Zotac Shows Off Two Mini PCs And GTX 970 AMP! Extreme Core GPU Ahead Of CES

Zotac, a manufacturer of graphics cards and mini PCs, is announcing three new products today, just a couple of days before CES. At the show, the company will be showcasing the powerful ZBox EN860, the ZBox CI321, and the GeForce GTX 970 Amp! Extreme Core Edition.

The ZBox EN860 comes with an Nvidia GTX 860M built in, giving it plenty of graphics horsepower. Zotac hasn't announced yet which processors the EN860's will come with, but chances are they'll be low-voltage mobile parts.

Despite being a mini PC, though, it does come with a rather respectable amount of connectivity. You'll find three USB 3.0 ports (one up front), HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI, two Ethernet ports, a wireless antenna connector, an optical TOSLINK audio output, an SD card reader, and lastly, the standard pair of HD audio jacks. According to Zotac, you will be able to drive a 4K monitor with this unit at 60 Hz, and it does have support for Nvidia G-Sync.

The second mini-PC is the ZBox CI321. Again, we don't know the exact hardware that's inside, but Zotac did reveal that it will support dual-channel memory and that it has two gigabit Ethernet ports. On top of that, it has three USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, a Wi-Fi antenna connector, DisplayPort out, HDMI, an SD card reader, and two HD audio jacks.

Most interesting, though, is the GTX 970 Amp! Extreme Core Edition graphics card. This card takes what Zotac has done with the Amp! Edition cards a step further, featuring even higher clock speeds. The card will feature an IceStorm cooler with ExoArmor, which has three fans, a carbon fiber design, and a backplate.

According to Zotac, the GPU is clocked at 1228 MHz, and it will boost to about 1380 MHz using Nvidia's Boost 2.0 technology. It's not much, but that's 25 MHz faster than the GTX 970 Amp! Extreme – the card's runner-up from Zotac. For comparison, reference GTX 970s are clocked at 1050 MHz and will boost up to about 1178 MHz. Zotac didn't announce memory speeds, but we're going to guess that the GDDR5 memory runs at 7200 MHz, just like its older sibling.

Stay tuned for more details at the show.

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