Dubbed the fastest NVIDIA GTX 1080 graphics card, 1080 AMP Extreme (ZT-P10800B-10P) carries with it substantial overclocks to the GPU and memory while using the IceStorm triple fan solution.
Product on Review: (ZT-P10800B-10P) GTX 1080 AMP Extreme
Manufacturer & Sponsor: ASUS
Street Price: UK: £620, US: $730 USD
NVIDIA’s flagship next-gen graphics card the GeForce GTX 1080 has been the dominating topic in hardware circles for the past month. This new release has proved itself to be both thrilling and frustrating; thrilling, because the GTX 1080 is NVIDIA’s most powerful single-GPU to date but frustrating because of the widespread lack of stock availability. But there is hope; in the coming weeks this should eventually clear up and cards such as the one we’ll be analysing today will be easy to obtain.
Under observation today is the ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP Extreme. As tradition would have it, AMP editions arrive with a factory overclock but this graphics card goes further than that by offering a substantial overclock to the GPU and memory and boasting a superior cooling solution, compared to the standard AMP edition. Joining the RGB revolution, 1080 AMP Extreme also arrives with Spectre lighting which is adjustable through ZOTAC’s FireStorm software, presenting the user with the option to tweak the colour and animation effect.
Do we have the fastest GTX 1080 in our hands today? Let’s find out!
ZOTAC on their GTX 1080 AMP Extreme
Raise the playing field with the most advanced gaming graphics card ever created. Amped with the ZOTAC technologies, discover performance, power efficiency, and gaming experiences from the new NVIDIA Pascal™ architecture. This is the game changer.
Technical Specifications
Below are the technical specifications supplied by ZOTAC:
Chipset
GeForce GTX 1080
Digital max resolution
7680×4320
Core Clock
OC Mode – GPU Boost Clock : 1911MHz , GPU Base Clock : 1771 MHz
Memory Clock
10.8 Gbps
Process Technology
16 nm
CUDA Cores
2560
Memory Size
8GB GDDR5X
Memory Bus
256-bit
Card Bus
PCI-E 3.0
Memory Type
GDDR5X
DirectX
12
[n]OpenGL
4.5
PCB Form
ATX
Multi-view
4
I/O
1x Dual-link DVI-I
1x HDMI 2.0
3x Display Port 1.4
Suggested Power requirement
500W (with 8+8pin external power connector)
Card Size
325mm x 148mm
GeForce GTX 1080
Digital max resolution
7680×4320
Core Clock
OC Mode – GPU Boost Clock : 1911MHz , GPU Base Clock : 1771 MHz
Memory Clock
10.8 Gbps
Process Technology
16 nm
CUDA Cores
2560
Memory Size
8GB GDDR5X
Memory Bus
256-bit
Card Bus
PCI-E 3.0
Memory Type
GDDR5X
DirectX
12
[n]OpenGL
4.5
PCB Form
ATX
Multi-view
4
I/O
1x Dual-link DVI-I
1x HDMI 2.0
3x Display Port 1.4
Suggested Power requirement
500W (with 8+8pin external power connector)
Card Size
325mm x 148mm
Detailed Look & Video Review
For this review we’ve produced a video review over on our YouTube channel which details all of the included features, and takes a close look at the PCB/cooling solution along with the addition of some gaming benchmarks. Please check out our video review or hit play on the video below:
Test Setup & Methodology
How we test graphics cards
Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphics card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and even out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and latest drivers so this does certainly need to be taken into consideration when viewing our testing results. Each game and benchmark is tested times with the lowest and highest scores omitted out of the 5 results and the average then taken from the three remaining to give us our final result for each resolution and setting used.
Hardware
Taking Intel’s High-End Desktop platform, our hardware utilises the Intel X99 chipset. Combined with this we use the Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to a realistic and achievable 4GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB (4x4GB) of DDR4 at 2666MHz and a 750GB SSD there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.
High End Graphics Cards on test:
PowerColor RED DEVIL RX 470 (Crimson 16.8.1)
PowerColor RED DEVIL RX 480 (Crimson 16.7.2)
ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme (NVIDIA 368.81)
ASUS STRIX GTX 1080 (NVIDIA 368.81)
Gainward GTX 1070 Phoenix Golden Sample (NVIDIA 368.81)
MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X (NVIDIA 368.64)
Gainward GTX 1060 Phoenix Golden Sample (NVIDIA 368.64)
NVIDIA GTX 1060 (NVIDIA 368.64)
NVIDIA GTX 980Ti OC (NVIDIA 368.81)
NVIDIA GTX 980 (NVIDIA 368.81)
NVIDIA GTX 970 (NVIDIA 368.81)
AMD Radeon RX 480 CrossFire (Crimson 16.7.2)
AMD Radeon RX 480 (Crimson 16.7.2)
XFX R9 FURY (Crimson 16.7.2)
AMD Radeon R9 390X (Crimson 16.7.2)
Special thanks go to Intel, Corsair, MSI and AOC for providing the extreme spec components used for our test bench:
Motherboard: MSI X99S GAMING 9 AC
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR HX1050
Hard Drive – Samsung 840 EVO 750GB
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H105 240mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2879VF
Capture Card – Razer Ripjaw
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR HX1050
Hard Drive – Samsung 840 EVO 750GB
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H105 240mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2879VF
Capture Card – Razer Ripjaw
Benchmarks
If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we’ve chosen:
DOOM (OpenGL 4.5 & Vulkan)
Total War: Warhammer
Rise of the Tomb Raider
HITMAN
DiRT Rally
Total War: Warhammer
Rise of the Tomb Raider
HITMAN
DiRT Rally
To capture framerates we use a combination of in-game benchmark tools, FRAPS and PresentMon.
