Zotac Gaming Geforce RTX 3060 Twin Edge Detailed Review
The Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB will be available as the most affordable RTX 30-series graphics card to date at a time when graphics cards are a rare and valuable commodity. It will quickly become a best seller... and then be completely sold out. I'd wager everything on that. But even while you may anticipate a generic launch from Nvidia's fifth Ampere launch to date, you might be astonished to learn that the RTX 3060 12GB is essentially a brand-new beast.
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| Zotac Gaming Geforce RTX 3060 Twin Edge Detailed Review |
The introduction of a hash rate limiter (opens in new tab), which will prevent the card from working to its full potential while mining Ethereum, the cryptocurrency of choice for GPU mining, may have been the most newsworthy change to the Nvidia RTX 3060. By using off-cut GPUs that are unfit for gaming, Nvidia intends to attract miners to its new CMP line-up, thereby leaving more GeForce cards for gamers.
However, we won't be evaluating the Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB's mining performance in this review, even if it might have some bearing on when these cards will be made available. No, instead we'll focus on its gaming prowess. Let's get started because there is a brand-new GPU and a sizable RAM loadout to play with.
What are the Zotac RTX 3060 12GB Specs?
- Graphic Coprocessor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060.
- Brand: ZOTAC.
- Graphic Ram Size: 12 GB.
- GPU Clock Speed: 1807 MHz.
- Video Output Interface: Display Port.
When compared to the other RTX 30-series GPUs that came before it, the 12GB of GDDR6 RAM stands out like a sore thumb: The RTX 3080 (opens in new tab) is equipped with 10GB of GDDR6X, whilst the RTX 3070 (opens in new tab) and RTX 3060 Ti (opens in new tab) both have 8GB of the component. However, the chips identified by the crucial "X" are actually far quicker than the common GDDR6 silicon, so a straight comparison isn't appropriate.
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| Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3060 Twin Edge Detailed Review |
With 24GB of GDDR6X memory, the RTX 3090(opens in new tab) is the only card in the RTX 30 series to surpass the RTX 3060's memory capacity. Again, in actuality, all of that happens much faster. But it's clear why some people could be confused by the cheapest Ampere card that arrives with the second-highest memory capacity.
That's considerably higher than the 1,920 CUDA Cores of the RTX 2060(opens in new tab), that is our principal factor of evaluation for this review, although it ought to be said that the way the Ampere era works doesn't make this an honest doubling of performance. It's the FP32 units that are efficiently being doubled right here, what Nvidia classes as CUDA Cores, while the closing silicon stays at a close count to its Turing counterpart.
Even the doubling of FP32 gadgets isn't all that easy—the use of a mixed function path that can jump among either integer or floating factor tasks is the key to the brand new core counts all-spherical. You can see it in the Ampere SM diagram, a fixed FP32 unit besides an FP32/INT32 route within every of the four SM processing blocks. Since gaming workloads can vary wildly the flexibility ought to be there to offer both statistics paths in suitable quantity, but there's frequently a leaning towards greater FP32 operations and therefore a boon to overall performance by imparting extra functionality to crunch the one numbers.
So even as the RTX 3060 is mightier through CUDA counted, it absolutely has two fewer SMs than the RTX 2060. In terms of ROPs and Texture Units (TMUs), which are each exceptionally important in constructing performant image cards for state-of-the-art video games, the RTX 3060 comes with 48 and 112, respectively.
The RTX 2060 is healthy for ROPs however certainly makes up a little ground right here with 120 TMUs. It's best a moderate boon in writing, however, it just is going to expose that there's no longer as a great deal of a distinction among the 2 chips in rendering silicon that the core count number can also endorse in the beginning look.
The RTX 3060 additionally has two fewer RT Cores than the RTX 2060 as an end result, too. But do not be wrong, that doesn't make it any much less capable in ray tracing workloads. In fact, it is significantly quicker. That's down to the upgrades introduced with the second generation RT Cores and third technology Tensor Cores inside the Ampere structure, which have established amazing for the high-cease 30-collection in partially negating the load of ray tracing on body instances.
It's also really worth noting that there's no Founders Edition RTX 3060 12GB. The Zotac Twin Edge that we have acquired for this evaluation is a stock card, even though, so you may be certain that you're searching at the jumping-off point for all other 1/3-birthday party and manufacturing facility overclocked cards, of which there are sure to be many.
What Is the Zotac RTX 3060 12GB's Performance Like?
With some likely governing factors for performance in the game, you can best recognize what to expect from this card at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K while looking at the graphs.
On the primary counts, 1440p and 1080p, I'm pleased to document that all is well within the inexperienced camp. These resolutions are easily within attainment for the RTX 3060 throughout the majority of our gaming benchmarks, even at the maximum available portrait settings. We don't expect anything less from even the most powerful entry-level cards these days, so a $409 GPU must truly outperform. That is what it does.
