EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 vs ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme

The EVGA GTX 1080 ACX 3.0 uses its own built-in cooling system which includes two fans. The ACX 3.0 cooler has been used on a lot of high-end graphics cards, and the GTX 1080 by EVGA is no different. In an idle situation, the EVGA GTX 1080 generally reaches temperatures up to 56° Celsius. At a first glance, that's pretty high, but the fans don't start spinning unless a temperature of 60° is reached. During full load, the EVGA GTX 1080 chip heats up to a maximum of 75 degrees Celsius - eight degrees cooler than a reference (Founders Edition) GTX 1080.

The maximum temperature of 75° C also means that throttling doesn't occur with the EVGA GTX 1080 SC Gaming ACX 3.0, something that tends to occur with other GTX 1080 cards with worse coolers. In other words, the graphics card won't slow itself down in order to stay cool: performance will be 100% at all times.

The GTX 1080 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 is a virtually silent card. In a non-gaming idle situation, the two fans of the cooler don't spin up at all - the card stays completely inaudible up to temperatures of 60° Celsius. Even during full load and intensive gaming situations, this edition of the GTX 1080 is remarkably quiet and stays under 40 decibels (when measured two inches above the motherboard in an open environment). For comparison: the reference GTX 1080 produces 45.5 dB of noise. Annoying coil whine sounds are not present in this edition either.

The GTX 1080 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 features a higher clockspeed compared to a reference GTX 1080, which means it has been factory overclocked to reach higher framerates and overall better performance. The base clock speed has been set at 1708 MHz, which is a 6.3% increase compared to the reference 1607 MHz. The boost clock has also received a factory overclock to 1847 MHz compared to the standard 1733 MHz, a difference of 6.5%.

This results in a slightly better performance, although practical performance differences aren't as noticeable. For example: In Rise of the Tomb Raider at 1080p and maximum settings, the SC ACX 3.0 is nearly 5 FPS faster than a regular GTX 1080. In the benchmarking suite 3D Mark Fire Strike Extreme, a GTX 1080 with reference clock speeds achieves a score of 9,387 points while the EVGA Superclocked takes the crown at 9,622 points. Although the performance differences between this overclocked card and a reference GTX 1080 are minimal, the extra power is nice to have nonetheless.

The EVGA offers the most performance for the dollar, and is $100 cheaper than almost any other decent GTX 1080 card. It has a great cooler, and comes with a decent clock speed without compromising the noise the card makes making it a well balanced option.

As it only requires 1 8 pin connector, it draws much less power for those whom may not have a high wattage rating power supply. Making this more eco friendly when it comes to energy usage.

Both the GPU and memory clocks are slightly overclocked out of the box. This provides excellent performance without having to do much tweaking.

The AMP! Extreme is probably one of the quietest cards in this category. Idle noise level is a bit hard to calculate in this case since for temperatures under 60 degrees C the fans are off, but under very light load which pushes the card to about 60 degrees C it reached a noise level of about 33dBA, comparable to the idle noise level of most 1080 cards. Under heavy load however, it registered a noise level of 38dBA, the lowest in this comparison.

Performance-wise, the ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme achieved a 3DMark Score (Firestrike) of 19410 with minimal FPS never dropping below 86 with averages of 157.25 for FHD and 109.5 for WQHD.

At a price of $639.99, which is an average price for 1080 graphics cards and numbers that usually top benchmark charts, the ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme offers great value for what you will be paying.

The 1080 AMP Extreme is equiped with three 90mm dual-bladed EKO fans, which according to Zotac increase the airflow by 30% and increase the air pressure by 15%. Furthermore, the fans are equipped on top of a heatsink with six variably configured heatpipes which greatly increases the heat extraction off the card. Or at least, that's what Zotac claims.

When idle, it does not surpass the threshold of 33 degrees C and even under heavy load it reached peak temperatures of 73 degrees C, well below the 80 degrees C set by the GTX 1080 Founders Edition.

Only takes 5 mins to install.

Zotac offers a five years long warranty for this card. That's quite long for most electronics equipment, not only graphics cards.