Zotac GTX 960 AMP

amazon Zotac GTX 960 AMP reviews

The shell is beautiful and impressive with the face of Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid. The reason Zotac designed the box so that they have the game code Metal Gear Solid V for the AMP version present. The value of this game is $ 20.

The product is carefully wrapped with a thick layer of shock-resistant plastic and a plastic foam box.

Included accessories include driver discs, manuals, a Molex 6-pin cable, and Metal Gear Solid V.

The card is beautifully designed, though it can not be called excellent. All the radiator masks are made of metal.

If the front side is not prominent then the back of the card is very impressive. The circuit board is supported by a thick, back-plate that is heat-resistant to the components behind the circuit board.

GTX 960 AMP! Not too long, can be compatible with most chassis. This can also be considered a small advantage for users who need to build high performance mid-price systems.

This version requires only one 6-pin auxiliary power source and 400W real-time power supply to operate.

The whole card was built pretty solid.

The upper part of the card prints the Zotac logo metallic. If using side mica case and lanyard, this logo will reflect relatively beautiful.

The highlight of the Ice Storm radiator is the large 9-blade radiator fan. Although not bending color but the experiment of this fan for the amount of wind is very loud and low noise.

The card is equipped with two DVI ports, an HDMI port and a DisplayPort port.

Components & Radiators

GTX 960 AMP! Use the reference circuit board as Nvidia’s design with three power phases for the GPU. The mosfet is mounted on the heatsink. Memory chips come in contact with the heat sink by a thermal-pad.

Temperature – Noise

At the time of this test, the room temperature is 21 degrees Celsius. The operating temperature of the Zotac GTX 960 AMP! on the benchtable:

– Idle: 43 degrees C.

– Game (Default): 79 degrees C, fan 48% ~ 1485 rpm, pulse boost was lowered from 1380 to 1366 MHz.

For the GTX 900 series, Nvidia set a safety margin of 80 degrees Celsius. As the temperature touches this threshold, boost pulses will drop, and performance will also decrease slightly. So the initial heat of the Zotac GTX 960 not satisfactory.

However, Ice Storm fans are somewhat of a remedy to this. From 85% speed down, the fan works perfectly smoothly. Even when running at 100% speed, the noise was still very small even though I used a benchtable placed right next to the screen. Thanks to that I can increase the fan to 70%, at this temperature down to 70 degrees Celsius, boost pulse maintained 1380 MHz.

Zotac has the right to be proud of the Ice Storm, but probably on another product that has more heatpipe. In this case, it is also possible to draw the GM206 as a relatively hot GPU, requiring a minimum of 3 heatpipes to achieve satisfactory heat dissipation.

where can you get a Zotac GTX 960 AMP online

Zotac GeForce GTX 960 AMP Edition 2GB GDDR5 128-bit PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Cards (ZT-90303-10M): Buy it now

Summary

GTX 960 AMP, the problem with the GTX 960 in general: 128-bit memory bandwidth obstruct GPU performance. As evidenced by the OC up to 139 MHz clock, Zotac card only 5% increase in performance compared to the standard version of Nvidia. It is possible that Nvidia wants to “save” 192 bit bandwidth for the GTX 960 Ti to fill in the gaps between the GTX 960 and the GTX 970.

Zotac is a well-known manufacturer that balances components and costs. Their products are reduced to the minimum necessary to give the user the best price and quality is not affected. GTX 960 AMP! Is also a product like that. However, this time they have been a little bit missing this time. When fully operational, the GTX 960 AMP! Touching 80 degrees Celsius and reducing pulse boost. Meanwhile, Ice Storm heat dissipation is not fully performance due to slow fan speed.

This downside is easily overcome by software modification. In addition to that, Zotac GTX 960 AMP! Is a good card in the mid-high-end VGA segment, suitable for gaming PCs from $500 to $700.

Pros:

– Strong performance, good p / p.

– Overclocking available.

– The form is stable, the mask is made of solid metal.

– Back plate support circuit board.

– The fan runs extremely quietly, even when it is 100% faster.

– Good price.

– Warranty 4 years.

Cons:

– Heat dissipation only 2 heatpipe.

– Users need to adjust the fan speed to achieve better temperature

– No memory overclocking.