Many thanks to NVIDIA and ZOTAC for the opportunity to test this graphics card!
It has been quite the wait since NVIDIA introduced their Kepler architecture in 2012. A sneak preview of what the next generation Maxwell architecture would be was shown in the form of two new graphics cards at the start of 2014: GTX 750 and GTX 750ti. These entry to mid-range level pair used the first generation Maxwell GM107 GPU and had many noticeable improvements over Kepler, in particular higher performance and yet decently reduced power consumption at the same time. After a wait of approximately 7 months, the high-end graphics category now finally gets the Maxwell treatment as well with the launch of the GTX 970 and GTX 980, utilising the second generation Maxwell GM204 GPU. With this, the GTX 980 is now the new single GPU flagship card. Powered by new NVIDIA® Maxwell™ architecture, The GeForce® GTX™ 980 is a high-performance graphics card designed for serious gaming, for incredible gaming experiences.
Today, we have with us a custom designed GTX 980 graphics card: the ZOTAC GTX 980 4GB AMP! Omega Edition with unique IceStorm dual fan cooling system, customized Power+ circuitry and OC Plus real-time performance intelligence that takes your graphics experience to the next level. For the 9 series, ZOTAC has gone on an all-out offensive and released three variants of the GTX 980: Amp! Edition, AMP! Omega Edition and AMP! Extreme Edition. The AMP! Omega sits right in the middle, while the regular AMP! is placed below the Omega and the AMP! Extreme snugly sitting right at the top. The AMP! series of graphics cards has been around for quite some time, all sporting the unique yellow-orange colours in their designs; this is however the first time they are expanding out their AMP! series to something more.
Brief Information on GTX 900 Series Before we carry on though, let’s have a quick look at the main features of the GTX 900 series (also available on NVIDIA website):
(i) Multi-Frame Sampled Anti-Aliasing (MFAA)
- Exclusive to Maxwell architecture
- New anti-aliasing technique
- Similar edge quality, but approximately 30% faster frame rates than MSAA
- Improvement in edge quality with minimal performance cost
- Also available on Kepler and Fermi GPUs as of NVIDIA 344.48 WHQL Graphics Driver
(ii) Voxel Global Illumination (VXGI)
- Incredibly realistic lighting, shading and reflections
- Good news for next-generation games and game engines
(iii)Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR)
- Renders game at higher and more detailed resolution
- Shrinks result back down to resolution of monitor
- End Result: 4K-quality graphics on HD monitor!
(iv) Memory Architecture improvements
(v) VR Direct
Quite a few nifty features over Kepler it seems. My favourite feature so far is DSR: being able to increase quality even on the same screen resolution is good news for gamers who aim for quality.
The technical details about the Maxwell architecture and the 900 series is actually quite the large pile, hence it’s summarised here briefly. For readers interested on the full technical information, you may refer to this link for the full whitepaper for the GTX 980: GTX 980 Whitepaper.
With that, let’s now move on to the unboxing and look at the additional features ZOTAC have for their GTX 980 4GB AMP! Omega.
Brief additional features of ZOTAC GTX 980 4GB AMP! Omega Here are some pictures from ZOTAC that explain the additional features on their GTX 980 Omega in detail:
The Firestorm software has been given a new look with the release of the NVIDIA 900 series. The version shown here is the latest one downloaded from the Zotac website, which is newer than the one from the provided installation disc. There’s still a quirk though: the GPU Vcore can be adjusted to 1.26V in Firestorm, but the change is not reflected and the GPU Vcore goes up to 1.2V only. Perhaps a new update of Firestorm or Video BIOS (VBIOS) will fix this. It’s also strange as to how the OC Plus feature is under “S.S.P Chip Setting”. Simply naming it “OC+ Chip Setting” would be less confusing, for instance.
With that, let’s get down to unboxing and have a good look at the real deal!
