GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming Premium Pack vs ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme

The extensive cooling solution of the Xtreme Gaming GTX 1080 results in a very quiet operation. In idle situations, the cooling fans don't spin up which means the graphics card doesn't produce more noise than any other component in your system. Under full load, a sound production of 38 dBA was measured, which is considered to be very quiet by graphics card standards. For comparison: The reference Founders Edition of the GTX 1080 produces 49.4 decibels (A) under load. Decibels use a logarithmic scale, which means the Xtreme Gaming card is effectively two times as quiet as a reference GTX 1080.

The exterior of the Gigabyte GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming features a lot of RGB lights and you can adjust the color of these lights via Gigabyte's included software package. This allows you to customize the look of the graphics card, which can be useful if your setup is built with a specific color scheme in mind.

Gigabyte is offering an extended Xtreme Care warranty period of 4 years, which is a major improvement compared to the regular 1-year warranty on graphics card. In the event of a failure within this period, Gigabyte will repair the card or send you a replacement model. Online registration is required.

The GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming cards are especially suitable for virtual reality headsets such as the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive, which require two HDMI-ports. Included in the packaging is a 5.25" extension bay, with two USB 3.0 ports and a set of HDMI inputs. With this frontpanel, users are no longer required to route their VR headset through the back of the system. The graphics card itself features two HDMI-ports on the opposite site of the usual ports, which allows a quick pass-through to this frontpanel. When using these two specific HDMI ports, two of the three DisplayPort inputs are disabled.

The GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming reaches a maximum temperature of 66 degrees Celsius under load with the increased clock and memory speeds. This is a major improvement over the Founders Edition's 82° C and an impressive feat for an air cooler. This not only extends the longevity of the card, but also prevents throttling from happening. Throttling can occur when temperatures reach around 80° C or higher. This is when the graphics card will slow itself down (reduce clock speed) in order to stay cool, effectively sacrificing performance. With the default clock speeds, this should never occur with the Xtreme Gaming card.

The higher clock and memory speeds of GIGABYTE's Xtreme Gaming edition of the GTX 1080 results in better performance. In Battlefield 4 using 1440p resolution and maximum settings, an average framerate of 118 was achieved. For comparison, a GTX 1080 Founders Edition only managed to achieve 110 fps, an almost 7% difference. Similar results can be seen in Far Cry Primal, again with 1440p resolution and maximum settings. The Xtreme Gaming card manages to get 84 frames per second on average, compared to the Founders Edition's 78 FPS. In DOOM, the difference is even more noticeable. With maximum settings and 1440p resolution, an average FPS of 140 was achieved for the Xtreme Gaming card - a 15 FPS improvement over the reference card. When tested in 4K, the Xtreme Gaming managed to achieve 72 average FPS compared to the Founders Edition's 62 frames per second, a difference of almost 14%.

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.