ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 AMP! Graphics Card Review

With Fallout 4 just being released on November 10th 2015, some of you may be looking at upgrading your gaming pc’s components. Probably one of the easiest upgrades you can make to your gaming rig is to upgrade the graphics card and SSD. Today, thanks to ZOTAC, we get to check out the performance of their GeForce GTX 980 AMP! graphics card!

WHY DO I WANT A GRAPHICS CARD?

If you are looking to know the who, what, when, where, why and how of graphics cards. If you are new to the graphics card market and are looking to further your knowledge of graphics cards then we encourage you to start your journey here. Simply put, a graphics card is a dedicated piece of hardware that is situated in the PCI Express bus interface found on your motherboard. This powerful device supplies a dedicated source of processing power to generate the graphics that will fill your monitor with exceptional 3D quality.

GPU SPECIFICATIONS

The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 AMP! comes in the usual largely-sized packaging which features a basic overview of the card on the front, where the back keeps you updated on it’s specifications.

Inside the packaging you will find the norm, the graphics situated in it’s foam cushion, DVI-to-VGA Adapter, Dual 4-pin MOLEX to 6-pin PCIe adapter, the driver disk and of course the User Manual. We highly recommend using GeForce Experience rather than the driver disk, just to make sure your Nvidia graphics card is kept up to date.

The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 AMP! was released around … yet it is still one of the top cards they have to offer. You can pick one up from Amazon for $449.99.

GPU COMPONENTS

Starting with the input and output panel, you can see that the Zotac GeForce GTX 980 AMP! features 3 x DisplayPort 1.2 (4K @ 60Hz), HDMI 2.0 (4K @60 Hz) and DL-DVI (2560×1600).

The ZOTAC graphics card features PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot for quick data transfer. Opposite of the PCI Express Port side, you will find the two 6-Pin PCIe power ports, as well as two SLI slots for a SLI bridge, which is pretty standard.

The top of the graphics card features the triple cooling design, which we touch on later, but in short is pretty phenomenal. These fans are encased in a slick aluminum frame. Based upon the latest Nvidia Maxwell architecture, the successor of the Kepler. The Maxwell microarchitecture is based on the 28nm manufacturing process.

The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 AMP! also features 4GB of GDDR5 memory, with the standard 256-bit memory bus. The bottom of the graphics card features the custom aluminum backplate to protect the PCB, as well as give it a stylish look.

Once removed, you get a better idea of the black PCB that the aluminum housing protects.