When comparing Palit GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition vs Zotac GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme, the Slant community recommends Palit GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition for most people. In the question“What are the best GTX 1070 cards?” Palit GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition is ranked 1st while Zotac GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Palit GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition is:
Palit GeForce GTX Premium Edition is one of the best GTX 1070 cards performance-wise. It scored a 3DMark Firestrike Score of 16575, which is one of the highest scores as far as GTX 1070 cards go. But this should come as no surprise since the Premium Edition of GameRock has slightly higher clock speeds than what may be found in other GTX 1070 cards (especially the Founders Edition).
Specs
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Pros
Pro Great performance
Palit GeForce GTX Premium Edition is one of the best GTX 1070 cards performance-wise. It scored a 3DMark Firestrike Score of 16575, which is one of the highest scores as far as GTX 1070 cards go. But this should come as no surprise since the Premium Edition of GameRock has slightly higher clock speeds than what may be found in other GTX 1070 cards (especially the Founders Edition).
Pro Relatively low noise levels for the massive fans it has
The GTX 1070 GameRock's cooler not only handles heat well, but noise production is very low, especially compared to other high-end cards. With a decibel rating of 29.6 in idle, the card remains essentially silent - this is because the fans don't spin up until a temperature of 50° C has been reached.
During full load, the fans can barely be heard with a noise production of 32.4 decibels. With these results, the Palit GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock is among the best in terms of sound production. For comparison: the Founders Edition produces 30.4 and 35.3 decibels in idle and under full load, respectively.
Pro Can have a second BIOS for higher speeds
The GameRock Premium Edition has a two-position slider which can be used to activate a second BIOS in case you want to try a custom BIOS for increased speeds.
Pro Great cooling solution
One of the main reasons that the GameRock Premium Edition is able to clock way past the reference card, is the cooler.
Measuring at 285mm long, 133mm wide and 46mm high it's simply massive (even bigger than the backplate). It has two 10cm fans which stop at around 55°C. The two fans sit on top of two heatsinks (most GTX 1070 cards have just one) joined by thick heatpipes.
Pro Great energy to performance ratio
The increased performance pushes this card from the standard 150W for GTX 1070's to 170W for this version. However, that is still more energy efficient than EVGA's most powerful GTX1070 (215W), which doesn't produce as much base & memory clock speeds.
Pro Very high clock speed increases
The Premium Edition of the Palit Geforce 1070 GameRock has a 1,671 MHz clock speed with a guaranteed boost speed of 1,873 MHz. That is a clear difference to the 1,506 MHz / 1,683 MHz of the Founders Edition. Palit also increased effective memory speeds from 8k MHz to 8.5k MHz (2x 4,250 MHz) . This manufacturer's main selling point is the performance they get out of NVIDIA cards and in this case as well they pushed the GTX 1070 to the limits of its design.
Pro Excellent cooling
The massive size of this GTX 1070 card is justified by the excellent cooling capabilities is offers. On idle the temperature gets as low as 36 degrees C and around 39 degrees C on light load. And this is without the three 90mm fans turning on.
On full load it rarely ever surpasses the 65 degree C threshold and it's usually somewhere around 58 degrees C most of the time.
With these temperatures, the Zotac GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme provides the coolest experience out of all GTX 1070 cards on the market.
Pro Good build quality
The Zotac GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme is wrapped around in Carbon ExoArmor for protection which gives it a robust and "premuim" feeling. As usual with Zotac, the GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme has a great minimalistic design. With 7 different colors to choose from and 4 different lighting effects.
Pro 5 year warranty
Pro Nice looks
Despite the yellow on the back this GPU with the carbon look is very nicely designed.
Cons
Con Only available in Europe
Palit graphic cards are only sold in Europe. In the USA, some of these graphics cards are sold by PNY but unfortunately, the GTX 1070 Gamerock Premium Edition is not one of those.
Con Takes up a lot of space
Because of the big fans and large backplate on this card, the Palit Geforce GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition takes up two and a half slots. (Or in other words, effectively needs 3 available slots.)
Con The aesthetics are not very pleasing
The blue and white color scheme that the Gamerock Premium Edition has is not that visually pleasing. The retro-looking logo plastered in the back is not that pretty, either.
Con Odd design
The yellow on the backplate does not suit most builds.
Con Quite large
The Zotac GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme is a rather large card. It effectively occupies the space equivalent of a 2.5 slot.
Con May need a support bracket to prevent from sagging
Since the GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme is quite heavy, there's a risk of it sagging while mounted on the motherboard. This is why it may need a support bracket to prevent it from doing so. Unfortunately, Zotac has not included a support bracket so you will need to find it on your own.
Con No true RGB
It only has 7 colors to choose from.