ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme Review
The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 AMP Extreme
What you’ll find, after you finish your reading assignments, is that NVIDIA’s Pascal-based GPUs are efficient and relatively power friendly, including the monstrous Titan X, so they don’t need insane cooling apparatuses or an unwieldy number of supplemental power feeds. With that said, NVIDIA’s board partners are never ones to leave well enough alone. Case in point, the Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme Edition we’ll be showing you here. This monster of a graphics card is outfitted with a triple-slot, triple-fan and lighted cooler, multiple power feeds, and a healthy factory overclock. It's overkill in light of the GP104 GPU’s requirements, for sure, but overkill can be fun...
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| ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme | ||
| Graphics Processing Clusters | 3 | |
| Streaming Multiprocessors | 15 | |
| CUDA Cores (single precision) | 1920 | |
| Texture Units | 120 | |
| ROP Units | 64 | |
| Base Clock | 1632MHz |
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| Boost Clock | 1835MHz |
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| Memory Clock (Data rate) | 4104MHz (Effective Speed - ~8.2Gbps) | |
| L2 Cache Size | 2048KB | |
| Total Video Memory | 8192 MB GDDR5 | |
| Memory Interface | 256-Bit |
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| Total Memory Bandwidth | 256 GB/s |
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| Texture Filtering Rate (Bilinear) | 190 GigaTexels/sec |
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| Fabrication Process | 16 nm |
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| Transistor Count | 7.2 Billion | |
| Connectors | 3 x Display Port, 1 x Dual-Link DVI, 1 x HDMI | |
| Form Factor | Dual Slot |
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| Power Connectors | Two 8-Pin | |
| Recommended Power Supply | 500 Watts |
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| Thermal Design Power (TDP) | 250 Watts |
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| Thermal Threshold | 94°C |
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| Price | $469 - Find It At Amazon (Other Models Available) | |
At its core, the Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme Edition is similar to the NVIDIA “reference” Founder’s Edition card, but Zotac really went to town on this one and modified and tweaked a number of things. Because it is a GTX 1070 at its core, the Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme Edition supports all of the new features of Pascal, including Simultaneous Multi-Projection, more advanced memory compression, GPU Boost 3.0, etc.
The GP104 GPU at the heart of the card has 1920 active CUDA cores and 120 texture units, and has base and boost clocks of 1632MHz and 1835MHz, respectively. The GeForce GTX 1070 Founder’s Edition has 1607MHz base and 1733MHz boost clocks. Both 1070 cards employ standard GDDR5 memory connected via 256-bit interface, whereas the higher-end GTX 1080 uses more advanced GDDR5X. However, the Zotac card’s memory is clocked a bit higher – 8208MHz to be exact.
A stock GeForce GTX 1070’s TDP is only 150 watts and the card requires only a single supplemental 8-pin power feed. However, Zotac specs the GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme Edition at 250W (and recommends a 500W PSU), and slapped a pair of 8-pin feeds on the card along with additional filtering caps to further smooth power delivery. Even with the factory overclock, there’s no way the GP104 needs that much power, but going overboard like this should allow for some significant and stable overclocks.
Zotac outfitted this card with what it calls an “Ice Storm” cooler. It’s packing six copper heatpipes (of varying sizes), linked to a huge, three-slot wide array of aluminum heatsink fins. Atop the fins are a trio of 90mm EKO fans, that will actually spin down completely when the card is idle, to keep noise to an absolute minimum. The fans also have a smaller, protruding second blade that help push more air around the center than traditional fans. There’s a something Zotac calls “Carbon Exo Armor” on the card too, which is essentially a wrap-around metal backplate. And finally there's “Spectra” lighting on board, which can be tuned to virtually any color with Zotac’s FireStorm tweaking utility.
Although Zotac went all-out on the card itself, the included bundle is fairly straightforward. Along with the GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme Edition, you'll find a case badge, driver / utility disc, a lit pack, a quick installation guide and a couple of 6-pin to 8-pin PCIe power cable adapters.
