Zotac GeForce GTX 560 1GB Amp! Review

Results Analysis

In Dirt 2 the Zotac GTX 560 1GB Amp!’s high clock speed made up for the card’s reduced stream processor count, albeit by fairly slim margins. At 1,920 x 1080 with 4x AA, the Zotac managed a minimum frame rate of 90fps while a stock-speed GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB could only manage a minimum of 87fps. This is a 3 per cent lead.

In Black Ops at 2,560 x 1,600 with 4x AA, the Zotac was again faster than a stock GTX 560 Ti 1GB, with a minimum frame rate of 85fps rather than 79fps. However, this is still a little slower than a standard Radeon HD 6950 1GB, which managed a minimum frae rate of 71fps. This is pertinent because HD 6950 1GB cards can now be found for £184, which isn't much more than the £170 of the Amp!


Arma II: Operation Arrowhead is a stern test for any graphics card, but the Zotac again out-performed a stock GTX 560 Ti 1GB. At 1,920 x 1,080 with 4x AA, the Zotac produced a minimum frame rate of 37fps, a 2fps improvement over the GTX 560 Ti 1GB. The HD 6950 1GB was as fast as the Zotac at the same settings.

Bad Company 2 remains a favourite with online gamers and at 1,920 x 1,080 with 4x AA, the Zotac produced a minimum frame rate of 34fps, 2fps faster than a stock GTX 560 Ti 1GB and 5fps faster than an HD 6950 1GB. However, at 2,560 x 1,600 with 4x AA, the lack of stream processors inside the GTX 560 1GB GPU told: the card’s minimum frame rate of 18fps was 2fps slower than the GTX 560 Ti 1GB. However, neither GPU could play the game the smoothly, and neither could the HD 6950 1GB.


Our original review of the card was based upon a pre-release sample, which Zotac has since informed us was fitted with a faulty cooler and which ran with an overly high vcore. It then sent us a replacement card, which the following analysis is based upon.

While the Zotac impressed us with its speed, its power consumption was less desirable. The high load vcore caused it consume 28W more under load than a reference GTX 560 Ti 1GB. The high power consumption also led to high temperatures, with the card running at 67°C above room temperature under load. However, to the card's credit, noise levels were decent, with the twin cooling fans almost inaudible at idle, and just audible over the rest of our test system's fans under load.

Overclocking

Zotac’s overclocking suite, Firestorm, isn’t the most capable piece of overclocking software, but it's easy to use and inoffensive to the eye. We managed to increase the GPU frequency from 950MHz to 1GHz, and the memory from 1.1GHz to 1.124GHz (4.5GHz effective). These are increases of 5 and 2 per cent respectively.

Performance in Dirt 2 rose accordingly, with a minimum frame rate of 93fps at 1,920 x 1080 with 4x AA rather than 90fps. Frame rates in Arma II also rose, but only by 1fps, from 38fps to 39fps. However, this overclock further increased the card’s peak power consumption by 10W.

Conclusion

While the Zotac GTX 560 Amp! offers impressive performance that in most cases allows the card to surpass a stock GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB card, it’s only been able to achieve this at the cost of higher power consumption and higher operating temperatures. These are unwelcome concessions considering how cool and efficient we’ve found most GTX 560 Ti 1GB cards to be, and count heavily against the Zotac GTX 560 AMP!

Considering that superb overclocked and quietly cooled GTX 560 Ti 1GB cards, such as the MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC, can be picked up for £15 more than the Zotac, it fails to make a convincing case for itself.

The extra is certainly worth paying, as the Twin Frozr is highly overclocked by default and so easily as fast as the Zotac if not more so. It's quieter too, and offers even more overclockability. There's also the extra GPU resources to factor in - the Twin Frozr uses the full-fat GTX 560 Ti 1GB GPU, which will give it more grunt in demanding games, both now and in the future.

The GTX 560 as a GPU certainly looks to have the potential to produce a good card; after all, the GTX 460 1GB is already a solid performer, and the GTX 560 can be thought of a higher clocked version. However, part of the success of the GTX 460 1GB was a keen price and low operating temperatures, and it's these areas that the Zotac fails to deliver on.