Zotac GTX 480 AMP! Graphics Card review

Review Score:
Zardon

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today. We set the game to 8xAA and 16 texture filtering and maxed all the other settings in game.

The nVidia hardware and drivers are ultimately optimised for this game and they leave the ATI solutions for dead. The AMP! Edition once again breaks our previous records with this engine.

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Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)
Zotac GTX 480 AMP! Graphics Card review, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

46 Comments
  • Tim
    June 24, 2010
    #1
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    Great review zardon interesting to read about temps and power consumption with this board. I could never buy this mind you the missus would kill me, literally.

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  • Eric K
    June 24, 2010
    #2
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    This will really put Zotac on the map. first good 480 GTX ive seen. mega money aint it? ouchies

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  • Death Dealer
    June 24, 2010
    #3
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    Grreat review man. Seems to be a very solid product from Zotac, shame Nvidia didnt work out a deal with zalman for the reference products.

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  • Harry
    June 24, 2010
    #4
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    Funny enough I was thinking the same thing, why not have put a good cooler on it in the first place? people in this sector can live with the power drain, but the noise and heat? mad.

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  • Tech Head
    June 24, 2010
    #5
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    Great looking board, but 3 slots? christ they are struggling to cool this monster.

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  • Bob
    June 24, 2010
    #6
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    Very interesting…

    It has huge power consumption drops, despite actually having a higher voltage. It is possible that the better cooling on the VRM area has made it more effeicient?

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  • Thomas
    June 24, 2010
    #7
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    Excellent Review! Overall looks like a very nice improvement, but im sure the 257 drivers helped .

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  • Harry J
    June 24, 2010
    #8
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    Hi,Is it possible to ajust fan speed at lower level with rivatuner for the noise in idle mode.

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  • Flo
    June 24, 2010
    #9
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    The standard VF3000 connected to a standard fan header though, the custom one Zotac is using connects directly to the card’s fan header. Which I would guess means it has fan control.

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  • Brian
    June 24, 2010
    #10
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    Still hoping I’d see more competition against the 5970

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  • Trevor
    June 24, 2010
    #11
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    maybe because they use more efficient cooler and not using those stupid high ampere fan, and because they are lower temperature it’s make the fan spin less, thus make power consumption to drop.

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  • Derek
    June 24, 2010
    #12
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    This price is high, but so is 5970

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  • Bjorn
    June 24, 2010
    #13
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    I dont think its as high as people say. for the technology.

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  • Fred
    June 24, 2010
    #14
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    And I would hardly consider it priced competitive when the closest option performance wise is $100 cheaper, and of course by closest I mean virtually identical performance.

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  • Tres Kool
    June 24, 2010
    #15
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    I’m not surprised about the power consumption; it’s been compared to the power consumption of the “launch card” not the mass production card. My GTX 480 consumes just 50w more at load that my old GTX 285. By the way most GTX 480 owners seem to reach 830-840 on the core with stock voltage; otherwise another excellent review.

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  • Hard Man
    June 24, 2010
    #16
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    So if I wanted to put two of these big daddies on my Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard… would I have to use slot 1 and 4? Wonder if slot 4 would even have enough room below it…

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  • swayye
    June 24, 2010
    #17
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    These chips are just not that great. Need a refresh for sure. I can’t wait to see how that turns out and if this ends up being one of the more inefficent GPUs. I’d bring up the R600 -> RV670 transition but they enjoyed a major new manufacturing process there and added Powerplay. I can’t see the refresh to this beast being on anything other than 40nm again.

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  • Brokrk
    June 24, 2010
    #18
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    It’s a known fact that when electronics get hot, they become inefficient. That’s why I don’t let my CPU over 60C and my GPU over 70C because they just start getting really inefficient, plus it’s not good for them. When you are dealling with something with 3 billion transistors, it’s definately going to make a difference when they start expanding from heat and such.

