When you’re speaking concerning the higher echelon of graphics playing cards Nvidia’s GTX 1080 Ti that’s the go-to GPU. There will, nonetheless, at all times be those that crave a bit of extra energy and, till AMD’s RX Vega comes using in on its pink horse, Zotac’s aiming for his or her factory-overclocked GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Amp Edition (bloody hell, that’s a mouthful) to be these customers’ new favorite card.
All this graphical grunt means nothing in case your monitor isn’t as much as the duty, so ensure you pair your GPU with one of many best gaming monitors round.
With the showdown between AMD’s Vega and Nvidia’s upcoming Volta GPUs inching ever nearer, hype for brand spanking new gaming tech is reaching fever pitch. Zotac want to capitalise on the joy with this overclocked tackle the prevailing 1080 Ti card earlier than one of many new GPUs emerges to grab the crown.
But at $50 (£75) greater than the Founders Edition, is it well worth the value hike or is it higher to pocket your cash and go on a Steam buying spree? We fired up the check bench and started working to seek out out.
Click on the fast hyperlinks beneath to get to the juicy bits.
Zotac GTX 1080 Ti Amp Edition specs
The Amp Edition clearly has many similarities to the Founders Edition 1080 Ti – 11GB of GDDR5X reminiscence, three,584 CUDA cores, and a reminiscence clock of 11Gbps amongst them. You’d nearly suppose the Zotac card was primarily based on the identical chip or one thing…
However, there are some variations – most notably, Zotac have managed to squeeze extra clock velocity out of the cardboard, bringing it as much as a 1,683MHz increase clock. That’s 101MHz increased than the inventory reference clock of the GTX 1080 Ti however it’s nonetheless solely the identical quantity many different associate playing cards are reaching. In actual gaming fps phrases, it’s hardly a mind-blowing bump in efficiency for these shopping for the Amp Edition and searching for a tangible efficiency enchancment over a stock-clocked card.
Having stated that, with some mild overclocking, we have been capable of carry the GPU clock as much as across the 1.92GHz mark. And, realistically, that’s what most individuals can be shopping for the Amp Edition for – chasing the overclocking potential to ramp the Nvidia GPU tech so far as it’ll go with out having to promote one other of their children to pay for Nvidia’s Titan Xp.
As a results of this elevated out-of-the-box velocity, the Amp Edition attracts 270W of energy – 20W greater than the usual 1080 Ti. That’s why Zotac have beefed-up the cooling, utilizing copper contacts to attract warmth away from the core in addition to thermal warmth pads and twin followers to maintain the temperature down and maintain throttling at bay. Even overclocked, the Amp Edition really stays cooler than an untouched Founders Edition card.
Zotac’s Freeze cooling operate is a nifty characteristic, too. It’s the title they provide to their 0dB fan cooling design, which suggests the followers don’t begin spinning up till the GPU hits temperature. That means, once you’re not operating any graphically intensive apps by way of your PC, the followers stay idle and the cardboard silent. Zotac are saying that by way of ‘precision temperature gauging’ and a widened temperature tolerance they’re capable of keep away from any of the stop-start stuttering you possibly can expertise when the GPU temp hovers round that activation level.
If having probably the most vibrant PC is your factor, the Amp Edition’s SPECTRA LED lighting will make a welcome addition to the sunshine present occurring inside your case. You’re capable of customise the color too, so in the event you have been hoping for a uniform aesthetic in your case you’re in luck.
Zotac GTX 1080 Ti Amp Edition benchmarks
Zotac GTX 1080 Ti Amp Edition efficiency
As you’ll hope with a factory-overclocked card, the Amp Edition exceeds the efficiency of the stock-clocked Nvidia model most often, however the efficiency increase is so small it’s going to be indiscernible in-game. Not actually what you need, is it?
Like we stated earlier than, although, folks possible received’t be shopping for the Amp Edition for the out-of-the-box efficiency, however to overclock it. So what’s the overclocking like? Oh, it’s none too thrilling both? Oh expensive.
Yep, it’s not the reply we have been hoping for, however our benchmarking confirmed that, after we’d obtained each playing cards operating as quick as they’d go, our Zotac GTX 1080 Ti Amp Edition GPU really carried out barely worse most often than our overclocked Founders Edition GTX 1080 Ti. The additional cooling and improved energy componentry haven’t actually delivered the additional GPU efficiency you might need anticipated over the inventory Nvidia model, then.
That stated, the followers are impressively quiet even after we have been giving the cardboard an actual battering. You aren’t going to maintain your vital different awake along with your late-night gaming periods when rocking this card. Conversely, the Founders Edition definitely isn’t shy about letting you recognize its followers are operating, so it’s definitely one thing to contemplate if fan noise winds you up.
As we talked about in our Founders Edition overview, $700+ continues to be bloody costly for a graphics card. When evaluating the worth of the Amp Edition to the Founders Edition, $50 (£75) extra could not look like an enormous quantity, however it all provides as much as a critical sum of cash. Not as critical because the asking value for a Titan Xp, however nonetheless…
Zotac GTX 1080 Ti Amp Edition verdict
We must admit it – we didn’t see this one coming. The complete objective of a factory-overclocked card is to both present a measurably speedier gaming expertise out-of-the-box, or present sufficient frequency headroom which you could push it additional than you would possibly with a reference card. But that doesn’t appear to be the case right here.
On paper, the numbers instructed a bump in efficiency (albeit not an enormous one), however sadly that hardly interprets into significant body price features. We can’t communicate for the opposite associate playing cards’ efficiency with out testing them (lots of which boast the identical elevated clock velocity because the Zotac’s, whereas Gigabyte’s Aorus Xtreme clocks as excessive as 1,746MHz), however in the event you’re actually hungry for but extra graphical energy you might need to chunk the bullet and shell out for a Titan Xp. But that manner insanity lies…
In our humble opinion, it’d be price ready till the mud settles as soon as AMD’s Vega has joined the fray. Though who is aware of what the costs for present high-end graphics can be in six months?
Zotac’s IceStorm cooling array is one thing to be applauded – for these with out a substantial amount of dwelling house, a loud PC could make you the home pariah – however sadly, it would not make it a lot of an enchancment over the inventory card, even when it does have all of the graphical goodness of the usual GTX 1080 Ti.
Yes, the Zotac is arguably sexier than the Founders Edition card, but when your main concern is wanting your PC to seem like a disco ball once you boot it up, you’d be higher positioned utilizing the spare cash on LEDs and getting artful.
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