Final words and conclusion
Final words
ZOTAC made a bit of a bold move sending us a value edition card over a premium model for a change. And realistically, if this card sits at that founder edition price, or perhaps a few tenners below it, then I see very little wrong with it. GeForce RTX 3060 Ti FE edition sits at the 399 USD marker, and we can only hope that prices won't be any higher, as that would be a tough sell, with the NVIDIA Founder edition being so good already. This is a product that I like as it offers proper performance at WQHD levels for us common folk. Not just that, you'll have the added benefit of playing some games with hybrid raytracing, as well as the fact that NVIDIA has Tensor cores onboard, offering more perf at complex workloads with DLSS.
Performance
I've mentioned this in a couple of other reviews as well; ultimately, everything and anything it's all about gaming price, performance, and, of course, rendering quality. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is a product that meets all these factors suitably; while we do feel the RTX 3070 offers oomph for money, the RTX 3060 Ti simply more reachable for a bigger crowd with a more normalized wallet. This card can still run games at 4K but not with raytracing for sure; it will serve you well at WQHD and Full HD. The easy comparative product would be RTX 2080 SUPER and often even close to that RTX 2080 Ti. And that's not a bad spot to be game performance-wise.
Cooling & noise levels
You've seen the FLIR images; it's not even lighting up. Temps under stress load sits just under 70 degrees C, and that's fine. Acoustics wise this was the loudest card we tested thus far. you'll hit 41~42 DBa under gaming load, which is a notch too much in this day and era. The card exhibitors only very minor amounts of coil whine, no worries there. BTW I noticed another website claiming this card has no fan-stop, that is incorrect. Fan stop at IDLE works as expected.
Energy
As you have been able to see, we're switching our energy measurements based on PCAT. It's far more precise. This card peaks at 244 Watt (power always fluctuates as much as your frame times and FPS). Averaged out, the card sits at 219 Watt under gaming load, in idle 14 watts. We're fine with all values.
Coil whine
The TWIN EDGE exhibits only very minor amounts of coil squeal, very little, and it's hard to hear. In a closed chassis, that noise would fade away in the background. Graphics cards all make this in some form, especially at high framerates; this can be perceived.
Pricing
NVIDIA is pricing the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti at USD 399. We have not yet received the MSRP for the TWIN EDGE, but knowing ZOTAC, this product will cost a similar amount of money. But with a predicted low availability, it's hard to really make a solid statement here of prices inflate due to e-tailers hiking up prices.
Tweaking
The graphics card has a tempered factory tweak but can be pushed a little further manually. You'll reach 16 Gbps on the memory, perhaps a +100 to +150 on the boost frequency. Important, slide op that power limiter. More power budget allows the GPU to do what it likes to do the best, go fast. Combined with the tweaks mention on the OC page, you'll sit in the realm of 2000~2100 Mhz on the boost frequency. Remember that values differ per workload and thus the game title. Also, for our tweak to be called valid, it needs to pass four games in a full benchmark run at Ultra HD to be called stable. This ZOTAC card's end result was quite okay, 16 Gbps on that memory, a turbo in the 2050~2100 Mhz domain. Coming from FE, we're roughly 7% faster after manual tweaking.
Conclusion
Well, what to say. The TWIN EDGE OC looks great, a nice small compact form factor, yeah it offers good looks. But the people that will be buying one will be based on small numbers, as the card is not any more beneficial than the founder edition, in fact, a little worse even. The looks as stated, are lovely. But the card is quite noisy, and that's just a no-go in this day and era. The OC in the naming refers to the small bump in boost frequency. Realistically though, this card was at or diminutively below reference performance. Hey, it is still a product that performs at RTX 2080 SUPER performance levels. The 8GB I am fine with as well; however for an AIB product to be successful, it needs to be better than the founder edition, that or significantly cheaper; and this card is neither. ZOTAC should really place more focus on the acoustic levels, I mean the reference design can manage 35 DBa, this card sits at 41~42 DBa, which for me was a turnoff. A good thing was a positive tweaking experience. And sure for some is it's lacking RGB bling, just a white-lit logo. A card aimed at gamers, and nothing more. At 399 USD versus the 399 USD founder edition, this is a tough sell.
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