For anyone wanting a slice of GTX 1080 action, the ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP Extreme is a rather spectacular card both in its presence and its performance.

ZOTAC has long been an advocate of high-quality customised cooling, their former generation of cards acquired assistance from cooling enthusiasts Zalman with the VF3000; a cooler which performed well and bore a monolithic design. Well, with the new 1080 AMP Extreme, ZOTAC haven’t departed from such a viewpoint; the featured IceStorm cooler is vast and it offers good thermal performance and low-noise attributes – the cooling fans stop spinning under light load.

So far as the design of 1080 AMP Extreme goes, we’re pleased to see the card bearing a metal shroud, featuring a strong metal backplate and the option to modify the lighting via FireStorm software. Though, this robust design does come with a slight compromise – this card is large and heavy. We recommend that if you are upgrading your system configuration to opt for a motherboard which takes advantage of reinforced, metal PCI express slots to avoid any long-term difficulties.


Performance is one of the primary concerns when investing in a graphics card and we can tell you that 1080 AMP Extreme does exceedingly well in this arena. By having both the GPU and memory clocks overclocked straight out of the box, the frame rates are notably impressive. After observing the performance at 1440p and 4K, ZOTAC’s offering is a top-performer in a range of different gaming titles and 3D-oriented tasks. The only drawback with such a significant performance modification is that there is very little headroom for users to nudge up even further - which should come as no surprise.

At this moment in time (July 2016) there appears to be a global shortage of GTX 1080s and prices are fluctuating quite rapidly so it won’t be unusual to see certain stores with stock monopolizing by hiking up the prices. As a rule of thumb, 1080 AMP Extreme should come with a price-tag of around £620 GBP / $730 USD. This card is among the cheaper of the custom designs and as far as GTX 1080s go, ZOTAC’s candidate is a worthwhile consideration; especially when you factor in the generous 5-year warranty.

The GTX 1080 AMP Extreme is equipped with an impressive cooling solution courtesy of IceStorm, takes advantage of substantial overclocks to both the GPU and memory, is backed by a rather appealing 5-year warranty and we thoroughly recommend it!




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