Zotac 480 AMP Review: 30W Less Power Draw!

[annihilat0r]

Here's TPU's review:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Z...Edition/1.html

According to this review, the AMP draws 30W less power than a reference 480 despite being clocked 50MHz higher.

Also it runs 20C cooler on load. However, looks like Zotac screwed up the fan profile - there is no difference between fan noise while idle and on load

Looks like this could be the 480 to get - the only problem is that it dumps 300W of heat into your case, so you need good airflow

[Ket]

About time a manufacturer had a stab at reducing the 480s power draw. Its still crap in that regard though. None the less its a start at least.

[Asmola]

Here's TPU's review:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Z...Edition/1.html

According to this review, the AMP draws 30W less power than a reference 480 despite being clocked 50MHz higher.

Also it runs 20C cooler on load. However, looks like Zotac screwed up the fan profile - there is no difference between fan noise while idle and on load

Looks like this could be the 480 to get - the only problem is that it dumps 300W of heat into your case, so you need good airflow

Cooler takes it's power from the mobo's fanconnector. I have same cooler on my 5870.

[Ket]

Zotac version of that cooler looks better IMO. It just kinda says sexy.

[Manicdan]

ok im actually quite shocked about this

from the first fermi article, it shows .99v for 700mhz
this card is 756mhz at 1.10v

how the hell did they get 30W in savings, running a 10% higher voltage and 8% higher frequency?

[RejZoR]

They both look crap to me. Why can't they make efficient coolers that dump the heat outside? Like triple slot exhausting cooler. Like GTX 480 cooler on steroids. Is it so hard to make or something? I'm sure many would prefer such coolers instead. I know i'm the one holding the hand raised. Same reason why i picked HD5850 with reference cooler. Because it dumps the heat outside.

[annihilat0r]

on a totally unrelated note, you can increase the performance of your 470 by flashing it with a 480 bios. Here you see a 1000 point difference in GPU score in Vantage Performance benchmark at the same settings. Enabled shaders?

[W1zzard]

how the hell did they get 30W in savings, running a 10% higher voltage and 8% higher frequency?

if i knew i'd have told you in the review

[Manicdan]

if i knew i'd have told you in the review

only 2 ways to handle this

either they admit they have magical powers
or i start part 2 of the, lets flame w1zzard till he quits thread.

lets go with option A

[Sgt.McRuff]

Its a golden sample? B1 stepping? How is there a power drop?

IDK but 30 watts less load is a nice improvement, only reason I don't like Fermi is power draw. To test W1zards theory he should put that card under water cooling and see what the power draw is. Also nice drop in idle power.

Edit: Because i see w1zzard is reading this thread I just want to say, thanks for the review.

[Vapor]

My guess is a two parter:

1) lower leakage core (maybe this core is 20th percentile in leakage and the original seeded samples were 60th percentile)
and/or
2) (significantly) better VRM cooling which leads to better VRM temperatures which leads to higher efficiency which leads to less power consumed by the card (but the same amount by the core itself)

Either way, if that's what can be expected from the full population of these cards, that's pretty impressive

[Asmola]

That earlier (stock) GTX 480 was press sample? Most of those uses more power
than retails. Asus GTX 480 used 22W less power than press sample GTX 480.

if i knew i'd have told you in the review

[W1zzard]

inspired by this thread i did some retesting, lower power is only because of the lower temperature:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Z...dition/27.html

[Manicdan]

i knew higher temps means worse power draw, but i never saw a real test done showing the correlation. but thats crazy how much it matters.

maybe i should the fan speeds up on my gpus and see if my kill a watt meter notices a dip

[W1zzard]

doing more testing to produce some kind of graph showing temp vs. power

[m0da]

doing more testing to produce some kind of graph showing temp vs. power

These are key characteristics everyone should be aware of.

With you doing these tests, I have no doubt they'll be as accurate as possible. Thanks.

[Manicdan]

doing more testing to produce some kind of graph showing temp vs. power

got a 5870 around to do the same comparison with?

[W1zzard]

there is the data, linear fit is y = 1.1975x + 215.29

basically for every °C that the card runs hotter it needs 1.2W more power to handle the exact same load

[Manicdan]

you really are the best

[annihilat0r]

So Much Win.

So, more power draw => more temperature => more power draw => more temperature.

Scary

[cegras]

Doped silicon's conductivity should be largely independent of temperature around this range. Conductivity of semiconductors goes up with T because of charge carrier generation, so that may result in more leakage.

[bamtan2]

if i knew i'd have told you in the review

higher minimum fps compared to previous cards is possibly the biggest advantage of gtx 470 and gtx 480, but I dont see that mentioned in your benchmarks. they all appear to be averages

[K404]

Awesome work... and useful!

Thanks W1zz

[WhiteFireDragon]

yup, W1zzard hit the nail on the head. i also found this out during testing one of my old gtx480. basically the power difference between 55C and 100C was 60w. the superior cooling from this non-reference card therefore lowers the power consumption by keeping the card cooler. i have my own raw data i could post later when i have time.

[K404]

I've not used a '480... how did you get 55c? Is it within the realms of mid-range watercooling?