Hardware Zotac GeForce GTX 480 AMP! Graphics Card Review

Can a custom cooler and pre-overclock make the Zotac AMP! stand out from the GTX 480 crowd?

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/06/21/zotac-geforce-gtx-480-amp-review/1

 

Still Struggling to see why anyone would buy one of these over the 5870 although the cooling on this seems to be quite a bit better over stock

 

For the same price I could get a 5970... Hmmm. I'm not sure nVidia are going to win this battle for the generation, no matter how hard they try. I hope they have something up their sleeve for the next.

 

£510? Are they mental?!? IIRC, the last single GPU card to cost that much was the 8800 Ultra.

The issue with the fan shroud is completely unforgivable, especially at that price. I hope Zotac do something about this pronto. On the other hand, the temperatures are finally sensible - although you'll also need a case with good airflow.

As for overclocking, I think I'll stay with Afterburner.

@Yakyb: Two reasons: PhysX and SLI scaleabiltiy.

 

Bit-tech why aren't you using the newest drivers for Nvidia cards!? There are supposed to be noticable performance increases...

 

£510 is mental for any graphics card. £300 is pushing it.

 

Physx makes sense although the only top games i can think of where you would benefit would be Mirrors Edge , Batman , UT3 and Mass effect

as for SLI i havent really spent much attention on this but surely crossfire performs just as well

 

That is just ridiculous for a single card and if you're going to Sli you'd have the sort of money that would kit you out with full on water cooling!

 

Nope, Nvidia have pretty much got multiple GPU performance nailed whereas that's generally not the case with Crossfire (Guru3D Reference).

 

Great overall, but with a very hight price tag

 

Crazy expensive, but while i wouldnt buy that card i am tempted to get a 480, mainly because i have more faith in nvidias driver department.

The upside of the review though is that if you dont want to watercool, but want to tame the heat of the GTX480 the zalman cooler is a no brainer imo.

 

only £510 ? great value for money, LOL. 5970 seems like a steal compared to it.

 

Memo to Ati and Nvidia

When designing new graphics cards, get in a design team who specialise in designing coolers (in the aftermarket sense of the word). They invariably do a better job at it than you!

 

Haven't read the article yet (will do so in a moment), but is Paul the new whipping boy at the bit-tech office? Seems every article these days is by him. Give the lad some rest!

 

I think ATI already got that memo!

 

far to expensive I'm afraid, esp for a gimped chip....

when are the next round of chips coming? both ati and nvidia have failed to break with the previous gen this time round.

 

Agree with your first point but how can you claim Ati have failed this gen? Their cards tick all the boxes at prices that make Nvidia's poor poor offerings look just like expensive oddities!

Care to expand on your claim?

 

I have a question since whenever the GTX480 gets reviewed/mentioned there's always someone saying to ignore it and to rather get the 5850/5870.

Let's suppose I buy the 5870 based on one of these recommendations and later decide that I need/want CUDA (Physx etc). I end up getting a GTS250 or maybe even a GTX260.

Would the extra power required and heat produced by this extra GPU not negate the power/heat benefit offered by the 5870 over the GTX480?

On top of that, there’s the driver side of things and the fact that you need a motherboard with 3x PCI-e slots should you wish to do CF at a later date...

Also does dynamic occlusion work if the nVidia card is the secondary one instead of the primary one?

(I suppose dynamic occlusion/CUDA etc means little or nothing to 80% of people but on my GTX275 I leave both DO and Physx enabled since I don’t really see too big a performance hit with it enabled)

I had a 4890 but replaced it with the GTX275 when it died and TBH I really like the extra effects in the games (granted VERY FEW games) that does support it.

Personally I’d get the GTX480...

(Post not meant to offend/start flame war, just wondering about the power/heat aspect of things)

 

Well speaking of power/heat aspect. My current system with GT8800 is generating about 98watt on the wall when doing absolutely nothing but showing the desktop. When i start a game it jumps to about 290 to 320 watt, depending on the workload of the GPU.

I'm just to damn scared to buy a 470/480 to just see it doing 200watt on the desktop all day and costing me oozes of money on electric bills. It's like having turned on the microwave all day in the kitchen for nothing. It is wasting energy and money.

I wait for a "IDLE" solution first...

 

I'd forgotten about being able to force AO in games through Nvidia drivers. Definitely adds to visual quality; ti's hard to miss its benefits when activated in Half-Life 2.