Nvidia's RTX30 series, which ranges from the high-end RTX 3090 to the RTX3060, defined as a mid-range dessert grade, has a product path that is somewhat similar to the previous generation's RTX20 series. However, a year after the official release of the first model of the RTX30 series, Lao Huang gave us a surprise move, because the RTX30 actually expanded.
The 50-level graphics card that disappeared in the 20 series desktop graphics product series, this time returned in the 30 series, and not only is it no longer a GTX prefix, but also gives the RTX model prefix that represents higher performance and provides ray-traced technical support, which is the RTX3050.
This time our evaluation room is the new RTX3050 product launched by Sotai, the Sotime RTX3050 X-Gaming OC graphics card.
Sotectide RTX3050 X-Gaming OC Graphics Card Unboxing:
Sotecté RTX3050 X-Gaming OC graphics card through its model name can know the series of this graphics card ownership, X-Gaming belongs to the ZOTAX for gamers exclusive, and has the practicality and cost-effective high-end graphics card series, and the OC suffix in the model indicates that this is a high-frequency version of the non-public design graphics card.
Of course, the most eye-catching thing about the Sotech RTX3050 X-Gaming OC is its colorful graphics card shell, which continues the design of the same series of RTX3060, red, pink, green and pink green four main color blocks with concave and orderly graphics card heat dissipation shell intersect with each other, forming a rather bold but very in line with the current young group's favorite contrast wind design, and can achieve this effect thanks to Sotime's introduction of the water cover process into the production of the appearance of the graphics card. Players can customize the appearance of what they need to personalize.
Not only did this bold color style been chosen on the front of the graphics card, but this design pattern was also continued in the back panel of the graphics card, so that the always monotonous graphics card reinforcement backplane can also have a colorful side.
In addition to having a fully personalized design, the RGB faith lamp is also an almost essential design for graphics cards today. The RGB faith lamp of the Sotec RTX3050 X-Gaming OC is still iconic, with the "ZOTAC" Sotec English brand LOGO design, and placed in the top center of the graphics card cover, which can not only highlight the brand, but also match with the colorful graphics card appearance.
Although RTX3050 as a mid-range game graphics card, in the output interface still provides HDMI2.1 + 3PD1.4 full digital output interface scheme, support single card external multi-device simultaneous video and audio output, whether it is daily office split-screen work, or multi-screen linkage during the game, can bring users an excellent experience.
The auxiliary power supply interface part adopts a single 8pin power supply interface design, this high-gauge auxiliary power supply interface can provide a larger power output than the public 6pin interface, so that the graphics card has enough working power to maintain the stability of the graphics card when running in a high-frequency state.
Sotectez RTX3050 X-Gaming OC graphics card disassembly
The thermal module used by Soté RTX3050 X-Gaming OC adopts a three-fan cooling layout design, and the three-fan layout has become a very common combination in today's mainstream graphics products.
The cooling fan adopts the shadow blast fan, adopts the bionic shark shield scale structure, optimizes the arc of the fan blade and the tilt angle, can provide the characteristics of large air volume and low wind noise, and supports the intelligent start-stop technology of the fan, so that the graphics card can achieve a quiet and efficient heat dissipation effect.
The heat dissipation module part adopts the main body of the two-stage three-heat pipe radiator, and the heat pipe and the heat dissipation fin are continuously reflowed between the heat pipe and the heat dissipation fin, and the design between the heat dissipation fins and the reinforcement rod is worn.
At the same time, the high thermal conductivity of the composite heat pipe quickly transfers the heat generated by the operation of the core area of the graphics card to the heat sink, ensuring that the core area of the graphics card can achieve stable operation at a lower temperature.
The heat dissipation base adopts the core direct contact design, and the graphics card GPU and the base copper base conduct heat in direct contact to improve the heat conduction efficiency. At the same time, the base and the surrounding area should also carry out targeted thermal conductivity design for other high-heat areas of the graphics card, such as the video memory chip and power supply module area of the graphics card, and other positions, all of which are laid out to conduct the heat generated by the thermal silicone during the operation of the area to the heat sink.
