ZOTAC GTX560 1GB AMP! Edition (+SLI) Review
Introduction
Product on Review: ZOTAC GTX560 1GB AMP! Edition
Manufacturer and Sponsor: ZOTAC
Street Price: £166.88
Established in 2006, ZOTAC are relative newcomers to the graphics card market yet they have rapidly become a favourite among gaming enthusiasts. You don’t get that kind of repertoire in such a short space of time by churning out inferior products. Quality craftsmanship, excellent product support, a superior warranty service and ultra-reliability are the order of the day here. Oh, and if you like to have the best performance straight out of the box without having to tweak until daybreak, then ZOTAC have that base covered too!
The AMP! Editions of ZOTAC graphics cards feature maximum possible overclocks yet still retain air cooling. The only options further up the hierarchy are Infinity Editions but for this you will need water-cooling. The GTX560AMP! Editions do however require modifying from stock format to keep the overclocks under control and for this purpose ZOTAC use their own custom heatsink and cooling fan assembly.
This particular model should not be confused with GTX560’s that carry the Ti moniker as the standard GTX560 GF114 core has a reduced shader count of 336 CUDA stream processes as opposed to the 384 carried by the GTX560Ti. The Titanium based GTX560’s have been dropped by NVIDIA and instead we are left with the stripped down GTX560. Interestingly though, NVIDIA have not produced a reference design and have left the graphics card manufacturers to set the clockspeeds of the GPU and memory to whatever they see fit, giving them free reign to produce pre-overclocked editions which will allow them to differentiate themselves from other varieties of the GTX560.
The ZOTAC GTX560 AMP! Edition is one such graphics card that arrives pre overclocked, weighing in at 950/4400MHz making it among the fastest factory overclocked GTX560’s available. This speed is faster than we managed to manually overclock the previous GTX560 reviewed here so it’s certainly impressed me straight away to have a factory overclock faster than what was possible manually overclocking the same core design. It does however remain to be seen how this overclock fairs and indeed how much harder the cooling has to be worked.
My single reservation is that with only 1GB of GDDR5 we could see some serious VRAM limitations at high resolutions which is something I will be looking into while testing the cards. Also, because the cards are priced at around the £160 mark, they are cheap enough for those looking for a 'bang-per-buck' solution to SLI so with this in mind, I will also be running a pair of overclocked GTX560’s in SLI to see how they compare to the high end single core GPU solutions.
Product on Review: ZOTAC GTX560 1GB AMP! Edition
Manufacturer and Sponsor: ZOTAC
Street Price: £166.88
The AMP! Editions of ZOTAC graphics cards feature maximum possible overclocks yet still retain air cooling. The only options further up the hierarchy are Infinity Editions but for this you will need water-cooling. The GTX560AMP! Editions do however require modifying from stock format to keep the overclocks under control and for this purpose ZOTAC use their own custom heatsink and cooling fan assembly.
This particular model should not be confused with GTX560’s that carry the Ti moniker as the standard GTX560 GF114 core has a reduced shader count of 336 CUDA stream processes as opposed to the 384 carried by the GTX560Ti. The Titanium based GTX560’s have been dropped by NVIDIA and instead we are left with the stripped down GTX560. Interestingly though, NVIDIA have not produced a reference design and have left the graphics card manufacturers to set the clockspeeds of the GPU and memory to whatever they see fit, giving them free reign to produce pre-overclocked editions which will allow them to differentiate themselves from other varieties of the GTX560.
The ZOTAC GTX560 AMP! Edition is one such graphics card that arrives pre overclocked, weighing in at 950/4400MHz making it among the fastest factory overclocked GTX560’s available. This speed is faster than we managed to manually overclock the previous GTX560 reviewed here so it’s certainly impressed me straight away to have a factory overclock faster than what was possible manually overclocking the same core design. It does however remain to be seen how this overclock fairs and indeed how much harder the cooling has to be worked.
My single reservation is that with only 1GB of GDDR5 we could see some serious VRAM limitations at high resolutions which is something I will be looking into while testing the cards. Also, because the cards are priced at around the £160 mark, they are cheap enough for those looking for a 'bang-per-buck' solution to SLI so with this in mind, I will also be running a pair of overclocked GTX560’s in SLI to see how they compare to the high end single core GPU solutions.
A bit about ZOTAC
ZOTAC International is one of the largest producers of NVIDIA VGA and motherboard solutions worldwide.
ZOTAC International (MCO) Limited was established in 2006 with a mission to deliver superb, high quality NVIDIA graphic solutions to the industry. It has strong backing from its parent group, PC Partner Ltd. - with headquarters in Hong Kong, factories in mainland China and regional sales offices in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. The scale of support ZOTAC provides is currently unrivalled in the world. With 40 surface mount technology (SMT) manufacturing lines, 6,000 workers and a production facility with over 9,000,000 square feet, ZOTAC employs a full array of state-of-the-art technologies and skilled personnel in order to meet your hardware needs. In addition, ZOTAC has over 130 research & development professionals in Hong Kong and mainland China, working to bring you the best from the cutting edge of the industry. ZOTAC's international bases of operation work together to enable effective and efficient global as well as localized sales and marketing support.
ZOTAC doesn't just mean top tier quality, it is also synonymous with high performance, absolute reliability and unparalleled value. With a range of products featuring overclocked performance, excellent cooling properties, and unique packaging ZOTAC products routinely meet - and exceed - users’ expectations.
ZOTAC's unwavering commitment to our users is to bring the latest products quickly to the market with the best value. Needless to say ZOTAC is the right choice for those who demand the highest quality graphics solutions.
For more about ZOTAC's philosophy, click here...
ZOTAC International is one of the largest producers of NVIDIA VGA and motherboard solutions worldwide.
ZOTAC International (MCO) Limited was established in 2006 with a mission to deliver superb, high quality NVIDIA graphic solutions to the industry. It has strong backing from its parent group, PC Partner Ltd. - with headquarters in Hong Kong, factories in mainland China and regional sales offices in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. The scale of support ZOTAC provides is currently unrivalled in the world. With 40 surface mount technology (SMT) manufacturing lines, 6,000 workers and a production facility with over 9,000,000 square feet, ZOTAC employs a full array of state-of-the-art technologies and skilled personnel in order to meet your hardware needs. In addition, ZOTAC has over 130 research & development professionals in Hong Kong and mainland China, working to bring you the best from the cutting edge of the industry. ZOTAC's international bases of operation work together to enable effective and efficient global as well as localized sales and marketing support.
ZOTAC doesn't just mean top tier quality, it is also synonymous with high performance, absolute reliability and unparalleled value. With a range of products featuring overclocked performance, excellent cooling properties, and unique packaging ZOTAC products routinely meet - and exceed - users’ expectations.
ZOTAC's unwavering commitment to our users is to bring the latest products quickly to the market with the best value. Needless to say ZOTAC is the right choice for those who demand the highest quality graphics solutions.
For more about ZOTAC's philosophy, click here...
