ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme Review

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards in this article on a Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P motherboard powered by an Intel Core i7-5960X octa-core processor and 16GB of Corsair DDR4 RAM. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" settings and disable any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's X.M.P. profile was enabled to ensure optimal memory performance and the solid state drive was then formatted and Windows 10 Pro (64-bit) was installed and fully updated. When the installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, games, and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.

HotHardware's Test System Intel Core i7 Powered

Hardware Used: Intel Core i7-5960X (3GHz, Octa-Core) Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P (Intel X99 Chipset) Radeon R9 Fury Nano GeForce GTX 1060 GeForce GTX 1070 GeForce GTX 1080 Zotac GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme Radeon RX 480 Radeon R9 390 16GB Corsair DDR4-2133 OCZ Vertex 4 Integrated Audio Integrated Network

Relevant Software:  Windows 10 Pro x64 NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v369.05 Benchmarks Used: Unigine Heaven v4 3DMark "Fire Strike" Thief MIddle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor Ashes Of The Singularity Hitman 2016 Steam VR Performance Test FRAPS

Unigine Heaven v4.0 Benchmark Pseudo-DirectX 11 Gaming

Unigine's Heaven Benchmark v4.0 is built around the Unigine game engine. Unigine is a cross-platform, real-time 3D engine, with support for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11 and OpenGL. The Heaven benchmark -- when run in DX11 mode -- also makes comprehensive use of tessellation technology and advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion). It features volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm and a dynamic sky with light scattering as well.

Unigine Heaven

The Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme Edition card has no trouble dispatching the Founder's Edition GTX 1070 in the Unigine Heaven benchmark, and came within striking distance of the more power -- and more expensive -- GeForce GTX 1080. None of the Radeons came close...

Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Fire Strike has multiple benchmark modes: Normal mode runs at 1920x1080, Extreme mode targets 2560x1440, and Ultra mode runs at a 4K resolution. GPU target frame buffer utilization for normal mode is 1GB and the benchmark uses tessellation, ambient occlusion, volume illumination, and a medium-quality depth of field filter. The more taxing Extreme mode targets 1.5GB of frame buffer memory and increases detail levels across the board. Ultra mode is explicitly designed for high-end and CrossFire / SLI systems. GT 1 focuses on geometry and illumination, with over 100 shadow casting spot lights, 140 non-shadow casting point lights, and 3.9 million vertices calculated for tessellation per frame. And 80 million pixels are processed per frame. GT2 emphasizes particles and GPU simulations.

3DMark Fire Strike

We saw a similar performance trend in 3DMark Fire Strike. The Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme Edition card lands just behind the GeForce GTX 1080, but well out in front of the Founder's Edition GTX 1070. The higher clocks on Zotac's card give it an approximate 9% advantage over the Founder's Edition here.