Introduction
This will probably be our last GTX 980 Ti review before the next generation of cards from Nvidia are released. The speculation is they will be named the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 continuing the product naming convention Nvidia have been using for quite a while now. If you forget the GTX Titan cards, out of the budget of most the natural flagship card is the Ti, at least judging by the GTX 980 Ti range and its performance. The production run has now been stopped, and less than a year after it started.
This will also probably mean there will be a GTX 1080 Titan and possibly a GTX 1080 Ti edition too. Before you think about upgrading, should you be overlooking the GTX 980 Ti, especially the releases with custom cooling solutions and core overclocks?
Either way, let’s look at the Zotac GTX 980 Ti AMP! Edition, a very different looking Zotac release compared to their stock reference cooler product, the Zotac Nvidia GTX 980 Ti. A card we loved, but only because of the performance, not because it looked especially good or set itself apart from the rest of the vanilla releases.
Zotac have labelled this the AMP! Edition, their own premium branding and something that would suggest it can’t get any better from the team at Zotac. It’s already sounding interesting!
Specifications
| Zotac GTX 980 Ti AMP! Edition | GeForce GTX 980 Ti | GeForce GTX 980 | GeForce GTX TITAN X | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stream Processors | 2816 | 2816 | 2048 | 3072 |
| Core Clock | Base: 1051 MHz Boost: 1140 MHz | 1000MHz | 1126MHz | 1000MHz |
| Texture Units | 176 | 176 | 128 | 192 |
| ROPs | 96 | 96 | 64 | 96 |
| Video RAM | 6GB GDDR5 | 6GB GDDR5 | 4GB GDDR5 | 12GB GDDR5 |
| Memory Clock | 7010MHz | 7010MHz | 7010MHz | 7010MHz |
| Memory Bus Width | 384-bit | 384-bit | 256-bit | 384-bit |
| Transistor Count | 8 Billion | 8 Billion | 5.2 Billion | 8 Billion |
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm |
| GPU | GM200 | GM200 | GM204 | GM200 |
| Launch Date | 17/06/15 | 01/06/15 | 18/09/14 | 17/03/15 |
Product Gallery
A nice clean box, and in much better condition than the Palit Super Jetstream GTX 980 Ti when it arrived.
There are three AMP! editions, this is the “entry” AMP! edition with the AMP! Omega and the AMP! Extreme topping off the range.
Zotac GTX 980 Ti AMP! Edition Graphics Card Review
Package and Bundle - 8
Performance - 7.5
Price - 7.5
Consumer Experience - 8
7.8
Our biggest issue with this card is that it's not special enough. Sure a core and memory frequency increase are good as standard and the GTX 980 Ti core is excellent, but we think the only advantage in owning this card over the reference design is cooling, and therefore overclocking. You may get a good overclocking baseline out of this card due to the good cooling solution, and it will help with sound performance, but the Palit Super Jetstream GTX 980 Ti outperforms it on most tests.