Sound Performance
We tested the sound performance at idle and during load. We used a certified Db meter at 15 inches range. As you can see, second place due to the excellent under load performance. It’s beaten by the superb Sapphire Fury Tri-X, which pretty much beats anything with a powerful core. At idle, or when not in 3D Mode, the fans do not spin up, so there was no reading to report. This is the same with the top three cards, and will most likely be the standard specification of all cards and possibly CPU coolers of the future.
In the meantime, the cards at the bottom of the chart are not bad, they are just slightly less effective at cooling quietly and have an active fan when in 2D or non gaming situations.
It is important to note we used the MicroCool Banchetto 101 Chassis for testing which is an open chassis. This means you are hearing the GPU cooler fan unobstructed and the card should have maximum airflow around it. With all of these test results, they are raw and uncut, take all sound results with a pinch of salt.
Any of these card are installed in a chassis, may reduce in sound levels due to the acoustic dampening effect of the chassis itself. Though if your chassis has poor airflow, then the card will labour under load, and possibly increase the overall sound when gaming.
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.
