Zotac GTX 1070 Ti AMP! Extreme Review

Conclusion

Phew. That was a ride.

You could be forgiven for thinking that, in the UK at least, Zotac fly somewhat under the radar. Whereas a lot of manufacturers have umpteen models which dominate the filters on reseller websites, Zotac tend to just produce a model which has all the bells and whistles and a stock one for those who will rip off the cooler and stick on a waterblock. Thus it is possible that you weren’t aware of exactly how great their AMP! range constantly is.

That is surely something that will change after today’s review. There is almost nothing negative at all to say.

Firstly we have to mention the looks. Whilst the backplate might divide opinion a little bit the front view is spectacular, combining a gorgeous carbon effect shroud with some seriously attractive fans and outstanding lighting capabilities. The Zotac logo in the centre is a particular highlight and there is enough flexibility in the lighting options and fidelity in the colour reproduction that you can tune it to your exact specifications.

The cooler isn’t just for show though. The performance is staggeringly good. Anything below 70 degrees is impressive, once you start heading towards sixty degrees there is a limit to how cool an air cooler can make the GPU. Even with our overclock in place the Zotac IceStorm cooler only topped out at a barely believable 58°C. We thought the DirectCU cooler on the ASUS Strix was about as good as it could get and then Zotac go and trump it by two degrees. Lush.

Speaking of our overclock, the performance of the Zotac AMP! Extreme is definitely enhanced by taking a moment to push the card harder than it comes out the box. Throughout our testing it was the highest performing GTX 1070 Ti – perhaps unsurprising given our limited number of reviews so far – but its ability to trump the GTX 1080 on a regular basis has to be something to make everyone sit up and take notice. nVidia are making a habit of their Ti models beating the next one up from the vanilla range, and the Zotac AMP! Extreme really shows the capabilities of the Pascal GPU, even with the slight reduction in CUDA Cores between this and the GTX 1080 version.

You would expect there to be a price to pay for this level of luxurious looks and pant-wetting performance, but nope. The Zotac GTX 1070 Ti AMP! Extreme sits very much at the affordable end of the GTX 1070 Ti models on the market. So it looks great, goes like a stabbed rat, has great lighting and is colder than your girlfriends heart. There is nothing not to like and thus it wins our OC3D Enthusiast Award.

  

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