Zotac GeForce GTX 580 AMP²! Edition
We already tested Zotac’s GeForce GTX 480 AMP! Edition, and to the casual observer, the GTX 580 AMP²! looks no different. They’re both equipped with Zalman’s excellent VF3000 GPU cooler and sport the same orange fan and black shroud color scheme. But looks can be deceiving; not only does the new AMP²! card host a GF110 GPU (rather than the ill-fated GF100), but it also hosts two times more GDDR5 memory: 3072 MB instead of the standard 1536 MB. The card also features a respectable overclock, with a core running at 815 and memory at 1025 MHz.
The Zalman VF3000N graphics card cooler is still the large and effective unit we remember it to be, with dual 92 mm axial fans and five 6 mm copper heat pipes pulling heat from the large copper base. Because of the cooler’s rotund dimensions, the card measures 11" x 5.3" x 2.5" and is too thick to fit in a dual-slot space. Anyone planning on an SLI configuration employing these three-gig/three-slot monsters will need a motherboard capable of accommodating their size.
The AMP²! bundle includes a HDMI mini-to-HDMI adapter, a Molex-to-six-pin PCIe power cable, a six-pin-to-eight-pin PCIe power cable, a DVI-to-VGA adapter, a driver CD, a manual, the Zotac Boost Premium software bundle, and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. It’s nice to see a game included with at least one of these overclocked cards.
Zotac provides a two-year standard warranty, and a limited lifetime warranty to customers who register their cards within 14 days of purchase (and can show off their receipt).
Similar to the reference model and most of its competitors, the GeForce GTX 580 AMP²! is equipped with two dual-link DVI outputs and a single HDMI mini output.
The card is currently available for $549 on Newegg, which is about $70 more than most reference-clocked GeForce GTX 580 cards.
Overclocking
Zotac includes its Firestorm overclocking utility with the AMP²!, but this is a somewhat Spartan program that doesn’t offer any voltage adjustment. We therefore chose to rely on MSI’s Afterburner utility.
With GPU voltage raised to 1.15 V from the stock 1.03, and the fans set to their highest speed, the AMP²! is able to run a best-in-class 1020 MHz GPU frequency and 1150 MHz memory clock in the FurMark stress test. Although this is the only 1 GHz+ core overclock in our round-up, FurMark's shortcoming as a torture test forces us to lower our targets to 950/1125 MHz for stability’s sake in the Crysis 2 benchmark.
