Zotac 480 AMP Review: 30W Less Power Draw!

[purecain]

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?

very intresting.... i'd love to know exactly whats going on....

deserves a thread of its own...

[kemo]

guru3d had 16W less power Draw from the overall system ,, they added a pump and 2 120mm fans and removed the Stock cooler

[Starscream]

Id love to see a big round up about this: higher temps equals higher power usage.

Like the top cards of the last 2 gens of both Nvidia and Ati.

On water could give the biggest range in temp but would ofc be loads of work.

now i can finally say that i watercool my PC to save the environment.

[knopflerbruce]

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

At -196c it consumes a negative amount of power! Perpetuum mobile ftw!

[cowie]

for you guys that have a wattage meter thing unplug the fan and see how much watts you save

[Pekalion]

Great review as usual! Hope I get the pennys to buy one of them, Im in love with Zotac since I buy the GTX260 AMP2.

Beside of the great work in that review, guys, where is the problem of that cooling solution? I only see win in that Zalman, although of that mezzed fan set at 46dB, 74° at Load with that card is a really good achievement. For the other hand, I can't even figure someone with a media center case put a Fermi base vga after reading several reviews. Is kind of common sence that if you wish this card, you have some good airflow, even if you go for the reference card most if not all reviewers highly recommend a high air flow case to cool down this monsters.

For me, is a great card, improved cooling solution, fab OC and really nice layout for u$30 more. The only con I can find is that it don't have any game included in the bundle

[Frontl1ne]

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

That is sweet. Learn something new everyday Thanks W1zz

[Loque]

reference design uses the almighty delta screamer, there goes the power saving..

[tajoh111]

There goes the notion that the stock gtx 480 design uses premium cooling. I applaude zotac for charging such a fair price too, a name brand cooler and charging only 30 dollars more.

Sapphire can learn alot from them, charging 500 dollar extra for 2gb of extra ram and a artic cooling fan, is down right crazy.

[texasreefer]

I just don't get why they are so expensive The review fails to put the 4870x2 in the price/stats chart on the first page. It should be there, considering it scores higher than the 480 in more than one instance. I know they are out of production, but you can still get one for 300 usd or less. Fermi is powerful, almost achieves 5970 performance, but to put the price point that close to a 5970 doesn't make sense.

[Pekalion]

I just don't get why they are so expensive The review fails to put the 4870x2 in the price/stats chart on the first page. It should be there, considering it scores higher than the 480 in more than one instance. I know they are out of production, but you can still get one for 300 usd or less. Fermi is powerful, almost achieves 5970 performance, but to put the price point that close to a 5970 doesn't make sense.

There is a u$200 gap between the GTX480 reference and the cheapper 5970. It would be almost magnificent if they cut the price at least u$25 for the GTX480, but since is the most powerful single gpu in the market and isn't so far from what a 5970 can deliver, is not a bad choice at all, despite of the power hungry fermi and the noise of the fans/blower.

Despite of that, if you consider buying one of those in countries that have a massification of Ati's 5000 series, well, you are going to suffer a lot when paying near u$700 - u$750 for your new flamant GTX480 reference card... That's really sad

I almost forgot. Compare this one wich is u$529 between the 5870 with 2GB that actually doesn't even make a difference from the 1GB version...

[texasreefer]

YEah, i guess...

[Manicdan]

i think you guys are jumping the gun a little on thinking this is what can really hurt ATI, not trying to be a fanboy, but in the review it still shows the Perf/W for ATI cards is 20-30% better, and Perf/$ is only the same as the 5970, but still much worse than the 5870, and especially worse as you go more mainstream (but thats how the market is, so im not saying it should)

if you had a choose a 480, this is no doubt the one to get, and is a massive step in the right direction.
i think still alot of people are hoping for an external only exhaust, 3 slot cooler, to see what it can do. i know i still am.

[bamtan2]

There goes the notion that the stock gtx 480 design uses premium cooling.

no. it obviously uses high end cooling. just because there is something bigger and cooler doesnt mean the first one wasnt good.

the gtx 480 is the most capable stock graphics cooler ever shipped.

[saaya]

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

awesome!

about the 470 scoring higher with 480 bios... wtf?

[tajoh111]

no. it obviously uses high end cooling. just because there is something bigger and cooler doesnt mean the first one wasnt good.

the gtx 480 is the most capable stock graphics cooler ever shipped.

Good stock air cooling doesn't mean its premium cooling and I still think the 7800 gtx 512 had a better cooler because it actually resembles real premium cooling. The point of saying it had premium cooling in the first place, was for AMD fanboys to say adding better air cooling was useless on the gtx 480 because it already used premium cooling and you should just go straight to water if you wanted to overclock it. Both have been proven wrong.

We see a huge drop in temperature with this cooler meaning, which shows air cooling can still get substantially lower temperatures and hence the stock cooler is not premium.

Honestly the gtx 480 is not that impressive. Sure it has alot of DT heatpipes, but it doesn't have nearly enough surface area to cool those said heatpipes. The fan would also be alot better if it blew directly over the fins like most premium air coolers instead of the current blower style fan it currently uses.

[fatguy1992]

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

So under my SS unit the card should use heaps less power?

[STEvil]

for you guys that have a wattage meter thing unplug the fan and see how much watts you save

quotebump

[D-Cyph3r V2]

30w Less for a GTX480 is kinda like saying "this nuclear bomb will give you 30% less cancer", it's still no good.

[Chri$ch]

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?

i tested the GTX480 bios on my GTX470 and don´t see a difference

GTX 470 @ stock Bios


GTX 470 @ 480 Bios

[Orbmu2k]

i tested the GTX480 bios on my GTX470 and don´t see a difference

Its most likely because of missing knowledge annihilat0r had with editing its 470 BIOS to change the default clocks. He doesn't seems to know that the clock[4] (def. 1272) has to scale ~1.05x Hotclock. So he may flashed 1577 Hotclock with clock[4] still 1272.

On the default 480 bios he overclocked per software only wich correctly takes the given multiplier from BIOS and scales to 1656 Mhz.

This clock[4] is extremly related to the feature test 5 in Vantage.


So finally, flashing GTX480 BIOS to a 470 card changes exactly nothing! ;-)