ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme Review | Amping Up The Ante In Gaming

The GTX 1080 Ti is NVIDIA’s strongest gaming card in its consumer graphics card lineup, and ZOTAC took it to the next level with its AMP Extreme edition. Like many manufacturers, the 1080 Ti cards will be fitted with various custom cooling solutions as well as several performance tweaks done to differentiate their products with the others. Let us find out how well it stands on its own.

Right off the bat, the 1080 Ti AMP Extreme is a humongous card with its length taking up 325mm.  Not to mention, even though it takes up 2 of the case’s PCI slots, the card takes up to 3 slots in terms of width. This extra bulk is done to fit their cooling solution called the IceStorm which uses direct copper contacts, thermal heat pads and its three fans to draw heat away from the chip. Potential buyers should check if their case, or even motherboard, fit this beast of a graphics card.

When it comes to the display outputs that are available, the AMP Extreme does not fall short. With 3x DisplayPort 1.4, a single HDMI 2.0b, and DVI port, the card would be compatible with most monitors on the market.

Supports SPECTRA for RGB customization using their own software called FireStorm. This program allows for the overclocking and simple monitoring of the AMP Extreme. It has all the features one would expect in a Graphics Card tool.

To show the performance of the GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme in all its glory, we decided to compare it with the GTX 1080 with reference design.

Like in many synthetic benchmarks, there will definitely be a huge gap. However, instead of using just these to justify how good the 1080 Ti, we ran some games at the highest preset and got the numbers needed.

As far as we can see, there were games that see a huge difference in performance with nearly a 50% boost in FPS, especially in the 4K portion. There were also games that did not have such a big bump in framerate, with some games just seeing a 10% increase.

This goes to show how the game’s engine can restrict the potential of the graphics card. Even with a powerhouse of a GPU, newer titles like AC:O struggles to pump up framerates using ZOTAC’s 1080 Ti. On the other hand, games like the unreleased FFXV is able to push the 1080 Ti to the limit and provide gamers with a premium gaming experience of 4K @ 30FPS.

However, one big and definitely important difference between the two cards during the entirety of the benchmarks is the temperature. The AMP Extreme is able to keep at a cool 65-69°C while the 1080 Reference cooler struggled at 86-90°C. All the while staying cooler, ZOTAC’s 1080 Ti managed to stay silent, whereas the other card became clearly audible throughout the entire time. This proves that an aftermarket graphics card, like ZOTAC’s custom cooling solution, works marvelously.