ZOTAC ZT-90106-10P GTX 970 AMP! Omega Core Edition Review

[CookeeMonster]

Hi Guys,

 

I recently joined the forums, and wanted to introduce myself. I've been a hardware enthusiast, PC Gamer, and System builder since my early teen years and now I'm in my mid 20s, but I joined this forum because I love the Linus' reviews and videos he makes. I figured, I'll start by giving back to the community by writing my own review on a product I have recently purchased off of Newegg.com, the ZOTAC ZT-90106-10P GTX 970 AMP! Omega Core Edition Video card.

 

Please keep in mind that this is the first time I'm writing a review, so don't be too harsh if it does not answer some of your questions, however, I'd love to expand more on the review if you guys are interested:

 

 

So far my experience with the ZOTAC GTX 970 AMP! Omega Core edition has been nothing but very pleasant. I have been through many manufacturers that claim their product is the best, but there is always something that makes you wonder whether another company could do better. This is the first time I have tried ZOTAC, and so far everything has been solid.

 

 

ZOTAC has standard packaging just like any other vendor would have, including the driver cd, some documentation, and accessories.

 

 

While the provided Molex to 6-pin PCI-E power adapters are a nice addition to the video card, I don't think many users will actually need it, considering most of today's even low end power supplies already come with a 6-pin PCI-E power connector. It might come handy if your PSU only supports one 6-pin PCI-E power connector. On the other hand the new 900 series cards have been quite good at maintaining a very low TDP (145W - GTX 970)  compared to the AMD close equivalent 290X GPU (290W TDP). This would generally mean that the card requires a lower thermal design, and could get away with quieter cooling solutions, as well as lower power consumption during load. From my research though, it looks like the GTX 970 and 290X are not too much off in actual power consumption (50-100W difference), but will have a drastic difference in heat output. We'll take a closer look at temperatures later in the review.

 

 

The actual card is roughly 11" in length and should fit most of today's desktop PC cases, along with small form factor cases designed for gamers. The part that was the most appealing to me though was the IceStorm Triple Fan cooler design and its ability to keep the card cool at a silent operation during gameplay. Sometimes stock cards with a single or dual fan design can't keep a card silent due to their CFM rating and cooling potential. With a wider and bigger cooler design, and more fans, lower RPM can achieve just as much airflow as a smaller cooler with fewer fans would at a higher RPM.

 

 

The actual design of the cooler is very solid. I've come across some cards that have a super thin and flimsy cooler design, especially the GIGABYTE Windforce cooler series cards on the older generation cards. This cooler is very sturdy, looks nice, and the PCB backplate keeps the card from bending in the PCI-E slot on the motherboard. Not only that but it helps dissipate heat from the card to cool the components that allow the card to perform at its top potential. This should become a standard on all video cards in my opinion.

 

 

The card has two 6-pin power connectors, that will draw roughly 150W tops, including additional 75W from the PCI-E Slot if I remember correctly. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this.

 

 

One thing that kind of frustrates me is the movement towards DisplayPort. I have nothing but annoyance with that cable, but perhaps I've only used cheap cables that broke easily. One time I had a displayport break into the output of a video card on a GTX 580. Not fun. Since then, it is possible that this has changed and there are no more problems like this. Besides the 3 DisplayPorts, the is one HDMI port and one DVI port. I would have like to see three DVI ports, but looks like most GTX 970 come with these display outputs. Possible reason could be the new trend towards 4K monitors, but I don't think that would be a good choice for a single GTX 970, and even if you would have an SLI configuration, I believe the problem with the 3.5GB memory that Nvidia admitted to would prevent you from enjoying your games the way they should be played. In that case I would move up to two GTX 980s, or go with a Titan.

 

Benchmarks:

 

I've only had a 1080p monitor to test the video card on, but I don't think a single card would be ideal for anything much bigger than that. 2560x1440 might be a possible option, but that might be pushing the performance of a single card, and a GTX 980 might be necessary if you're considering to max out your games. 4K, I wouldn't even think about, unless going with SLI.