We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included three of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:
Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike
Futuremark 3DMark Time Spy
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike
Futuremark 3DMark Time Spy
Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…
Power, Temperatures, Acoustics
To test for power consumption, we take a measurement from the plug socket. It is important to note that the figures below represent total system power use and not just the GPU. The CPU was always in a fixed state (4GHz overclock) so did not affect the additional power load when the GPU was placed under 100% load using Heaven 4.0 which was ran for 20 minutes at which point a load reading was taken. Idle readings were taken 5 minutes after system boot to ensure any background services and applications had loaded.
Temperature
To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests we set Heaven 4.0 running continuously for ~30 minutes recorded the peak/maximum GPU temperature.
Acoustics
Noise from the cooling fan isn’t disruptive at all, even under full load – take a look and listen on our video.
Overclocking
In our overclocking efforts we managed to squeeze more performance out of our GTX 1080, thought not much. Since the memory clock is already overclocked, this wouldn’t allow an increase. Although this is only a conservative overclock, by increasing the Base Clock we get an impressive result in Heaven 4.0.
DX12: 3DMark Time Spy
With its pure DirectX 12 engine, which supports new API features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, 3DMark Time Spy is the ideal benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards.
DX11: 3DMark FireStrike
Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremark’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.
DX11: Unigine Heaven 4.0
Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.
DX11: Unigine Valley
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.
DX12: DOOM OpenGL 4.5
By default DOOM utilises an OpenGL 4.5 renderer, and is one of relatively few Windows PC titles to not use DirectX 12. It tests how well NVIDIA and AMD’s GPUs deal with a less mainstream approach, especially in regards to driver optimisations, and like all of id titles stretches graphics quality to the limit.
DX12: DOOM Vulkan
id have also released an optional Vulkan rendering path for DOOM. This API is a development of AMD’s Mantle low level which has been taken on board by the Kronos Group for implementation as the next generation of Open graphics APIs. Like DirectX 12 Vulkan is capable of Asynchronous Compute in specific configurations.
DX12: Total War: WARHAMMER
Total War: WARHAMMER is a pseudo Real-Time Strategy title which leverages DirectX 12 to render huge numbers of complex units on screen at any one time.
DX12: Rise of the Tomb Raider
Square Enix’s Rise of the Tomb Raider is the sequel to 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot. An enormously challenging title graphically, the developers also released an optional DirectX 12 render path for Windows 10 users. Although it has undergone a number of iterations this rendering pathway notably doesn’t currently utilise the full capabilities of DirectX 12.
DX12: HITMAN
Yet another DirectX 12 title, 2016’s Hitman from Square Enix and developer IO Interactive has a more robust DirectX 12 implementation than Rise of the Tomb Raider. We’ve tested at a full range of resultions, from 1080p through to 4K, which provides a look at the impact of GPU speed and memory utilisation.
DX11: DiRT Rally
Overall Performance
Here we take a look at the overall performance of the graphics card. This figure is determined by finding the average FPS across all of the settings used in a particular benchmark(game) to give us an overall value.
Value For Money
We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.
Conclusion
For anyone wanting a slice of GTX 1080 action, the ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP Extreme is a rather spectacular card both in its presence and its performance.
ZOTAC has long been an advocate of high-quality customised cooling, their former generation of cards acquired assistance from cooling enthusiasts Zalman with the VF3000; a cooler which performed well and bore a monolithic design. Well, with the new 1080 AMP Extreme, ZOTAC haven’t departed from such a viewpoint; the featured IceStorm cooler is vast and it offers good thermal performance and low-noise attributes – the cooling fans stop spinning under light load.
So far as the design of 1080 AMP Extreme goes, we’re pleased to see the card bearing a metal shroud, featuring a strong metal backplate and the option to modify the lighting via FireStorm software. Though, this robust design does come with a slight compromise – this card is large and heavy. We recommend that if you are upgrading your system configuration to opt for a motherboard which takes advantage of reinforced, metal PCI express slots to avoid any long-term difficulties.
Performance is one of the primary concerns when investing in a graphics card and we can tell you that 1080 AMP Extreme does exceedingly well in this arena. By having both the GPU and memory clocks overclocked straight out of the box, the frame rates are notably impressive. After observing the performance at 1440p and 4K, ZOTAC’s offering is a top-performer in a range of different gaming titles and 3D-oriented tasks. The only drawback with such a significant performance modification is that there is very little headroom for users to nudge up even further – which should come as no surprise.
At this moment in time (July 2016) there appears to be a global shortage of GTX 1080s and prices are fluctuating quite rapidly so it won’t be unusual to see certain stores with stock monopolizing by hiking up the prices. As a rule of thumb, 1080 AMP Extreme should come with a price-tag of around £620 GBP / $730 USD. This card is among the cheaper of the custom designs and as far as GTX 1080s go, ZOTAC’s candidate is a worthwhile consideration; especially when you factor in the generous 5-year warranty.
The GTX 1080 AMP Extreme is equipped with an impressive cooling solution courtesy of IceStorm, takes advantage of substantial overclocks to both the GPU and memory, is backed by a rather appealing 5-year warranty and we thoroughly recommend it!
VIDEO REVIEW – VORTEZ TV
Pros
+ Attractive design
+ Customisable LED lighting
+ Comes with factory overclock
+ Low-noise
+ Effective cooling
+ Excellent performance
+ DirectX 12 ready
+ 5 years warranty
Cons
– Heavy
– Large
– Only 7 colour options for RGB lighting
+ Attractive design
+ Customisable LED lighting
+ Comes with factory overclock
+ Low-noise
+ Effective cooling
+ Excellent performance
+ DirectX 12 ready
+ 5 years warranty
Cons
– Heavy
– Large
– Only 7 colour options for RGB lighting
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
