Zotac GTX 480 Amp! Edition Review

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/3729/topf.jpg

Introduction:

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ZOTAC International is one of the largest producers of NVIDIA VGA and motherboard solutions worldwide.

ZOTAC International (MCO) Limited was established in 2006 with a mission to deliver superb, high quality NVIDIA graphic solutions to the industry. It has strong backing from its parent group, PC Partner Ltd. - with headquarters in Hong Kong, factories in mainland China and regional sales offices in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. The scale of support ZOTAC provides is currently unrivaled in the world. With 40 surface mount technology (SMT) manufacturing lines, 6,000 workers and a production facility with over 9,000,000 square feet, ZOTAC employs a full array of state-of-the-art technologies and skilled personnel in order to meet your hardware needs. In addition, ZOTAC has over 130 research & development professionals in Hong Kong and mainland China, working to bring you the best from the cutting edge of the industry. ZOTAC's international bases of operation work together to enable effective and efficient global as well as localized sales and marketing support.

ZOTAC doesn't just mean top tier quality, it is also synonymous with high performance, absolute reliability and unparalleled value. With a range of products featuring overclocked performance, excellent cooling properties, and unique packaging ZOTAC products routinely meet - and exceed - users’ expectations.

ZOTAC's unwavering commitment to our users is to bring the latest products quickly to the market with the best value. Needless to say ZOTAC is the right choice for those who demand the highest quality graphics solutions.

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OK we have all seen and heard about Nvidia's new GTX480. What makes this one different ? Lets take a look ....


Spec:

Model ZT-40102-10P
Cooler Active (with fan)
Core Clock 756MHz
Core Processors 480 Stream Processors
Dimensions 13.26“ X 10.23“ X 2.67“
DirectX DirectX 11
Dual-Link DVI Supported Yes
DVI 2 (DVI-I)
GPU GeForce® GTX 480
HDCP Ready Yes
HDMI 1 (Mini HDMI 1.3a)
Interface PCI Express 2.0 x16 (Compatible with 1.1)
Max Resolution 2560 x 1600
Memory Clock 3800MHz
Memory Size 1536MB
Memory Interface 384-bit
Memory Type GDDR5
Package Contents ZT-40102-10P
Driver Disk
ZOTAC Technology Demos Disk
User Manual
Mini-HDMI-to-HDMI adapter
DVI-to-VGA adapter
Dual 6-pin to 8-pin PCIe power cable
Dual MOLEX to 6-pin PCIe power cable
RAMDAC 400 MHz
SLI Supported Yes
Weight 2.0000 lb


Unboxing:

Front of the box
http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/848/boxfronte.jpg

Back of the box
http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/5559/backofbox.jpg

Its open ...
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/8938/boxopen.jpg

Cables and driver cd's
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/8287/bitsk.jpg

Front of card and hdmi/Dvi inputs
http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/3213/frontbc.jpg

Rear of card
http://img806.imageshack.us/img806/4409/rear.jpg

Power connectors
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/245...onnecotors.jpg

Back of card
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/9937/backcardm.jpg

Now lets look at the Zalman V3000 cooler and fans..

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/4743/frontcard.jpg

http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/995/siderightn.jpg

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/20/leftsidec.jpg

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/1468/heatsink.jpg

Overclocking

The card comes with a stock clock of 756Mhz on the core shadders at 1512 and the memory at 950Mhz. As this review was done with the card in a case I wanted to keep fan speed low and didnt want to adjust voltage atall. This is the system used and how i got on ...

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Intel Core i7 920 @ 190x19 3.8Ghz
Gigabyte X58-UD5
APOGΣΣ DDR3 2000 6GB @ 1900 Cas 9
Corsair TX950


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http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/7...mengmemsha.jpg

Zotac has its own tool for the user to overclock the card. Thou not as feature packed as MSI afterburner the Zotac Firestorm does the job. Thou slightly backwards with the Memory slider changing the core frequency and the shadder slider adjusting the ram .. :rollyeyes:
anyway the oc i got to and was happy with is 880 Core, 1759 Shadder and 1055 Memory. All test were run with the fan on Auto and no adjustments to the core voltage.