Although the Sotectide RTX3050 X-Gaming OC uses a long-board three-fan cooling design on the heatsink, in fact, its graphics card PCB substrate size is a short-board design. However, the advantage of this design is that it can speed up the air circulation speed through three fans, so as to ensure the heat dissipation of the graphics card, and also have the effect of assisting heat dissipation on other hardware around the graphics card.
The PCB substrate adopts a non-public design, and it is inferred that only four pads are used in the soldering area of its memory chip, and the substrate prototype used by soteceter RTX3050 X-Gaming OC should be modified from the RTX3060 graphics card substrate of the same series. In addition, the materials used for components also use the second generation of Sotime Platinum Performance Materials.
The Sotecté RTX3050 X-Gaming OC core is designed with ampere architecture and its GPU chip model is GA106-150. It can support real-time ray tracing, DLSS deep learning anti-aliasing, NVIDIA Reflex low latency and other functional technologies. And the graphics card as an OC high-frequency version of the graphics card, the GPU core frequency parameters have also been adjusted, so that the graphics card can run under the GPU Clock/Boost frequency setting of 1552/1807.
The video memory section is equipped with 4 GDDR6 high-speed video memory, which constitutes the 8GB of video memory of the Soté RTX3050 X-Gaming OC graphics card.
The graphics card power supply module area adopts a 4+1 power supply design, the 4-phase core power supply module is laid out at the front end of the PCB substrate, and the 1-phase video memory power supply is placed at the end of the substrate. Such a layout focuses on the high temperature generated by the core power supply module when the core power supply module is working for the first time after the external cold air enters the graphics card, ensuring the stable output of the power supply module.
Sotecté RTX3050 X-Gaming OC Graphics Card Test:
Test platform We chose the Intel Core i9-12900K processor with DDR5-6000 frequency memory as the hardware for testing the Sotecté RTX3050 X-Gaming OC graphics card, so as to maximize the overall performance of the graphics card and let netizens understand the true strength of the RTX3050 graphics card.
Before the test, the operating state of the graphics card is checked again by the GPU-Z and the specification parameters to avoid incorrect test results due to incorrect running status and parameters.
3DMARK graphics performance testing
The theoretical performance test adopts the more popular 3DMARK graphics card performance test program, and the test items include: Fire Strike, Fire Strike Extreme, Fire Strike Ultra, Time Spy, Time Spy Extreme and Port Royal, which can better reflect the theoretical performance of the graphics card.
In the 3DMark test project, the performance data obtained by the Soté RTX3050 X-Gaming OC test shows that the overall performance is in line with the performance level of the RTX3050 mid-range positioning, which is several times higher than the performance of the previous generation GTX1650, which is also due to the performance iteration brought about by the upgrade of the ampere architecture.
Applied Theoretical Performance Testing:
UL Procyon benchmark
The UL Procyon Benchmark Suite provides hardware manufacturers and their suppliers with a range of accurate, relevant and unbiased benchmarks. Each Procyon benchmark is designed for a specific use case and uses real-world applications where possible
The UL Procyon benchmark is a simulated office application, while video production and image editing are the two most used projects in media processing, and the Data Performance of the Soté RTX3050 X-Gaming OC in these two projects is basically similar to that of the public 3060-level graphics card, and the efficiency performance is good.
PCmark10 machine test
PCMark 10 is a comprehensive benchmarking software for the performance of the whole computer, including a series of performance tests, custom running options, battery life data charts and storage benchmarks, fully meet the needs of the modern office. Using the software for testing, users can get a set of scores that compare the system to the user, so that users can understand the performance of their computer.
Based on the support of high-performance hardware such as Sotel RTX3050 X-Gaming OC graphics card with IntelCore i9-12900K and DDR5-6000 memory, the score performance obtained by PCMark10's Extended test can see the performance of the graphics card get a good performance, and the performance of its own graphics card can also be fully displayed under the leadership of high-standard hardware.
