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Power usage, temperatures and noise
Power Consumption
| Idle | Under Load (Unigine Valley) | |
| Zotac GTX 980 AMP! Omega | 125W | 342W |
| eVGA GTX 980 Ti Superclocked | 118W | 385W |
| Zotac GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme | 126W | 454W |
Power draw from the wall for the complete system except monitor. Load is when running Unigine Valley at 2560×1440.
The higher clocked GPU and memory plus the triple fan-cooling all work together to increase the power draw quite a lot compared to the eVGA GTX 980 Ti SC. We still end up under 500W meaning a 600-750W PSU should be enough. Considering the performance this card provides us it’s impressive.
Temperatures
The max temperature was measured while running Unigine Heaven test but was similar when using other benchmarks that put full load on the GPU. The room where this was done had a temperature around 25C which is higher than usual due to warm summer weather.
This card does not run the fans while in idle or low and won’t spin them up until the load is around 40%.
| Zotac GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme | eVGA GTX 980 Ti Superclocked | |
| Idle Temperature | 34 C | 33C – 38C * |
| Temperature under load | 63 C | 67C – 81C * |
* eVGA offers several fan profiles. The default profile and the quite profile yields the high temperatures while the aggressive profile yields the low temperatures, however with a loud fan noise.
Even though the fans are not spinning at all at idle we still hit 34C on the GPU, same as the eVGA with the noisy aggresive fan profile. We never really see any higher temperatures than around 63C on the Zotac GTX 980 Ti AMP Extreme.
Noise
Noise was measured at 1 meter behind the case while at the windows desktop (idle) and full load while running Unigine Heaven.
Typical
Sound Levels
| Jet takeoff (200 feet) | 120 dBA | |
| Construction Site | 110 dBA | |
| Shout (5 feet) | 100 dBA | |
| Heavy truck (50 feet) | 90 dBA | |
| Urban street | 80 dBA | |
| Automobile interior | 70 dBA | |
| Normal conversation (3 feet) | 60 dBA | |
| Office, classroom | 50 dBA | |
| Living room | 40 dBA | |
| Bedroom at night | 30 dBA | |
| Broadcast studio | 20 dBA | |
| Rustling leaves | 10 dBA |
| Idle | Under Load | |
| Zotac GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme | 37.9 Ba | 39.7 dBa |
| eVGA GTX 980 Ti Superclocked | 38.4 dBa | 44 dBa |
Out own test-rig with the Thermaltake Level 10 case is itself quite noisy with large fans. This means that the noise level at idle basically is an indication how noisy the case and the rest of the environment is. The difference between the eVGA and the Zotac card is minor and can be attributed to fluctuations between the two measurement times.
As we put a load on the cards things change though. The eVGA-card is using the default fan profile meaning that the temperatures are hitting around 81C. In contrast the Zotac-card is coasting at around 62-63C and still is a lot less noisy.
We did encounter a weird issue though. We did some Witcher 3 tests (~ 40 fps at 4K with everything set to max is not bad, is it?) and for some reason suddenly whenever we started the game, even at the menu screen and even though the temperatures on the GPU was below 50C the fans spun up to 70% which was very noisy. This was the only game it happened in of all we tested so we do not know what the issue is. We’ve also seen some reports of fans spinning, then stop spinning and quickly spin up again which result in an annoying sound but we did not encounter that at all. In fact we have seen this reported for other GTX 980 Ti-cards also so it might be a bios issue that can affect cards from more than one vendor. We have also seen reports of coil whine from the fans but again this is not something we encountered at all. Make sure you buy it from a good vendor though in case your card has the problem so you can exchange it.
How are you providing SLI results with a slower card in the pool? The Zotac clocks down to match the slower card to create equal performance. Essentially you posted results of the eVga card in SLI mode, not the Zotac. Also, the system you are benching on appears to be gen 2 not gen 3 pcie. You’re not getting the full 40 lanes out the Zotac… I assume these things will have an effect on your test results, no? i have this Zotac card and feel with the configuration and testing method you didn’t do it justice, it’s my first Zotac, coming from eVga 780 then 980’s all in SLI and find the new AMP Extreme a mind blowing experience. Extremely curious to see a what a “real” real-world test of two AMP! Extremes running in SLI with full gen 3 support active.
Well, until I get two of these cards to play with any SLI-tests will be affected by the difference in clockspeed. That said I could follow the clock speed in GPU-Z and each card was actually running at their relative speeds so it doesn’t seem it is clocking down – however it needs to be in sync so yes, we do get a bit slower SLI-results than we could get. The SLI numbers though is more to show what SLi can do for you. you are correct that I am rocking on an older gen mobo/CPU which I noted in my test-rig info and I am in the process of swapping everything out for Skylake the coming days so unless Zotac needs the card back ASAP i hope to get some new SLi-testing in during next week.
I just picked up a Skylake i7-6700K and the ASUS Z710 Deluxe (http://www.asus.com/US/Motherboards/Z170-DELUXE/) and will instalkl everything and then do some SLI-testing to see if the scaling changes.
Might be powerful, but I don’t trust Zotac 😛
Zotac is a more reliable edition compared to the plain but you’ll never get anything special and you’re likely to pay more. Then again if you’re looking for a more stable version of a unit where the special things like the 20th edition 980 for example mean nothing, zotac is the way to go.
I’ve tested a bunch of Zotac cards and their AMP! edition cards always worked well and provided nice overclocking featrures and good cooling. Still, even the “reference” cards of the 980 Ti overclock well so in the end you have to see how much you value factory overclocking and different coolers.
A fan of Zotac. They get the most out of their GPU’s but as a result, suffer limited longevity. I’ve had 2 of their cards die on me, roughly as I was just about to upgrade to the next version. Meanwhile all stock frequency cards I have from other brands (as far back as GeForce3) live to this day. On most cards the fans will wear out after about 3-4 years of regular use. In Zotac cards the GPU has a similar lifespan, which shouldn’t be an issue if you’re chasing high frequencies and tend to upgrade often.
May as well buy reference card
At that price I’d rather get a FuryX…