 

System Specs:
* Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.4Ghz

* ASUS Z97-Pro Motherboard

* 256GB Samsung 840 Evo SSD

* 1TB WD Hard Drive
* 16GB DDR3 1866Mhz

________________________________

 

Tomb Raider (1080p 4xAA)
Min: 36FPS
Max: 69FPS
Avg: 47.5FPS

 

Metro Last Light (1080p 4xAA, PhysX Enabled, Highest Setting for Tessellation)
AVG: 51.18FPS

Battlefield 4 (Ultra Settings)
Avg: 84FPS

 

Crysis 3 (1080p 4xAA) 

AVG: 44FPS

 

Far Cry 3 (1080p 4xAA)

AVG: 65.2FPS

 

Bioshock Infinite (1080p Maxed)

AVG: 141.1FPS

 

Temperature Gaming for 1 hour

Max: 63C

Avg: 61C

Idle: 29C

_________________________________________________

 

I hope you guys found this review helpful. As I said, so far I had no issues with the card whatsoever. The cooling is solid, the card runs extremely quiet even after an hour of gameplay, and as someone who has tried other vendors such as EVGA, GIGABYTE, ASUS, I cannot personally tell the difference in quality or lack in service ZOTAC would provide as of yet. The card does run for $359.99 which is a bit higher from the standard card that ZOTAC offers, but this card has been nothing but pleasure to use, and I couldn't be happier. The overclocking of the card is excellent too, and manged to squeeze out over 100MHz in Core and 200MHz in memory without touching voltages, without any issues, however, I do not have any benchmark results for that as of yet. If anybody is interested, please let me know.

[MLGNOSCOPEHEADSHOTGETREKT]

Well a little late...But totally worth reading

[CookeeMonster]

Thank you for the kind comment.

[kpreg]

great review, im pretty sure this is better tha 99% of people's first post.

 

I think this should be in member reviews, @GoodBytes what do you say?

[linuxnutcase]

Nice job, keep up the quality reviews, hope to see more of your post in the future.

[GoodBytes]

I think this should be in member reviews, @GoodBytes what do you say?

After consulting with GoodBytes, GoodBytes agrees. Moved

Great review! @CookeeMonster

Excellent shots as well. Did you take them?

And welcome to the forum!

[CookeeMonster]

Hi GoodBytes,

 

Thank you for moving the thread. I took those photos with my Galaxy S4 and ended up just brightening them up a bit due to the auto exposure in the S4 camera making everything too dark. Also, thank you for the kind welcome.

[DontPeek]

What was the fan rpm at load? Also what is the lowest fan speed you can set the fans to?

[GoodBytes]

Hi GoodBytes,

 

Thank you for moving the thread. I took those photos with my Galaxy S4 and ended up just brightening them up a bit due to the auto exposure in the S4 camera making everything too dark. Also, thank you for the kind welcome.

Impressive!

[Notional]

"4GB vRAM"

No but seriously, that is one sexy backplate. Almost as nice as the Asus ones. Too bad zotak is too stupid to realize, how a card is installed.

Nice review though

[CookeeMonster]

What was the fan rpm at load? Also what is the lowest fan speed you can set the fans to?

 

I'll try to figure this out for you later today once I am at home.

 

 

"4GB vRAM"

No but seriously, that is one sexy backplate. Almost as nice as the Asus ones. Too bad zotak is too stupid to realize, how a card is installed.

Nice review though 

 

 

What exactly do you mean about how a card is installed? Could you please elaborate on that? I don't see any problems with the design, and SLI configuration would work as well.

[Laputacake]

That card looks so nice. Nice review.

[RatedBlam]

Nice post.

I almost bought one of those, but that was when the AMP! Omega looked hideous.

I definitely enjoy the new design more. And to top it off they switched to Nvidia reference design because it was better.

[metalika777_h_g]

Tnx, nice....

[dre92]

Great review, and I admit, I'm glad Zotac decided to give this core edition card a triple fan design, because the original AMP! Omega is ugly as hell imo. This looks waaay prettier.