V-Ray rendering test
V-Ray Benchmark is a free standalone rendering speed test software. It can easily and quickly test three rendering engines: V-Ray — CPU testing; V-Ray GPU CUDA — GPU and CPU testing, and V-Ray GPU RTX — RTX GPU testing, from which you can see the performance of the platform hardware.
As a rendering project dedicated to testing graphics card performance, Sotectez RTX3050 X-Gaming OC with advanced architecture and high frequency of core parameters, although the test score of RTX3060 still has a certain gap, but compared with the previous generation of RTX2060 is not much different, and even CUDA score is higher than RTX2060.
Blender rendering performance test
Blender Benchmark is a free program for testing cpu gpu rendering performance, allowing you to test the rendering capabilities of your computer hardware.
The data obtained by Blender Benchmark is actually similar to that of V-Ray, the iteration of the architecture and the high core high frequency improve the performance of the Sotech RTX3050 X-Gaming OC, and the performance improvement naturally improves its execution and execution efficiency, and the rendering time is also reduced.
Game performance testing
Game performance test We selected a number of popular masterpieces and iconic games for testing, and in the test, the image quality resolution was set to 1080P Full HD resolution, after all, the RTX3050's mid-range positioning is aimed at users who play at this resolution. The game is also divided into two groups, regular test games (including: CS: GO, F1 2020, Gears of War 5, Horizon 5, Tomb Raider: Shadow and Red Dead Redemption 2) and ray tracing test game titles (including: Tomb Raider: Shadow, Border, Subway: Departure)
Summary of general test game scores:
In the regular game test, Sotec RTX3050 X-Gaming OC in full HD 1080P resolution basically allows the game to achieve a smooth running effect of 60 frames in the medium and high quality settings, and many games can reach more than 100 frames, for the load pressure of 1080P resolution can be easily coped with, if the picture quality setting is not too high, slightly lower the quality level to open the 2K resolution should also have a good smooth support.
Summary of ray tracing test game results:
In the light chase test, because the load of the light chase on the graphics card is larger than that of the regular game, we did not see the number of frames as easily exceeded 100 frames in the regular test, but at the same time, we also saw that the number of game frames that soltei RTX3050 X-Gaming OC can present after turning on the light chase can still bring good game smooth support to players, which is also a relatively low-cost entry experience graphics card choice for the current high RTX series graphics cards.
Load energy consumption test:
We use the test software Fumark to grill the graphics card, open the latest version of GPU-Z during the baking process, view the video card temperature, memory temperature, fan speed, power consumption, and power consumption and other information, and record the value after 15 minutes.
Through the test collected load energy consumption data, the total power consumption of soltite RTX3050 X-Gaming OC is only 127.7 watts, as a high-frequency non-public graphics card energy consumption control is already good, from another side also reflects the RTX3050 ampere architecture GPU core energy consumption control has been very significant improvement, after all, the performance compared to the previous generation has increased several times, and the power consumption has only increased by about 50 watts.
Review Summary:
As a member of the expansion of the RTX30 series, the emergence of the RTX3050 has enriched the product choices of users on the RTX30 series graphics cards, and further reduced and popularized the application threshold of ray tracing in graphics card products, which is a welcome result for gamers.
As a new RTX3050 graphics card launched by Sottech, the Soltei RTX3050 X-Gaming OC continues the dazzling design of the same series of RTX3060 contrasting style in terms of appearance design, and the OC high-frequency parameter setting and the second generation of Sotecté Platinum performance materials have laid a solid foundation for the performance of graphics cards.
In the actual test of the data obtained, graphics cards can indeed provide excellent performance support for gamers and even general office users, especially the support for light chase can attract some users who use GTX series graphics cards or intend to experience light chase but the budget is not high, through the Soté RTX3050 X-Gaming OC to experience the fun of next-generation games.