the GeForce GTX 970 it's not exactly new
at this point we already know it's a wicked Beast of a graphics card at a
great price with some cool new features like Dynamic super resolution super
sampling multi-frame anti-aliasing AK
mfaa and an unbelievably power efficient new architecture the best evidence for
all of this is that you can't seem to buy them anywhere so then lonus why are
you taking another look at it well our last GTX 970 didn't really overclock
that well compared to some results I've seen around the web and we needed some
more of them anyway for a three-way SLI test later on make sure you're
subscribed so you don't miss that so when Zotac reached out and asked if I
wanted to try out their ludicrously Overkill looking gtx970 amp Omega and
amp extreme I was like oh hell
yeah something like
that Corsair gaming RGB keyboards feature precision MX RGB key switches
for 16.8 million color per key backlighting for virtually unlimited
customization click now to learn more let's start with the general overview
and physical tour of these bad boys you get the usual NVIDIA Staples two-way and
three-way SLI support 3D Vision GeForce
experience GPU Boost 2.0 Dynamic power
thermal and performance optimization g-sync adaptive refresh display support
and up to four simultaneous monitors connected with three in round and one
auxiliary one but Zotac wanted to add
their own special sauce and I think they pulled it off so first up is the stuff
that both of these cards have in common if it wasn't already obvious they are
non reference boards in every possible
way they're physically larger with a significant PCB bulge behind the two SLI
connectors that is covered by Fancy Pants heat sinks in both cases moving
further back we find two8 pin power connectors compared to to the reference
dual six pin design at the rear of the card we get multimeter voltage
checkpoints for folks who don't want to rely on software for that stuff and a
USB plug for the oc+ module that
communicates with Zotac Firestorm overclocking software to give you
realtime diagnostics from the way overbuilt power delivery system on the
card some of which is visible from the back where you'll also find one of the
thickest back plates I've ever seen this
is good from a wow this is Beefy perspective but because it's also on
risers it could hurt compatibility with dual Slot Cards installed directly above
the graphics card in your system and it even interfered with a heat snc above
the top PCI Express slot in my Rampage 5 extreme motherboard rear IO is nearly
identical with three DisplayPort outputs for up to three simultaneous
gsync or 4K displays HDMI 2.0 and dual
link DVI which leaves us just with the main differences between these cards
which are well pretty much the coolers
the Omega is up first with its allmetal shrouded dual 90mm fan design that keeps
the GPU under 70° under an overclock
load with fan speeds under 50% it's a
triple slot cooler but Zotac used the extra space well and opted to use
thicker fans with better static pressure rather than just going overkill on like
more metal this is one of the quietest graphics cards that I've ever
encountered when fully overclocked under a gaming load and my praise for the
omega's cooler is very similar to my praise for the extremes cooler just more
of the same it's also triple slot it's got the same quiet optimized well spaced
fin structure the same 90 mm fan size
which is a really good sweet spot but it gets a larger heat snc fin array with
more heat pipes and an additional fan that translates into slightly better
cooling the Shroud is made of plastic which is unfortunate but it gets a faux
carbon fiber finish that and please forgive me for this I think actually
looks pretty darn cool and it gets a few sort of green and red LED illuminated
zones that have this breathing effect and change colors when the GPU is under
load you can turn that off in Zac's Firestorm utility if you want to though
which I guess brings us to Firestorm and the overclocking
experience it's not the most polished out of all the OC tools out there and I
had to have after running at the same time to monitor things like GPU power
limit so I could determine what was holding back my overclock but it's also
got some really neat functionality with oc+ plugged into the motherboard's USB
header you can see board input power GPU
power consumption vrm efficiency voltage and current in real time is actually
super cool you can also change most of the usual settings so adjusting GPU
boost clock and voltage setting temp targets manually overriding fan speeds
adjusting power limit all that stuff and and you can monitor your clock speeds
temps and the like you can even update your BIOS but unfortunately a lot of
this stuff ends up getting held back by NVIDIA as usual Zotac did manage to get
the maximum voltage unlocked to 1.26 in the latest version of the software but
setting it higher than 1. 212 the old Max caused the power limit of the board
to trip pretty much instantly under any load crippling performance even at the
same overclocks I was already getting anyway so I left it at Auto while I was
overclocking the good news is that the overclocking experience is actually
still pretty good on these cards the extreme is clocked higher on both core
and memory out of the box but thanks to the Silicon Lottery didn't actually
overclock as high as the Omega they both
ran nearly silently at 1546 MHz and 1513
MHz observed clock speeds in games
across my entire test Suite both are very solid results which brings us to
Performance Luke's on vacation so I had to run Benchmark numbers myself which
means I guess I'll talk about them our bench was our standard 4 GHz octacore
extreme Edition with 16 gigs of ddr4 and as usual all of our cards are
overclocked check the link in the video description for all their clock speeds
both Zotac 97s thanks to their much higher clock speeds outperformed our
strict sample but neither of them was able to do as well as an overclock GTX
980 particularly at 4K where the extra SMS in the 980 give it better pixel 3
put no real surprises here though other than the similarity between the
performance of these two Zotac cards given their different price points so I
think for the prospective buyer this one is pretty much going to come down to
which one is actually in stock anywhere and which one they think is going to
both fit and look better in their system because either of them looks like a
pretty solid Choice speaking of solid choices Zotac has made the choice to
have us give away a GTX 980 amp extreme
yes the fully enabled bigger brother of
the 970 extreme that I'm holding right here all you need to do is watch this
review so that part's done check out the pricing and discussion Link in the video
description and post in our Forum where we will randomly draw a winner from
anywhere in the world to start enjoying the fastest single GPU gaming experience
on planet Earth thanks Zotac on behalf of myself and the lineus tech tips
Community for doing this giveaway thanks to you guys for watching like this video
if you like it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment letting me know which you prefer the metal shroud
on the Omega or the carbon fiber finished LED adorned shroud on the
extreme check out the support us Link in the video description to give us a
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