new 12-pin power connector. There are two variants of this card, one which sticks to NVIDIA reference clock speeds and comes in at the $499 baseline price for this SKU and the Zotac RTX 3070 Twin Edge OC in this review as its OC variant, which offers a tiny 30 MHz factory overclock of 1755 MHz (compared to 1725 MHz reference) for a marginal premium of just $20. In our review, we put it through its paces to check if this is the card you should pick if all you want is the RTX 3070's near-stock gaming performance, and also how it competes with the NVIDIA Founders Edition.