Zotac GTX 780 AMP! Review Thread

[NCX]

Hardware Info UK

The GeForce GTX 780 is a card that all of Nvidia's partners wanted to do something special with and Zotac clearly made a big effort in that department as well. We already tested four overclocked cards with customized coolers, and Zotac's GeForce GTX 780 AMP! Edition outdoes all of them - on paper at least. Unfortunately in practice it falls just a bit short, which is a shame.

The Zotac card has higher clock frequencies and a unique cooler with three fans. In practice, the results are not as impressive due to very restrained Boost settings in the BIOS. Overclocking also didn't yield great results, and we actually didn't get it as far as the ASUS and Inno3D cards.

Zotac's AMP! cooler works well, but not better than average. The noise levels are much too high, however, and each of the other four cards are better in this regard.

The recommended price of of £ 589 / € 679 is higher than the average price of the other four GeForce GTX 780s we tested. With that price and the current BIOS settings, it is hard to recommend the Zotac card over the competition. The ASUS GTX780-DC2OC-3GD5 remains our favorite, with the MSI N780 TF 3GD5/OC as good affordable option.

The brightest spot in our examination of this card were the clock frequencies we were able to obtain when overclocking the memory, which were distinctly higher than the competition. Therefore, we hope Zotac will release a BIOS upgrade for this model, allowing faster Turbo frequencies - which would likely make this the fastest GTX 780 on the block. The question is whether the cooling solution would be able to handel the additional heat, but given our test indicated an average temperature, there is plenty of room for turning up the heat a bit. With a clear performance advantage, the card's noise production would be a lot easier to accept and Zotac would have a clear winner on its hands.

Hardware Heave Review

When NVIDIA launched then GTX 780 they attached to it a rather impressive cooler. In fact it would be fair to say for a couple of generations now NVIDIA have been significantly outperforming AMD in that area. So for ZOTAC to take that cooler, throw it away and create their own it adds some extra risk to creating a 780 but thankfully they have succeeded in creating a better unit. Part of this is down to the chunky heatsink, copper pipes etc but the tri-fan setup runs quiet and the metal shroud ensures the card feels well-built rather than cheap.

Looking to performance we have a card which offers performance which easily exceeds the fastest (and cheaper) AMD single GPU option while also offering significant improvements over the stock GTX 780 and even pushing past any other GTX 780 we have seen to date. Temperatures were also very good on this card and ZOTAC have kept the power use in check too.

For value we get a decent bundle of games, AMD do offer more with their cards but the selection is getting a bit dated now. At £589 the AMP! Compares well to the other enhanced 780 cards however its real strength is that this GPU offers much of the Titan experience in a much more affordable package.

The best GTX 780 we have tested to date.

PC Games Hardware Germany (Use google or chrome to translate)

These are all of the reviews I could fine atm. The Zotac AMP! is the same price in Canada as the Evga ACX & 60$ cheaper than the Galaxy HOF, but it seems the HOF is definitely better. [H] Galaxy GTX 780 Hof Review

 

[losttech]

I have had some experience with zotac RMA and its not speedy 3-weeks to a month if you do one and they dont cross ship.
They are fine once you actually get the card but going a month without a gaming rig sucked.

So just some extra info if you ever get a bad card from them.