Gadgetory

offering only the finest in PC enthusiasts apparel awesomesauce shirts are not only threaded they're hyper threaded and come factory overclocked get yours today at the awesomesauce two walls of gas so it wasn't too long ago when we all went crazy over the big release of nvidia gtx 980ti but fast forward a month or so and we're still seeing a handful of custom variants pop up from adding board partners keeping the hype of new videos latest card ever so real and with the promise of better thermals lower acoustics and more performance it's not hard to see why so today I'll be taking a look at the gtx 980ti amp edition from ZOTAC Zoet ax amp signature indicates the card has been factory overclocked this one in particular sees a core clock increase to 1051 megahertz and a boost clock to eleven hundred and forty over the reference model that's a fifty one and sixty five megahertz boost respectively but I quickly found in my testing that the cards boost clock was able to hit around twelve hundred and fifty megahertz due to the favorable thermal conditions in my office this performance boost brought to you by Lance Armstrong here the rest of the specs including the GM 200 mm 816 CUDA cores and ample six gigabyte frame buffer at the reference speed of seventeen hundred and fifty three megahertz keeping things cool on the dual slot card is so tax ice storm cooler which features 390 millimeter fans that stay put until the GPU is under load in order to save power and suppress fan noise the acoustic aid is wasted here however as the fans are virtually inaudible even when they do spin up and that's a just two feet away from me with the cases side panel off no wind noise no high-pitched whirring of any kind I mean at one point I had to physically get up to see if the fans were actually spinning and sure enough it was exhausting no not the card physically getting up so kudos otac not every vendor can make a high-end card as quiet as this one let alone one that gets me off my ass the large aluminum heatsink and copper heat pipes are partially enclosed by a gray shroud of metal and plastic construction accompanied by some water transfer printing that gives the card a sporty carbon-fiber appearance while the coolers length of 301 millimeters is reserved for larger chassis z' Maxx as a claimed power efficiency is suitable for more modest power supplies sporting at least one six pin and one eight pin PCIe cable on the same side as your power connectors you'll find some ZOTAC branding in the center and a small section of the full cover back plate that reads push the limit quite simply the most clever insertion of a Quick Start Guide I've seen to date a nifty aesthetic trait of the back plate is that it extends past the PCB and wraps around the front of the card where it meets the fan shroud effectively hiding the thin array for a more uniform look finally at the back you get the same video outputs as found on the reference model including dual link DVI HDMI and three display ports for 4k resolution at 60 Hertz for benchmarking I used my 5820k system running Windows 8.1 and was able to push the limit of the cards factory clock speed to fourteen hundred and seventy-three megahertz a seemingly negligible 1 to 2 percent increase over my reference overclocked temp señal my tests maxed out at 68 degrees Celsius a solid 17 degrees cooler than the reference card hopefully this means we'll see some noticeable performance gains via GPU boost as we now have a higher thermal ceiling for our GPU temp target as I mentioned earlier the fans on the amp Edition were so quiet that I'm still trying to shake off the uncomfortable silence between us so let's fire up some melodic mayhem as we check out the benchmarks as you can see from the results both cards stay competitive at 4k with the exception of a 19% lead for the amp edition in Metro last light once we drop down to lower resolutions however ZOTAC takes home some landslide victories that are a clear indication of its overclocking prowess aided enlarge by its ability to stay 26% cooler on average than the reference model I'm still on the notion that single GPU cards won't be fully ready for 4k until 2016 which by that I mean will see consistent average frame rates topping 60 FPS on most maxed out triple-a titles in the meantime the gtx 980ti can churn through 1440 with ease and the influx of quad HD g-sync monitors makes this combo all the more compelling for us gamers now as for ZOTAC s-- amp edition this is the first custom variant of the 980 TI that i've personally spent any time with so i honestly can't compare it to other offerings from competing AIB partners what I can tell you is that it blows the reference model out of the water in three of what I consider the big four characteristics for any video card being performance thermals acoustics and power consumption being awash in this case it's a shining example of wily wait the extra month or two after the reference cards released to market and while I personally agree that Zoet acts loud and proud sporty aesthetic isn't for everyone I have to admit that it checks all the boxes for what I look for in a card at this price point but let me know what you guys think of this thing in the comments below and don't forget to toss me a like on this video if you enjoyed it before you go check out my store you can pick up an awesomesauce shirts not like this one and in case you didn't hear my CPU cooler shirt is back in stock but is quickly selling out again which makes me wonder how many of you were watching me naked beforehand