Conclusion
Performance
When considering the data we have gathered, in plain rasterized gameplay the Radeon RX 6600 is the easy winner. The ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC was bested by a low of 8% in Dying Light 2 and by as much as 26% in F1 2022. In the racing format, F1 and Forza Horizon 5, the Radeon 6600 was overwhelming.
In Far Cry 6 the result was a little closer, but Radeon 6600 non-upscaled performance was nearly as fast as the ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC upscaled performance. In our trio of demanding games: Cyberpunk 2077, Dying Light 2, and Watch Dogs Legion the Radeon 6600 was again out in front, especially in Cyberpunk 2007. The addition of upscaling just drove home the point even more.
All was not lost for our ZOTAC Gaming RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC however. When we flipped the switch to Ray Tracing things became a little more interesting. That is not to say that the Radeon 6600 is lost when you Ray Trace. F1 showed a big margin for the 6600 using FSR with a small margin of victory for our ZOTAC RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC without upscaling. In Dying Light our ZOTAC video card held a clear advantage. Far Cry 6 once again favored the Radeon 6600, with nearly identical margins whether or not upscaling was used. Cyberpunk 2077 and Watch Dogs legion are hard to discuss because both video cards were so miserable. Even with upscaling Cyberpunk 2077 was difficult to play, but the Radeon was better again. As we have said, something is broken in Watch Dogs Legion when it comes to Radeon cards and Ray Tracing.
Overclocking
The ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC was easy to overclock. The values obtained were on par with other like cards in prior reviews (here, here). Overclocking led to a very consistent 7-8% advantage over the default video card in all our games.
We used a custom fan curve set in FireStorm to cool the overclocked card and it worked very well. You can review the sensor data and see the GPU was kept very cool. The fans were essentially silent despite running at 57 to 60%. FireStorm is quite straightforward to use. Since this is our second Zotac review in a short time, we found the utility a breeze to set up and use.
Final Points
This review examined the ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC video card. We focused on 1080p gameplay and compared our card with the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6600. We can’t lose track of the fact that we are asking these video cards to render the games at their highest possible settings, then we add more complexity with Ray Tracing. It’s not hard to see that the Radeon 6600 is a tough challenge for the Zotac GeForce RTX 3050. In fact, unless you enable Ray Tracing, the Radeon 6600 is the card to beat. So, rasterized gaming at 1080p belongs to the Red Team in our testing.
Ray Tracing is a different story. Our Zotac card did put up a good showing here. A definite nod to NVIDIA’s work on Ray Tracing technology. Still, there are games where the Radeon 6600 shines as well.
Finally, no matter how you slice it, DLSS and FSR make a big difference in the frame rates and playability for both these video cards. One advantage in favor of the ZOTAC RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC is it can use either upscaling method, where the Radeon is limited to FSR.
What is the bottom line here?  Well, ZOTAC makes a nice video card, it looks and feels well-constructed, it overclocks well and the cooling solution is quiet and very efficient. All that unfortunately doesn’t help if you don’t have the horses to pull the wagon.
