New - Zotac AMP Extreme Edition GTX 970!

[RaistlinZ]

Just stumbled upon this on Newegg. Zotac AMP! Extreme Edition GTX 970 with a triple-slot aftermarket cooler.

Default core 1203
Default mem 7200

MSRP = $409.99

 

[RaistlinZ]

Newegg also has the MSI Gaming GTX 980's now in stock.

MSRP = $579.99

 

[toyota]

I actually thought about the MSI Gaming 980 but only one review I have seen showed it ocing really no better than the reference card. and it was using a lot of power too. it seems like many of these non reference cards are absolute power hogs. Maxwell's biggest selling point was efficiency but it seems that goes completely out the door on some models making it as bad or worse than the 780..whats funny is that in the Hard review of the Gaming 970 no one seem to even care that it used more power than the 780. I am just becoming more unimpressed with the more reviews I look at and I certainly made a HUGE mistake selling my 780.

 

[RussianSensation]

That's stupid price for that Zotac card. $370 for Gigabyte 970 is already pushing it. With $420-430 780Ti, I would pick that. 780 Ti overclocked competes with 980 @ 1400mhz+.

 

[ocre]

Maxwell is very efficient. That is no joke. It is real.

The issue is the high clocks on the 28nm node. Nvidia was aggressive with their clocks. These are the highest clocked 28nm chips ever but even still, everything stock is perfectly under control. Very impressive power consumption.

But then their are AM vendor OC models with custom bios. This is a place where binning comes to play. You are already at the edge of the limits and some chips require more than othrts to go that much further. Most vendors try to put the best binning chips in the custom oc cards and this allows them to get that much more performance without a huge spike in consumption. They pick thru the chips.

Honestly it looks like msi is doing something very different. My feeling is they arent binning nore trying to choose the best chips. They are cranking up the values for the worst case and calling it a day. This isnt something new at all. This is why kepler had a voltage lock so low. Cause vendors can make their chips look very very bad. Msi is doing something very diffetent than the others. Maybe it saves them money idk. But their methods should not be something you judge maxwell by

 

[toyota]

Maxwell is very efficient. That is no joke. It is real.

The issue is the high clocks on the 28nm node. Nvidia was aggressive with their clocks. These are the highest clocked 28nm chips ever but even still, everything stock is perfectly under control. Very impressive power consumption.

But then their are AM vendor OC models with custom bios. This is a place where binning comes to play. You are already at the edge of the limits and some chips require more than othrts to go that much further. Most vendors try to put the best binning chips in the custom oc cards and this allows them to get that much more performance without a huge spike in consumption. They pick thru the chips.

Honestly it looks like msi is doing something very different. My feeling is they arent binning nore trying to choose the best chips. They are cranking up the values for the worst case and calling it a day. This isnt something new at all. This is why kepler had a voltage lock so low. Cause vendors can make their chips look very very bad. Msi is doing something very diffetent than the others. Maybe it saves them money idk. But their methods should not be something you judge maxwell by

No its not very efficient in all cases.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Crazy design but looks like its got the fastest out of the box clocks, at least from what i see on newegg. Wonder how it will overclock.Zotac cards are great when on sale so this one will be under $400 sometime soon no doubt.

 

[Face2Face]

The card looks really good and I love the robust PCB and power delivery. The price does seem pretty high though, but if you register the card with Zotac within 28 days you'll extend the warranty to 5 years, which is pretty stellar.

Though even with eight GPU phases and three memory phases the card will still be held back by it's power limit, which doesn't make it any better than most GTX 970's at this point. That is until modded BIOSes are released, then this card should really shine.

 

[tviceman]

I actually thought about the MSI Gaming 980 but only one review I have seen showed it ocing really no better than the reference card. and it was using a lot of power too. it seems like many of these non reference cards are absolute power hogs. Maxwell's biggest selling point was efficiency but it seems that goes completely out the door on some models making it as bad or worse than the 780..whats funny is that in the Hard review of the Gaming 970 no one seem to even care that it used more power than the 780. I am just becoming more unimpressed with the more reviews I look at and I certainly made a HUGE mistake selling my 780.

I don't think its worth over volting GM204 24/7 just to get 2-3 more boost bins. That said, the MSI 980 gaming reviews I have seen keep power consumption in line (for the most part) with regards to perf/watt vs. the reference 980 reviews. It is the 970 reviews which are showing poor perf/watt performance relative to reference 980's. Personally, I would have ordered a reference 980 but the noise levels when overclocked in anandtech's review looked way too high for me to live happily with.

What did you use to measure power consumption? I am thinking about getting a cheap kill-o-watt and running my own tests.

 

[poohbear]

Triple slot cooler?? What is this 2005? These cards are already running cool, why the oversized cooler??

 

[Face2Face]

Triple slot cooler?? What is this 2005? These cards are already running cool, why the oversized cooler??

To make it run even cooler ()

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Triple slot cooler?? What is this 2005? These cards are already running cool, why the oversized cooler??

Well prepared for 1.4v?

 

[Rvenger]

If you want a power efficient card then Zotac makes this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-362-_-Product

Otherwise, if you don't care about power consumption and want to overclock to the limits, then buy the AMP. I don't know why others are complaining about the power consumption on some of these cards that are designed to overclock and be overvolted.

 

[Haserath]

They also sometimes call it the destroyer of virtual worlds...

 

[Destiny]

I think that Zotac GTX 970 has Red and Green LEDs... I might consider it... I am looking for a GTX 970 with 3 DisplayPort outputs.