ZOTAC GTX 960 AMP! 2GB Graphics Card Review

[section_title title=”Conclusion”]

Conclusion

Another day, another dollar….no wait, another day, another graphics card review; that’s better! Over the past year or so, ZOTAC as a company have impressed me quite a considerable amount due to a number of reasons but most of all, their AMP! editions performance right out of the box; some stunning pre-overclocked cards. The main question however remains, has ZOTAC’s GTX 960 AMP! edition 2GB graphics card done enough to further improve on my experience? Have ZOTAC finally met their match? Let’s find out…

So starting out with enforcing what was said above, the ZOTAC GTX 960 AMP! performed brilliantly at stock and was easily a match for the ASUS GTX 960 STRIX; it easily beat the MSI Twin Frozr V which is always a credit to any company beating MSI at anything as of late. The biggest advantage was found in synthetic benchmarks such as 3DMark 11 but in games, the difference became even less apparent with it matching the other GTX 960’s on test; showing that the clock speed coupled with the meagre 2GB of VRAM have a limiting factor.

Overclocking performance wasn’t ZOTACs strong point falling in the wake of the MSI GTX 960 Gaming Twin Frozr V model but all in all, it managed to peg with the ASUS card and the only real significant result was synthetic performance; the overclocking performance in games was mediocre at best and was held back a lot by the 2GB of VRAM equipped with this card. This is where the AMD R9 285 has a slight advantage in terms of performance overall but the GTX 960, especially the ZOTAC one is keeping it as close as it has been for a while against AMD.

The card comes in at just over 8” in length meaning this card is small; ok it isn’t small form factor (SFF) classified but it certainly comes in much shorter than the MSI GTX 960/970 which comes in at around 11.5”; a good result for ZOTAC in this regard. The general aesthetic is nice too and I feel the card has a nice sleek and sophisticated look about it; the back plate is also absolutely stunning and I love the way ZOTAC have implemented it to fit in with the rest of the cooler. One down side to the cooler however is it is the warmest out of the GTX 960’s on test and pretty much the rest of the pack; the slightly noisier cooler doesn’t help matters here and if the AMP! cooler would have performed here, todays result would have been different. Essentially the noise/extra heat have robbed the ZOTAC GTX 960 AMP! of Gold today.

That being said, this card is a upper echelon Silver any day of the week as for its small size and out of the box performance, if heat/noise are nothing of concern, then this card should seriously be considered for purchase. It is hard to justify any GTX 960 since AMD price dropped their R9 285 and R9 290 models offering much better bang for buck in terms of performance, the main advantage here is the efficiency, lower power draw and overall quality of the features; DSR anyone?

£185.99 isn’t exactly the cheapest price for a GTX 960 at the moment and given the coolers slightly disappointing performance, it wouldn’t be too far off R9 290 pricing which is of course a more superior card in performance and VRAM. That being said, AMD is not for everyone just like NVIDIA is not for everyone (let’s not go there), so NVIDIA regulars will most likely snap this card up for decent 1080p gaming performance and in all honestly, it isn’t a bad purchase whatsoever. My advice to ZOTAC, drop the price a little to be more competitive and you have a winner!

Huge thanks to ZOTAC for sending the GTX 960 AMP! edition graphics card in for review and I look forward to seeing more in the near future.