The GeForce RTX 3050 is based on the NVIDIA GA106 graphics processor, which is used on the RTX 3060, too. Physically, the chip has 3840 cores, out of which 2560 are active on the RTX 3050. NVIDIA is also including 8 GB of GDDR6 over a 128-bit wide memory interface—twice that of the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which is 4 GB GDDR6 with 64-bit. While the RTX 3060 connects to the host system over a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface, the RTX 3050 only uses a x8 link. While that's twice as much as the x4 RX 6500 XT, it's still a surprising, artificial design choice. According to NVIDIA, this improves supply, allowing them "to source a wider variety of chips for the life of the product," which translates to "we want to build the RTX 3050 with the GA107, too, but that's only x8, so we'll limit all RTX 3050 cards to x8." As part of our RTX 3050 launch testing, we ran a whole round of testing at PCI-Express 3.0 x8 to get a feel for what kind of performance loss you can expect on an older motherboard. With just 1–2% depending on game and resolution, the differences are negligible.

Averaged over our whole game test suite at 1080p resolution, we find the Zotac RTX 3050 beating the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti. The card is also considerably faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT and Radeon RX 5500 XT. The gen-over-gen improvement is 25% (compared to the GTX 1650). Last generation's GeForce RTX 2060 is 11% faster, just like the aging Vega 64 and RX 5600 XT. Current-generation products that could be considered a step up in performance are the GeForce RTX 3060 (+34%) and Radeon RX 6600 (+28%). Zotac has given their Twin Edge OC a small factory overclock, up to 1807 MHz from the NVIDIA reference frequency of 1777 MHz—a tiny 1.7% increase that turns into a 1% real-life performance increase, which is nothing you'd ever notice subjectively.

With those performance results, the GeForce RTX 3050 is a good choice for 1080p Full HD gaming at highest settings. There are a few titles in our games list that don't hit 60 FPS. Sacrificing a few details settings in those will get you over 60 easily, though. This is in contrast to the RX 6500 XT, which requires settings to be reduced much more drastically to achieve the same goal. While AMD is executing most of its ray tracing in shaders, NVIDIA has dedicated hardware units for it. These are included on the RTX 3050, too, with impressive results when compared to the RX 6500 XT—it's really night and day. However, that doesn't mean you can get a convincing high-end ray tracing experience from the RTX 3050, not even at Full HD—the hardware capabilities are simply too limited. To achieve 60 FPS at 1080p with RT enabled, you must enable DLSS (or FSR), which brings with it a loss in image quality. Another option could be to reduce certain details, like shadows, tessellation, and textures. Given what ray tracing currently offers, I'm not convinced I'd be willing to make either of those trades. It's not a big deal, though. In my opinion, ray tracing isn't the most important capability to have in this segment; rather, you want to be able to enjoy your games at decent framerates with rasterization settings maxed out, or close to maxed, to justify why you didn't just buy a console instead.

Zotac has installed a decent cooler on their card; it's certainly not totally overpowered like the one on the ASUS STRIX, but rather the right tool for the job without going overboard. Temperatures are very good with only 65°C. Unlike most other board partners that failed with their fan settings, Zotac properly tuned the fan settings for the capabilities of the cooler. With 31.5 dBA, the card is "kinda quiet," not inaudible or "whisper-quiet", but definitely good enough to make gaming on it an enjoyable experience. Compared to the other RTX 3050 cards we've tested, it actually is the second-quietest after the ASUS RTX 3050 STRIX OC. The cards from EVGA, MSI, Palit, and Gigabyte are louder despite some of them having a more powerful heatsink. Given the low temperatures, I feel there's even a little bit of extra headroom left to quieten down the card further still with a custom fan curve. In a surprising reversal, recent competing AMD Radeon designs are usually considerably quieter than what NVIDIA's board partners offer, so do check out the red camp if you want low noise. Idle fan stop has become a standard capability lately, and I'm happy to report that the Zotac RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC turns off its fans completely during idle, desktop work, and media playback.

Energy efficiency is roughly comparable to that of other graphics cards on the market, sitting in the middle of our test group—no surprises here. Overclocking, on the other hand, worked very well, better than with most other RTX 3050 cards we've tested so far, both in terms of relative percentages for overclocking potential over the default and in the final performance achieved. The differences aren't that big, though, just one or two FPS, and they also depend on the silicon lottery. While AMD keeps artificially limiting overclocking potential, NVIDIA doesn't do such a thing, and it pays off: +10% in real-life performance after overclocking is a significant achievement.

Just like other vendors, Zotac is operating their card at the NVIDIA default power limit of 130 W despite marketing it as an "OC" SKU. This of course costs a little bit of performance because the card will hit its power limit and NVIDIA Boost will reduce clocks slightly. So far, the ASUS STRIX is the only RTX 3050 with a higher power limit (150 W). What's also surprising is that despite the decent VRM and 8-pin power connector, Zotac includes only a small additional range for overclockers to manually adjust the power limit. With 143 W, or +13 W, the setting is quite conservative.

NVIDIA has announced a $249 MSRP price point for the GeForce RTX 3050, which of course is a fantasy. Graphics card prices have come down in recent weeks, which is why I've updated all price points in this review. The Zotac RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC can be found for $400 right now, which is basically the minimum price you'll have to pay for any RTX 3050. While that's probably not a Zotac achievement, but rather an effect of "supply and demand," I like that you'll be getting the slightly premium and overclocked Twin Edge OC at baseline pricing. AMD's RX 6500 XT is currently sold for $250, or $50 above its MSRP, and offers a better price/performance ratio, but considerably lower overall performance. It also takes a serious performance hit when running on PCIe 3.0. I feel like the strongest competition for the RTX 3050 is the RX 6600, which costs $440 right now, so +10% more than the RTX 3050, but offers almost 30% higher FPS—definitely an option to consider. Also worth mentioning is the RX 6600 XT, which comes at $460 and offers almost 50% more performance than the RTX 3050. The prices are currently changing a lot, so always do some math based on our results to find the best deals. Last generation's GTX 1660/1660 Ti could be an option, but only if you find them for well below $400, and note that these lack support for DLSS. While we're seeing a lot of titles with AMD FSR these days, which is supported on all hardware from all vendors, I do feel like having support for DLSS and FSR could come in handy, giving you more choice when you have to rely on upscaling to achieve better FPS.