Had and old 480GT 4GB card that couldn't keep up with the new computer I built. Built an I5 12600KF on an MSI Z790 motherboard, 32GB DDR 5 memory, 512GB Windows11 OS SSD, 2 TB hard drive, and a 2TBNVMe SSD. Thought i would use the old card until I could find a card that I liked but that just didn't work out! The old card just refused to even display the games I was trying to run. Bought the Zotac first, because it would ship from Amazon faster by about 2 weeks that the cheaper MSI 3060 I was initially looking at would. It cost me an additional $60 dollars but I didn't want to have to wait 2 weeks for it! Second, I watched some reviews on the Zotac 3060 on YouTube and the performance numbers were better by about 6 to 8 percent.
I installed the card when it arrived and installation was a breeze. Booted up the card, went to their website and installed the software, also easy. Rebooted the machine and the card performs flawlessly!! The card will run older games like Diablo 3 in all high and ultra settings at about 325 to 355 FPS at 1080! Haven't tested Armored Core 6 yet but reviews say that Steam loves this card and the visuals are beautiful and smooth at the initial install settings.
The Firestorm card management software that you download from Zotac's website is excellent and allows you manage the graphics card overclock rate, individual fan speeds, memory overclock rates, etc. A great utility to ensure that your video card is staying cool and it has custom configurations to allow you to define your own set points. It also displays the GPU and memory temperatures so you can watch your temps change when you reconfigure the fans settings.
This card I know isn't as fast as the new 40 series graphics cards are but unless you intend to play the newest games on ultra high settings and have a monitor that can support those settings as well, this card is definitely a great value for the average player and the performance will surprise you unless you are looking to spend $800 up to $1500 on a video card just so you can have bragging rights with your friends!! A $349.99 price is definitely reasonable for me, where $800 to a $1000 is not! Also if you are OK with a longer delivery wait the MSI 3060 card is pretty much the exact same card with a bit slower GPU clock timing but at about a $60 cheaper price. To be honest, I don't think you will see any difference in the 5 to 8 frames a seconds difference between the 2 cards when the difference is in the 80 FPS area anyway. Either way, I definitely think this card is a winner for the price and performance!!!
| Max Screen Resolution | 7680 x 4320 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 1807 MHz |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 |
| Chipset Brand | Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 12 GB |
