INNO3D RTX 3050 Twin X2 OC: cool and quiet, shame about the real price

After analyzing the Gigabyte RTX 3050 EAGLE, finding a solution that it stands in the way in terms of performance between the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and the RTX 2060, a second RTX 3050 made this time by INNO3D.

The RTX 3050 Twin X2 OC is, as the name implies, factory overclocked: the boost frequency rises from the reference 1777 MHz to 1822 MHz, for an increase of 45 MHz. This is a minimum frequency increase, which does not significantly affect the performance of the card: in terms of fps it should affect 1-2 fps.

As always, when comparing two video cards based on the same project, more than performance in and of itself, the element of interest concerns cooling, both in terms of temperatures and noise. If with the Gigabyte EAGLE we had found a good level solution but with a very small mole on the noise front, will the INNO3D be able to do better? Let’s find out, but first let’s talk about the Twin X2 OC.

INNO3D RTX 3050 Twin X2 OC

The INNO3D solution has two axial fans and a length of about 24 cm, a height of 12 cm and a thickness that makes it occupy due slot. In the back of the card we have a backplate that has already been seen, at least in design, on other solutions of the Hong Kong house. There are numerous vents, with the main one aiming to collect as much fresh air as possible from the bottom of the case so that it passes through the radiator and pushes the hot air to the top, where the fans can capture it and expel it out of the chassis.

The two axial fans (which do not spin when unloaded, as in all modern products) are 85mm in diameter and start spinning as soon as the GPU temperature rises above 65 ° C. If the GPU temperature drops below a value of 40 ° C, the fans stop again. As in the case of the Gigabyte solution, also the INNO3D RTX 3050 Twin X2 OC it is powered by an 8-pin connector.

It should be noted that in the face of an overall longer card, the INNO3D it has a shorter PCB than Gigabyte’s solution. Finally, INNO3D has equipped the board with tre DisplayPort 1.4a e una HDMI 2.1, while Gigabyte has opted to insert two DisplayPort and as many HDMI.

We quickly recall that the heart of the RTX 3050 (of any brand) is GPU GA106 (12 billion transistors, 8 nm FFN) with 2560 CUDA core, 80 Tensor core, 20 RT core, 80 TMU and 48 ROPs. The GPU is connected to 8 GB of GDDR6 memory at 14 Gbps via a 128-bit interface for a bandwidth of 224 GB / s. The TDP is 130W and NVIDIA recommends pairing with a system with a 550W or greater power supply.

Test setup

The tests were performed on Windows 11. The test platform consisting of a Core i9-10900K on an ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero WiFi (Z490) motherboard with G.Skill Trident Z 2x8GB DDR4-4000 (17-17-17- 37) and a Crucial P1 M.2 2280 1TB SSD remains unchanged from the past. As for the GPUs in the comparison, we have included all RTX 3000 and RX 6000, also including older generation models for comparison. For the NVIDIA GPUs we used the 497.29 drivers, except the RTX 3080 12 GB and the RTX 3050 8 GB. In the case of AMD GPUs, we used 21.12.1.

Performance in traditional rendering, without ray tracing

In a way of gaming that is increasingly embracing ray tracing, there are still many players who delight in “traditional” games, based on mere rasterization. Furthermore, ray tracing is currently optional (except Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition), so let’s see how the new RTX 3050 8 GB behaves without enabling ray tracing with the two projects now in the editorial office.

There is not much to say about these tests, except that the easy initial predictions turned out to be correct: the INNO3D is 1-2 fps generally faster than the Gigabyte solution and this not so much thanks to the factory OC, but at the boost clock (as we will see later) able to go beyond what is recorded on the Gigabyte model.

Ray tracing performance

In this part of the article we see how video cards behave by activating ray tracing, without DLSS or FSR to support. Today when we talk about ray tracing we are not talking about everything and nothing, in the sense that the technology can affect more elements (reflections, global lighting, shadows, etc.) and depending on the game the developers choose how to apply it to make the graphic rendering. best possible.

There are therefore games where ray tracing has a very high impact, others where it is more digestible. This part of the article is also interesting to see how the architectures of NVIDIA and AMD perform in the management of the technology.

Again we have to repeat ourselves from the previous review: the games tested tell us that the RTX 3050 most often needs DLSS to play well with active ray tracing. Only in some titles where ray tracing is less heavy – SOTTR or Far Cry 6 – the card manages to raise its fps, otherwise it suffers.

In the article dedicated to Gigabyte’s proposal we carried out further tests with DLSS and active FSR to demonstrate the impact of these technologies on performance (obviously the most performing modes correspond to a greater degradation of image quality).

Consumption, clock, temperature and noise

In this part of the article we analyze the behavior of INNO3D’s video card compared to Gigabyte’s. Let’s start with consumption, which we recorded with the NVIDIA PCAT hardware, very useful for tracking precisely how much power a video card needs.

The INNO3D consumes like Gigabyte’s solution, with some sporadic spikes slightly higher. While in, the clock rate of the GPU goes up to around 1950-1970 MHz, well beyond the boost frequency, which argues in favor of the cooling system.

With the help of GPU-Z we have plotted the GPU temperature. As you can see, the GPU settles around the 66 ° C, with a hotspot of 80 ° C, absolutely normal values ​​since NVIDIA indicates a thermal limit of 93 ° C. It is also about numbers 3-4 ° C lower than Gigabyte’s proposal.

In terms of noise, the card proves slightly less noisy than Gigabyte’s solution. During the gaming load the fans settled at 1600 RPM, around 47% of the duty cycle. In an environment with a noise level of 36.5 dB we recorded 43.5 dB under the Metro Exodus load, while forcing it to 100% artificially with Afterburner the noise jumped to 59 dB. It should be noted that the GPU, with the card with the fans stopped, settled at about 43 ° C of temperature.

Conclusions

In these conclusions we do not reiterate all the “story” that we have already written about the RTX 3050 8 GB as a project, you can read it in the review of the EAGLE and clearly the incarnation of INNO3D does not shift our impressions one millimeter. Long story short though, we were expecting more and we’re not fully thrilled with this RTX 3050.

Moving on to the Twin X2 OC, we can only see how is a great product in terms of functioning. We were expecting it given the larger heatsink compared to the competing proposal. INNO3D traded some compactness for lower temperatures and slightly less noise, nevertheless the Twin X2 OC is still small in size. Those who love RGB LEDs may not like the look, but it is something subjective.

The real problem is the real price of the card which, except for temporary offers at launch, is unfortunately destined to skyrocket over 500 euros due to the shortage of semiconductors. The situation, common to all manufacturers, disintegrates the value of any video card analyzed for a year and a half now, whether it is valid or invalid. In theory, the MSRP of the RTX 3050 8 GB is 279 euros, so this OC variant could be positioned slightly above, but precisely we are talking about pure theory at this historical moment.