0 
0 The awesome team over at Zotac have been letting us check out their 30xx series range graphics cards. It wouldn’t be right if we didn’t compare at least one of them against a previous gen card. The card that the team sent over for this is the Zotac 3060 Twin Edge.
The One Where The 20 Series Met The 30 Series
Luckily I am currently running a Zotac 2060 Super Mini, an ideal card to put the Zotac 3060 Twin Edge in the virtual ring with. On specifications alone, I know what I think should come out on top, however! Join me as I benchmark them both and game with them both, but just how much will my gaming experience differ?
Specification
Firstly let’s take a look at the build that I will be comparing these graphics cards on. It is by no means the most recent build at Thumb Culture, however, it is still a great gaming setup. CPU, we have the AMD Ryzen 7 2700x, 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair Dominator RAM. From a cooling perspective, we have an NZXT X63 AIO housed in an NZXT 510i case with stock fans.
Now that we know the main build, let us take a high-level side by side look at the Zotac 2060 Super Mini and the Zotac 3060 Twin Edge:
| GeForce RTX 3060 | GeForce RTX 2060 Super | |
| CUDA cores | 3584 | 2176 |
| Video Memory | 12GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bus | 192-bit | 256-bit |
| Engine Clock | Boost: 1777 MHz | Boost: 1650 MHz |
| Memory Clock | 15 Gbps | 14.0 Gbps |
| PCI Express | 4.0 16x | 3 |
| Recommended PSU | 600W | 550W |
| Power Consumption | 170W | 175W |
A full specification breakdown of the Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 can be found here and the Zotac GeForce RTX 2060 Super can be found here.
Benchmarking
Now that we know the specs let’s take a look at how they performed when benchmarked against each other. When Benchmarking, this time around I used two different tests from Uningine. The first was SuperPosition and the second was Heaven. I have to say, as someone fairly new to PC gaming the numbers on the boxes should (in theory) bring the 3060 out on top.
Let us first take to a look at the SuperEngine benchmarking results whilst at 1080p on High. I figured this was medium ground when it came to the benchmarking so wanted to see how it was handled without pushing the cards to the extreme. After all, most games buying GPUs around this price will not be gaming full 4k. Although, I did benchmark the 3060 at 4k and it benchmarked pretty well! Anyway, as you can see below the Zotac 3060 Twin Edge did outperform on this test, not only did it push circa 5 frames higher it run a lot cooler at 98% utilisation. However, on average it was only a few frames difference.
Secondly, we look at Heaven and how they both worked out. We can clearly see that the 2060 Super pulls in front when it comes to FPS and MAX FPS, sitting at 172.7 and 356.8 they are only a few frames away from each other. However, when it comes to getting the most of out the card within Heaven Benchmark the minimum FPS on the 3060 sits at 38.6 which is more than double that of the 2060 Super.
Performance
Obviously, Benchmarking shows us a great amount of detail, but just how did I find the cards to use when gaming? I decided to check out Call Of Duty Warzone again. I hadn’t picked it up for a while (I can also confirm I’m still just as bad at the game as well). There were a few modes I hadn’t checked out, so I jumped into a few to see if any of them was more draining than the other. However, they all seemed pretty much equal when it came to the numbers.
When it came to hands-on gaming I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting them to run very similarly however, the Zotac 3060 Twin Edge ran a lot smoother. With a difference of just under 30 frames, it wasn’t anything that was going to vastly impact your gaming but you could tell which card was superior.
On top of the above, the latest generation card was also running at around 20c less than the Zotac RTX 2060 Super. So not only do you get better frames but you also get a cooler running card. I could tell that my 2060 was pushing itself as the fans were getting ready to take my PC for a fly.
Final Thoughts
Obviously, when it comes to the numbers the Zotac 2060 Super Mini comes out slightly on top over the Zotac 3060 Twin Edge. However, with that, you are getting previous-gen technology. Neither of these cards is a bad card, however, the GPU market is extremely volatile at the minute.
The other thing that stood out for me from a next-gen perspective is the cooling working a lot slicked and was also a lot quieter. This might not be such an issue for most, but I would happily trade my Zotact 2060 Super Mini in for a 3060 for a cooler and quieter build. Not to mention the design on the newer cards is also a level above the previous gen. So pretty trivial things from my perspective to be quite honest but that’s the great thing about PCs, you can make them your own.
The one thing this comparison has provided us is with comfort that if you can still get hold of a Zotac 2060 Super Mini you will be getting a similar experience to that of the next-gen. Either way, you will have a great gaming machine that will last you for years to come and enable those epic fails and wins along the way.
Disclaimer: A review sample was received in order to write this review.
YouTube | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Discord | Podcast
About Author