Btw, I'm wondering, if it isn't too much to ask, is it possible for you to give the measurement of the fan noise level? I know you mentioned that this card could maintain silent operation, but I'd really love to know how silent. Perhaps if you don't have like a special sound measuring device, you could use like a sound meter app on smartphones and then later mention what app you're using.

[alij]

I have this card. The fans will not go below 60% speed. I can not change it no matter what monitoring software I use. Even Zotac's own Firestorm. I contacted Zotac. waiting for responce.

 

It's Bios Info:

 

 

[Mr PotHead]

i own a zotac 970 ref and would like to point out that zotac has improved a lot in terms of quality in the past few years owing zotac cards since the 500 series ..... support has become a lot better as well as the manufac quality ... what intrique's me is that 84 fps on bf4 isn;t tha good mine does 98 avg without a oc and can oc upto a whopping 1597mhz resulting in an avg of 110 in bf4 and many other games..... although the cooler on mine is crap 

[CookeeMonster]

Sorry for the delay guys. Yes, like Alij said, the card won't go below 60% on the fan speed, but I was able to measure the rpm with MSI Afterburner and it showed 1440RPM at 60%.

 

I let furmark running for an hour and came back with the temperatures roaming around 63C in a 24C ambient house temperature, and the fan speed was only at 65% and 1550RPM. Such a small difference in fan speed that you cannot even tell the difference in noise between the two levels.

 

With all that said, I don't have any measuring tools right now for noise, but I can tell you this. When I built my system, I used a Phantom 820 case from NZXT. I loaded it up with quiet fans from Noctua and Zalman. Same for my CPU cooler. What I did next was used the built in Fan controller and adjusted each fan one by one to still spin and blow air, but get rid of all motor noise and air movement noise. With all that when I turn on my system, you cannot hear anything running besides the hard drive spinning up. Seriously that quiet even with the side panel off. I do have my case under the table though.

 

With the ZOTAC GTX 970 card, you do hear the system starting up because when the system boots the card goes to 100% fan speed, but will return back to 60% right after it posts. at 60%, you cannot hear the card, unless you come close to it with your head, and at 65% you may hear a super duper slight air movement noise, but no motor noise or anything like that. Hope this is helpful.

[Guest]

It looks very similar to the G1 Gaming/Windforce but looks much better IMO. It is much neater and nice looking. 

 

Also, very nice review, thanks.

[SadDoragon]

The overclocking of the card is excellent too, and manged to squeeze out over 100MHz in Core and 200MHz in memory without touching voltages, without any issues, however, I do not have any benchmark results for that as of yet. If anybody is interested, please let me know.

 

thanks for this review. 

I am really interested in this card and I would like to know overclocking benchmark results!!

[CookeeMonster]

thanks for this review. 

I am really interested in this card and I would like to know overclocking benchmark results!!

 

 

Hi SadDoragon,

 

I'll be happy to run some benchmarks for you at overclocked settings. I'll also try to push the card a bit further and see where we can get. Give me a couple of days and I'll reply back here with the results.

[SadDoragon]

Hi SadDoragon,

 

I'll be happy to run some benchmarks for you at overclocked settings. I'll also try to push the card a bit further and see where we can get. Give me a couple of days and I'll reply back here with the results.

Thanks man

You are the real MVP!

[CookeeMonster]

SadDoragon,

 

I apologize for the delay. Been a rough month for me, and I was not able to get much testing done. Let me see what I can do tonight when I get home. I'll get back to you as soon as I have some results.

[MblaZe7run]

3.jpg

 

Is that a.... BENT FIN!?! 10/10 would not recommend.

 

Minor trolling aside, great review

[runjep]

Thank you very much for this - I think I will choose this in my next PC, over MSI Gaming and the Strix.

 

@alij and @Cookemonster if you update the BIOS you can turn down the fans!  

See here how: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Zotac_GTX_970_Extreme_Core 

 

If you do, please share your findings 

Kind regards from Denmark