ZOTAC GTX 970 AMP! Extreme & Omega Video Card Review & a Surprise
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,444 words · ~7 min read
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the GeForce GTX 970 it's not exactly new
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at this point we already know it's a wicked Beast of a graphics card at a
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great price with some cool new features like Dynamic super resolution super
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sampling multi-frame anti-aliasing AK
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mfaa and an unbelievably power efficient new architecture the best evidence for
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all of this is that you can't seem to buy them anywhere so then lonus why are
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you taking another look at it well our last GTX 970 didn't really overclock
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that well compared to some results I've seen around the web and we needed some
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more of them anyway for a three-way SLI test later on make sure you're
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subscribed so you don't miss that so when Zotac reached out and asked if I
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wanted to try out their ludicrously Overkill looking gtx970 amp Omega and
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amp extreme I was like oh hell
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yeah something like
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that Corsair gaming RGB keyboards feature precision MX RGB key switches
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for 16.8 million color per key backlighting for virtually unlimited
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customization click now to learn more let's start with the general overview
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and physical tour of these bad boys you get the usual NVIDIA Staples two-way and
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three-way SLI support 3D Vision GeForce
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experience GPU Boost 2.0 Dynamic power
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thermal and performance optimization g-sync adaptive refresh display support
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and up to four simultaneous monitors connected with three in round and one
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auxiliary one but Zotac wanted to add
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their own special sauce and I think they pulled it off so first up is the stuff
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that both of these cards have in common if it wasn't already obvious they are
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non reference boards in every possible
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way they're physically larger with a significant PCB bulge behind the two SLI
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connectors that is covered by Fancy Pants heat sinks in both cases moving
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further back we find two8 pin power connectors compared to to the reference
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dual six pin design at the rear of the card we get multimeter voltage
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checkpoints for folks who don't want to rely on software for that stuff and a
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USB plug for the oc+ module that
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communicates with Zotac Firestorm overclocking software to give you
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realtime diagnostics from the way overbuilt power delivery system on the
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card some of which is visible from the back where you'll also find one of the
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thickest back plates I've ever seen this
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is good from a wow this is Beefy perspective but because it's also on
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risers it could hurt compatibility with dual Slot Cards installed directly above
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the graphics card in your system and it even interfered with a heat snc above
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the top PCI Express slot in my Rampage 5 extreme motherboard rear IO is nearly
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identical with three DisplayPort outputs for up to three simultaneous
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gsync or 4K displays HDMI 2.0 and dual
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link DVI which leaves us just with the main differences between these cards
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which are well pretty much the coolers
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the Omega is up first with its allmetal shrouded dual 90mm fan design that keeps
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the GPU under 70° under an overclock
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load with fan speeds under 50% it's a
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triple slot cooler but Zotac used the extra space well and opted to use
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thicker fans with better static pressure rather than just going overkill on like
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more metal this is one of the quietest graphics cards that I've ever
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encountered when fully overclocked under a gaming load and my praise for the
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omega's cooler is very similar to my praise for the extremes cooler just more
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of the same it's also triple slot it's got the same quiet optimized well spaced
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fin structure the same 90 mm fan size
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which is a really good sweet spot but it gets a larger heat snc fin array with
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more heat pipes and an additional fan that translates into slightly better
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cooling the Shroud is made of plastic which is unfortunate but it gets a faux
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carbon fiber finish that and please forgive me for this I think actually
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looks pretty darn cool and it gets a few sort of green and red LED illuminated
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zones that have this breathing effect and change colors when the GPU is under
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load you can turn that off in Zac's Firestorm utility if you want to though
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which I guess brings us to Firestorm and the overclocking
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experience it's not the most polished out of all the OC tools out there and I
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had to have after running at the same time to monitor things like GPU power
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limit so I could determine what was holding back my overclock but it's also
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got some really neat functionality with oc+ plugged into the motherboard's USB
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header you can see board input power GPU
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power consumption vrm efficiency voltage and current in real time is actually
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super cool you can also change most of the usual settings so adjusting GPU
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boost clock and voltage setting temp targets manually overriding fan speeds
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adjusting power limit all that stuff and and you can monitor your clock speeds
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temps and the like you can even update your BIOS but unfortunately a lot of
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this stuff ends up getting held back by NVIDIA as usual Zotac did manage to get
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the maximum voltage unlocked to 1.26 in the latest version of the software but
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setting it higher than 1. 212 the old Max caused the power limit of the board
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to trip pretty much instantly under any load crippling performance even at the
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same overclocks I was already getting anyway so I left it at Auto while I was
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overclocking the good news is that the overclocking experience is actually
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still pretty good on these cards the extreme is clocked higher on both core
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and memory out of the box but thanks to the Silicon Lottery didn't actually
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overclock as high as the Omega they both
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ran nearly silently at 1546 MHz and 1513
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MHz observed clock speeds in games
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across my entire test Suite both are very solid results which brings us to
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Performance Luke's on vacation so I had to run Benchmark numbers myself which
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means I guess I'll talk about them our bench was our standard 4 GHz octacore
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extreme Edition with 16 gigs of ddr4 and as usual all of our cards are
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overclocked check the link in the video description for all their clock speeds
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both Zotac 97s thanks to their much higher clock speeds outperformed our
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strict sample but neither of them was able to do as well as an overclock GTX
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980 particularly at 4K where the extra SMS in the 980 give it better pixel 3
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put no real surprises here though other than the similarity between the
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performance of these two Zotac cards given their different price points so I
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think for the prospective buyer this one is pretty much going to come down to
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which one is actually in stock anywhere and which one they think is going to
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both fit and look better in their system because either of them looks like a
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pretty solid Choice speaking of solid choices Zotac has made the choice to
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have us give away a GTX 980 amp extreme
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yes the fully enabled bigger brother of
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the 970 extreme that I'm holding right here all you need to do is watch this
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review so that part's done check out the pricing and discussion Link in the video
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description and post in our Forum where we will randomly draw a winner from
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anywhere in the world to start enjoying the fastest single GPU gaming experience
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on planet Earth thanks Zotac on behalf of myself and the lineus tech tips
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Community for doing this giveaway thanks to you guys for watching like this video
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if you like it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment letting me know which you prefer the metal shroud
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on the Omega or the carbon fiber finished LED adorned shroud on the
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extreme check out the support us Link in the video description to give us a
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monthly contribution buy a cool t-shirt like this one or change your Amazon
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bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a kick back whenever you buy
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graphics cards or whatever else it is you buy all that stuff helps us out a lot and as always don't forget to
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subscribe to L's Tech tips for more Daily Tech videos just like this
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one
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he