Conclusion

Conclusion

Zotac has a lovely offering with the AMP Extreme. It is the fastest out of the box clocked 1080 Ti to date, totally stable and very quiet. It is however a heavy and big card and that's not something everybody likes, I mean 31cm long, three slots wide and sure, the card is nearing 1.6 kg. The cooling is excellent as it allows you to game at, give or take, 66 Degrees C with that MASSIVE graphics processor under the hood. And equally important, it does that whilst remaining silent. And then hey, you need to factor in that it is doing all that at a very extensive factory tweak. All this is the result of a proper cooling system with three spinners. Three fans is more airflow thus they can keep fan RPM lower, and that reduces noise levels. The MSRP of 699 USD is for the the Founders Edition. Zotac is selling this bad boy for roughly $800 in the USA, however here in the EU the prices are downright ridiculous passing 900 euros with some web-shops nearing 1000 EUR! An incredible amount of money to play games. In the Founders Edition review I stated that the cooler is not enough for the beast inside, but for this factory tweaked and cooled version, it just isn't an issue. Overall you are looking at an up-to 8% on average extra in performance. And that means the product as tested today passes Titan X performance levels. 

 Aesthetics

The GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme is a nice looking card. It has that nice dark and grey appeal to it from the PCB to both sides, the LED inclusion has been done subtly and can be configured in any manner you prefer, the choice is yours. We do remain skeptical about backplates, they potentially can trap heat and thus warm up the PCB. But the flip-side is that they do look better and can protect your PCB and components from damage and, well, they can look nice as they can have a certain aesthetic appeal. Combined with that LED logo and copper block admittedly I have to admit, this is looking very tasteful and that copper block actually serves a good purpose. So in the end, on looks you certainly get that premium feel of detailed aesthetics and quality. All that combined with a nicely designed 16+2 phase PCB again in matte black, well what's not to like, eh?

Cooling & Noise Levels

The reference design (Founders Edition) of the GTX 1080 Ti is set at an offset threshold of 80 degrees C and quite easily hits 84 Degrees C under load/stress. As such, the reference card, once that GPU gets warmer, will clock down on voltage and that dynamic turbo clock to try and keep the card at that temperature threshold. That's throttling and it's part of the design and falls within advertised turbo frequencies. The cool thing though is that the GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme runs at only around the 66 Degrees C marker, and with the temperature threshold set at 80 Degrees C it has no need to throttle. So once the fans kick in, you can expect to hover around the 65~70 Degrees C marker (depending on ambient temperature a bit), with seriously demanding games. Please do note that you will need proper ventilation inside your chassis to achieve that number as the card oozes out warm air at the top side and cooler vents. Overall though the cooling design shaves off over 10 to 15 Degrees C over reference. Noise wise, we can’t complain about the triple fan cooling design the slightest bit. Expect (very silent) sound pressure values in the 37~38 dBA range at max under load and warm circumstances. Overall this is a very quiet and solid cooling solution. We did hear some coil noises/whine at high FPS, you likely will not hear it inside a closed chassis.

Power Consumption

The GP102-350-A1 Pascal GPU is rated as having a 250 Watt TDP. This GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme sits at roughly 315 Watts. This higher wattage has everything to do with the factory tweak. At this performance level you are looking at 450~500 Watts for our PC in total, that is okay. We think a 600~650 Watt PSU would be sufficient and, if you go with 2-way SLI, an 800~900 Watt power supply is recommended. Remember, when purchasing a PSU aim to double up in Wattage as your PSU is most efficient when it is under 50% load. Here again keep in mind we measure peak power consumption, the average power consumption is a good notch lower depending on GPU utilization. Also, if you plan to overclock the CPU/memory and/or GPU with added voltage, please do purchase a power supply with enough reserve. People often underestimate it, but if you tweak all three aforementioned variables, you can easily add 200 Watts to your peak power consumption budget.

Gaming Performance

From 1080P to Ultra HD the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti shows some serious numbers. But here's a paradox - the more difficult things get - the better the product will perform. E.g. Ultra HD is its true domain. Much like fine wine that ages well, that means this GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will last you a long time with future more GPU intensive games. This much performance and 11 GB of GDDR5X graphics memory helps you out in Ultra HD, DSR, VR and hefty complex anti-aliasing modes. That, and of course the latest gaming titles. I consider this to be a very viable single GPU solution that allows you to game properly in Ultra HD with some very nice eye candy enabled with a single GPU. Drivers wise we can't complain at all, we did not stumble into any issues. Performance wise, really there's not one game that won't run seriously well at the very best image quality settings. Gaming you must do with a nice Ultra HD monitor of course, or at least a 2560x1440 screen. Now, we can discuss the advantages of that 11 GB frame-buffer, but hey, you can draw your own conclusions there as performance isn't limited. And with 11 GB of it, you won't run out of graphics memory for years to come, right? So in that respect the card is rather future proof.

Overclocking

This card will not overclock much higher for the simple reason that Zotac pretty much went all the way for you, they defined a factory tweak and applied it. It is roughly your maximum with maybe ~25 MHz room left on that GPU base clock frequency. As such, at default this card hovers in that familiar ~2000 MHz range. So there is no real need to overclock per se as hey, this tweak is covered by your warranty as well. If you do want to tweak, you'll get a bit more out of the base clock and roughly 1.2 GHz on the memory. You can also allow the board power limiter to go up towards 120%. All these factors combined (power limiter/GPU clock/MEM clock) offer a notch more performance.

Concluding

There is little to dislike about the GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme, it is a beast offering close to maximum tweaked performance for a 1080 Ti straight out of the box. The size and weight you do need to factor in though, some dislike three slot designs and that weight, well you need to secure the card properly as that's a lot of pressure on any PCI Express slot. Proper cooling, great looks, subtle LEDs, nice tweaked performance, it is silent and runs at nice temperatures as well. Well okay, the one thing is the price level of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cards of course. Your stress gaming temperature will sit under a 70 Degrees C threshold, which is pretty good considering what GPU lies under the hood. In my previous 1080 Ti review I have not recommended cards like these for 1080p gaming. I am revising that claim a bit as there are people that want 144 FPS on their 144 Hz monitor of course. Next to that, 1080p rendering with DSR enabled also can have its benefits, and this card would be perfect for that. Broadly speaking though, at 2560x1440 the card really kicks in and at this resolution the 1080 Ti actually makes a lot of sense as it has heaps of power and memory hence it is going to last you a long time. Really, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is that Wolf Titan X in disguise. Nvidia had to do something to it and decided to ditch 1GB of memory, bringing that VRAM number to a weird 11GB. This means slightly fewer ROPs and a rather unusual 352-bit memory bus as well. But then they do use faster DDR5X memory and slightly faster than Titan X clock frequencies. So the performance drop is immediately annihilated and in fact the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is as fast or sometimes even faster compared to the Titan X (Pascal). You've seen the numbers, for Ultra HD gamers and even 2560x1440 gamers this product works out well, really well. Overall we are impressed by the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, very much so. Compared to the Founders Edition from Nvidia this product has improved on performance with roughly an 8% average, it has low noise levels and proper cooling levels but does exhibit a bit of coil whine. A handy side-effect of remaining below the temperature target of 80 Degrees C is that the card will not throttle down either. Sure, the price is obviously the biggest conundrum with the custom premium edition GeForce 1080 Ti cards, this baby sits at 759 USD in the USA but the EU is getting sodomized as prices seem to hover in that € 900~1000 domain, and that simply is too much imho. However, if you are willing and can afford it, we can definitely recommend it. The ZOTAC GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme edition as tested is a very impressive product that ticks almost all the right boxes.

 - H

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