ZOTAC GTX 980Ti AMP Extreme review: Adding finesse to the stock GTX 980Ti

Close on the heels of Nvidia launching the GTX 980Ti , Zotac came out with the GTX 980Ti  AMP! Extreme Edition card, which is a factory overclocked card. Zotac is known for its factory overclocked Nvidia cards and considering the GTX 980Ti already outperforms most single-GPU cards out there, we were just wondering what kind of performance improvement one can expect from the AMP edition card. Let us find out. Build and Design Considering the fact that the Zotac GTX 980Ti AMP Extreme edition is a factory overclocked card, Zotac has taken the liberty to redesign the card, and how! The card looks like an absolute beast, and has a triple-slot configuration, meaning any two PCI-Express slot near the card will be rendered useless.  It exudes an air of a performance card thanks to the three 90mm fans called ‘IceStorm’ fans which are placed up front. The length, at 12.9-inches is longer than the 10.5-inch seen on the reference card. On closer observation from the top, you will notice that the PCB length is shorter, but its the third fan that increases the length.  The look of the card is also a departure from the black and yellow colour template that is seen on most Zotac cards. You get a dark-gray coloured open-metal shroud called the Carbon ExoArmor, and there is a gray coloured back plate as well with the words ‘Push The Limit’ engraved on it. Even the top and side portions of the shroud have pleasing design. On the whole, a very well built card with an interesting overall design.  Rest of the features are pretty much in line with the stock GTX 980Ti card. On the display front, you have 3x DisplayPort 1.2, 1x HDMI 2.0 port and 1x DVI port. The HDMI 2.0 port also supports 4K at 60Hz. It requires ~one 6-pin and one~ two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Features The Zotac GTX 980Ti AMP! Extreme Edition card comes with a base clock of 1,253 MHz  and a boost clock of 1,355 MHz. This is quite an upgrade from the stock speeds of 1,000 MHz for base clock and 1,075 MHz for the boost clock. But Zotac includes the FireStorm utility which will let you overclock this card.  The Zotac GTX 980Ti AMP edition houses the GM200 GPU. The GM200 on the 980Ti comes with two of the 24 streaming multiprocessors (seen on the TITAN X) disabled. So you have 22 SMMs giving you 2816 active CUDA cores. It sports 6GB of VRAM.  The GTX 980Ti supports DirectX 12. Apart from this you have support for Nvidia’s features such as Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR), Multi-frame Anti-aliasing (MFAA), Voxel Global Illumination (VXGI), GameStream, G-sync and so on. Test Setup Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K Motherboard: ASRock Z87M Extreme4 RAM: 2 x 4GB GSkill RipjawsX Drive: Intel SSD, 80GB (boot drive) Additional Drive: Western Digital Velociraptor, 150GB (secondary) PSU: Cooler Master 800W Silent Pro Gold OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Monitor: ASUS PB278Q Drivers: Nvidia 335.60 (for ZOTAC GTX 980Ti AMP and Nvidia GTX 980Ti) (Other cards were tested on older drivers as we didn’t have it with us at the time) Performance 3DMark 11 3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation to determine the performance of a computer’s 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities. The latest version makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11, including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. We used the “Performance” preset for this benchmark.  3D Mark (Fire Strike Extreme) This is another synthetic benchmark from Futuremark. We test the card on the Fire Strike Extreme test as it is designed for the enthusiast-level graphics performance. It test the DirectX11 capabilities, using extreme tessellation and volumetric illumination along with smoke simulations which use compute shaders and dynamic particle illumination.  Metro: Last Light Metro: Last Light is a first-person shooter video game that continues Metro’s legacy of being one of the most demanding games for the best of GPUs. The game has a lot of DX11 eye-candy, which really puts a strain on any GPU. All DX11 features were enabled for the benchmark and we used the built-in benchmark for this test. PS: Some of the cards have not been tested on the 4K display, as we did not have those cards on hand. We will update the charts as soon as we get the cards. Also for the sake of brevity in the charts, we have kept the name in the chart as ZOTAC GTX 980Ti AMP! (not to be confused with the actual card with that name).     Bioshock Infinite Bioshock Infinite developed by Irrational Games uses a modified version of the Unreal Engine. It’s a first-person shooter which takes place in a fictional floating city. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings. In the Ultra settings you have FXAA On, Ultra texture detail, 16x AF, Ultra dynamic shadows and with the Medium settings you have FXAA On, High texture detail, 8x AF and High dynamic shadows.    Tomb Raider Tomb Raider is a third-person shooter which is a reboot of the famous series with Lara Croft as the protagonist. In this reboot, she is ship-wrecked on a mysterious island which presents its own set of challenges which Lara has to overcome. The game is based on a customised CrystalEngine. It also features the AMD TressFX technology which adds more realism to hair rendering and physics. We ran the benchmark using the in-built benchmark tool at the Ultimate and Ultra settings. On the Ultimate preset, you have TressFX activated, 16x AF, FXAA whereas the Ultra preset has Normal hair quality, 16x AF, FXAA.    Sleeping Dogs Sleeping Dogs is an open-world third-person action-adventure game developed by United Front games and Square Enix London Studios. Set in modern-day Hong Kong the game involves you playing as Wei Shan, an undercover cop, who infiltrates a local Triad gang. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings.    The Witcher 3: Wild Hun****t The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an open-world action role-playing game. The story revolves around the protagonist Geralt of Rivia who is on a journey through the lands of the Northern Kingdoms. It is based on the REDengine 3 game engine which is meant for non-linear RPGs. Since the game does not have its in-built benchmark we played a set saved game which involved couple of action scenes and riding on horseback through various terrains including through water. We used FRAPs to keep track of the frame rates. The graphics section also has a separate post processing section. We played using Ultra and Medium settings.    Temperatures We noted the temperature of all the participating cards at idle and load states. The fan speeds were kept on auto. We noted maximum load temperatures after running benchmarks such as FurMark at 1080p preset, 3D Mark 11, Battlefield 3 and Metro: Last Light and taking an average.  Power Consumption We used an energy monitoring device to measure the power consumed by the total rig with the graphics cards on them. The Cooler Master 800W PSU was plugged into the power meter which gave out the power consumed in Watts on the display. After powering on the system we let it stay unused for a good five minutes to get the idle power reading and then ran three instances of FurMark 1080p preset to get the maximum load power.  Verdict and Price in India Just like we had said with the Nvidia GTX 980Ti review, the Zotac GTX 980Ti AMP Extreme edition is a card which is meant for a niche audience who do not want to compromise in any way when it comes to performance. It is priced at Rs 68,980, which is a good Rs 13,000 higher than the stock GTX 980Ti card. Does the performance deserve this kind of price gap, we think not. But if you want the best performing card, then this is the one to go for. The Zotac card performed better than the stock GTX 980Ti card in most of the tests except in Metro: Last Light where we got scores comparable to the GTX 980. But in all other benchmarks, there was a good 10 to 15 percent increase in scores. It is clearly the fastest card that we have tested to date. The importance of the three fan setup becomes evident when you have a look at the load temperatures. It barely crossed 70 degrees despite the highest end games or benchmarks such as the Furmark 3. The stock card was around 15 degrees hotter in comparison. So that is the USP of this AMP edition card, for which Zotac is charging a premium. Of course, this is not the quietest card around. The total system power consumption did cross 400 Watts, so ensure you have at least a good 600W power supply unit for this card - an 800W plus PSU would be ideal. As part of the Nvidia bundle, you get either Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege or Assassin’s Creed Syndicate when you purchase this card.