ZOTAC GTX 970 AMP! Omega Edition Review

[section_title title=”Conclusion”]Conclusion

To be pretty brutal here to you all, the NVIDIA GTX 970 has effectively had the majority of peoples tongues wagging since its release with its low TDP, lower but more powerful shader count and of course, the release price.  The focus today has been on ZOTAC however and one of their iterations of the “Maxwell” chip which will surely have a lot of people wondering how the “partner” variants will fair in testing.  The card as mentioned all throughout the review is the Omega edition which comes from the new family of ZOTAC AMP! series cards but what is different?  How does this card stack up against other cards and more importantly, does it warrant a purchase?

If I were to sum the performance up in a couple of words, they would probably have to be super, smashing and great; let me explain.  In synthetic benchmarks the ZOTAC GTX 970 AMP! Omega edition graphics card does very well and is on par with the MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G card aside from when overclocked; the MSI is a beast, let’s make no mistake.  With the ZOTAC having less in the way of head room for increasing voltage, it still manages to not only beat the MSI variant in a couple of the games it was tested on, but at stock it relatively stays above AMD’s R9 290 graphics card which is obviously the target so performance wise, this card is bang on the money.  I have a feeling when the Maxwell drivers start maturing as we are still in the initial driver phase, I would expect even more performance yields in games and as progression and the pricing wars start to come into effect, you will get even more bang for buck; something which should make this card desirable for many months to come.

Now I have to have a little gripe here as personally, I’m not the biggest fan of triple slot coolers and although the thermal performance is fantastic, it doesn’t warrant the thickness ZOTAC have implemented; there is literally a degree of difference between this card and the MSI Twin Frozr V cooler which is barely a dual slot cooler.  One thing I will say is that the latest variant of the AMP! cooler does look particularly good and I love the addition of the back plate; a very big plus point in ZOTAC’s favour in my opinion.  If triple slot does “grind your gears” so to speak, then this card isn’t going to do anything to persuade you to buy it but if you intend to only run 1 x GPU in your system and have perhaps no need for additional expansion cards, then the game changes slightly in ZOTAC’s favour.

Another notable feature with the ZOTAC Omega is the inclusion of the new ZOTAC FireStorm overclocking software which is enhanced via an included USB cable to get imperative control and tweaking options which should please the enthusiasts among us.  Overall the software does offer some very nice functions but I have to remind you that to overclock all graphics cards, I use the MSI Afterburner tool so who knows, extra performance might be available via the FireStorm utility but obviously not guaranteed.

Giving my honest opinion on the design, ZOTAC have radically changed the overall aesthetic of the AMP! series coolers; well from the 7xx series cards anyway.  This time round ZOTAC have dropped the orange fans and have gone for a more industrial look; something I reckon would appeal to a wider audience on the whole.  What I mean by that is orange is not everyone’s colour and for those who like to match up components in builds, you would have a hard time with the older revision; not so much this time around though!  All in all, ZOTAC have done a great job but I still question their use of a triple slot cooler when it yields little to no benefits for consumers; more of a hindrance in fact if you are looking to SLI or use additional expansion cards such as sound cards and RAID controllers.

Now the price is a very interesting one in regards to the GTX 970 as it is one of the more expensive models; not something people are going to want to hear.  It comes in at around £296 which as mentioned sits in the higher spectrum of the GTX 970 models but you have to look at what you get in terms of feature package and of course bundle.  ZOTAC have bundled FireStorm and the ability to control and tweak literally every aspect which will surely excite some.  Another thing to remember is that there is a “higher” spec version called the Extreme from ZOTAC so there is clearly more to come and with that will be an even more expensive model; one would imagine ZOTAC would cut the price to be a little more competitive eventually.

Overall the ZOTAC GTX 970 AMP! Omega edition graphics card combines NVIDIA’s latest “Maxwell” graphics chip with their new iteration of the AMP! cooler and in my opinion, has done a great job overall.  Despite being a triple slot cooler, the card is still a top performer and still offers a better overall deal to the current AMD R9 290X in which it trades blows with and of course the AMD R9 290 it consistently beats.  The inclusion of the FireStorm overclocking software, enhanced components, great cooling performance and all those Maxwell features such as DSR/DirectX 12 support further adds to an impressive package on offer from ZOTAC.

In combination of the great performance, design and of course the price, I have decided to award the ZOTAC GTX 970 AMP! Omega Edition our gold award.  This is based on a solid combination of power, performance and even though it is still one of the more expensive GTX 970’s, it still remains a good price.

Huge thanks to ZOTAC for sending in the AMP! Omega edition GTX 970 for review and I look forward to seeing more in the future.