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/8804/furmarkoc3.jpg

The benchmarks I used are Futuremark 3DMark 03,05,06 & Vantage. I also used Farcry benchmark tool and Battlefield Bad Company 2. I also ran Unigine which you will see below. I ran these benchmark with a Nvidia 260 216 before running them with the Zotac Gtx 480 Amp! Edition so to have a comparison. I ran the tests at stock and then at the oc I was happy with. I used Msi tool to monitor the temps,volts, fan speed and clocks. These test were run on a absolutely non tweaked os. I didnt even change the resolution from 1920 -1080.

Results

3DMark 03

http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/9128/3dm03graph.jpg

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/1154/48003oc3.jpg

3DMark 05

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/5013/3dm05graph.jpg

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3360/48005oc3.jpg

3DMark 06

http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/3527/graphk.jpg

http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/8072/48006oc3.jpg

3DMark Vantage

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/555/vantagegraph.jpg

http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/7...eoc3stockv.jpg


As you can see 3Dmark 05 and 06 didnt really gain alot from the card being oc'd. This makes me think the cpu needs to be a bit faster to really enjoy the overclock on the card. Thou 03 and Vantage show nice gains over the stock results.
The card leaves the Nvidia 260 216 for dust as expected. Also please note 3Dmark Vantage was run with Physx off

Far Cry 2

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/8...cry2engine.jpg

I ran the benchmark tool with a custom test from Hardware Canucks.
All settings on Highest setting @ 1920-1080

http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/1...rcry2graph.jpg

Here are the results with the card oc'd and with AA enabled.

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3...agraphcopy.jpg

http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/371...2oc3screen.jpg

Battlefield Bad Company 2

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/2...ttlefiled2.jpg

I used frapps to test performance in Battlefeild Bad Company 2.
I used the same save file each time and loaded the cold War level.
All settings on highest settings at 1920-1080

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/1728/bf2bc2graph.jpg

and here are the results with AA Enabled

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3...agraphcopy.jpg

The card never went over 71c even with a 20 min session.

and finally my Unigine Heaven score with the card overclocked

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/2...noc3screen.jpg

Conclusion

Well all I can say is wow. This card performed amazingly. All I had heard about the Nvidia GTX 480 is that they are hot and the fans are loud. Well Zotac have answered both these issues with the AMP! Edition. With the fan under 55% I couldn't hear it over my system fans atall. As you can see from the results the fan only went higher than 48% during the furmark test which really doesn't represent real gaming or benching. The testing was done over the last few days with a room temp of 23-24c and I has very happy with the temps the card was producing.
All in all a quility graphics card.
Great Work Zotac :)

Awesome review, really very well done.
Thanks for the post!
Cory.

At least Zotac got the name of their OC software right for that blast furnace "firestorm" :p:

thank you

are you dont have more overclocking for the card

Nice review, good stuff man!
I have the VF3000 on my ATi (sorry for offtopic) and @ 5v I have amazing temps and silence :)

3-slot cooling solution I presume? If so, it limits the SLI capability to a few motherboards.

Nice card, seems like ZOTAC got their cooling down pat... Might save me the hassle of watercooling the 2x 480's im soon to get..

Nice review.

What is the default VGPU on that card please ?

Can you give measurements on how far it goes into the third slot without the shroud? I am wondering if I can manage to place 2 12mm slipstreams on it for a PC-Q08 build.

http://lian-li.com/v2/tw/product/upl...q08/q08-29.jpg

You can see that there is some room under the 2 slots but I'm not entirely sure if it can fit with everything stock.

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Originally Posted by next-jin

Can you give measurements on how far it goes into the third slot without the shroud? I am wondering if I can manage to place 2 12mm slipstreams on it for a PC-Q08 build.
You can see that there is some room under the 2 slots but I'm not entirely sure if it can fit with everything stock.

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I have an ati 5850 in my pc-q08 and it about 5-6 cm distance between ati and chill fan
Some photo
http://s001.radikal.ru/i194/1008/f7/19e39f77571e.jpg