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  • Rupert Haridicko
    June 24, 2010
    #19
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    While they a specified for higher, it’s still not good for them. Doesn’t matter how well it’s built, it’s simply physics: when something heats up, it expands. When you have that many tiny little things all bunched together, expansion is the last thing you want, no matter how little.

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  • Rupert Haridicko
    June 24, 2010
    #20
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    im happy with my 4870X2 to be honest, these figures are insanely good, but I dont have a 30 inch screen, its pointless. I dont think many people get that. You arent only buying a card that costs the same as a car, you need a monitor which costs even more.

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  • Trebik
    June 24, 2010
    #21
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    Yeah people do buy cards not GPUs, and many of those same folks whine when they realize their 2Gb card has a 1Gb frame buffer and performs worse than a single GPU in games if a proper driver profile isn’t present. See it constantly on gaming forums.

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  • Robert
    June 24, 2010
    #22
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    No way this should have got 8/10 or whatever. runs too hot still and takes too much power, way too much power. so ineffieicent

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  • Eric K
    June 24, 2010
    #23
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    @ Robert – really? I think it is a good 7 or 8 /10. People that buy this wont care about 300 watts out the window. its performing to a level no other card does right now.

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  • Stefan
    June 24, 2010
    #24
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    I am not sure if I agree, I like the performance, but it all seems so wasteful. I liked the analogy of the humvee in the review, it is exactly tlike that. its like throwing something over the top to get better performance than a product taking half the power. reminds me of the old days with intel V AMD and intel always aiming for clock speed and AMD being more efficient

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  • Go Reds
    June 24, 2010
    #25
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    STill dont rate this series of cards. its an improvement, but at what price? same cost as my car insurance for a year. ill pass, thanks though. good review.

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  • tom
    June 24, 2010
    #26
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    interesting to read, thanks Zardon

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  • tri color
    June 24, 2010
    #27
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    still not sure what to think, fast as hell and then some, but the price and power sucking requirements put me off recommending it. I think the review is generous, I would have gave it 6 or 7 out of ten.

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  • AMD4EVER
    June 24, 2010
    #28
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    300 watts power drain, and a three slot cooler to get it around 80c.

    Ludicrous. You were far too nice on this card Zardon.

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  • Trev Mang
    June 24, 2010
    #29
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    I like the cooling solution, glad to see zalman are still alive and kicking

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  • Dax
    June 24, 2010
    #30
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    Good card, but this should be the reference design. Nvidia take note next time, those reference coolers suck the big one.

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  • fluffychicken
    June 24, 2010
    #31
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    interesting to see the power consumption thanks to better effiecency

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  • brad
    June 24, 2010
    #32
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    Good review KG, thanks. enjoyed it. Will never own one, even if I had one id sell it :) quite happy with my 275 GTX

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  • jim oldtimer
    June 24, 2010
    #33
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    How the hell can they get away with charging over 500 quid for a graphics card? seriously w,t,f,

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  • geek master
    June 24, 2010
    #34
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    wicked review. temps are solid. frame rates are up.

    Would need a new PSU to get it to work, but its an improvement over the reference, even if it costs more.

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  • Skin force
    June 24, 2010
    #35
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    SO Zotac have charged £70 (reference is 430 in UK) for a £30 cooler and increased clocks a bit? nice cash in there. wouldnt have gave this 8./10 – 6/10 IMO.

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  • Gareth Cringle
    June 24, 2010
    #36
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    id love one, if they dropped the price to 250. Reckon that will happen? I can dream :)

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  • Rob Max
    June 24, 2010
    #37
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    Nah, far too much money Zotac. £450 seems a better price point, would sell more. well maybe not !

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  • long jumper
    June 24, 2010
    #38
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    I like the GTX480. I really love nvidia drivers. But I dont like this price. nice dream card for the rich. im waiting on the GTX460 review !

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  • nerd sucker
    June 24, 2010
    #39
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    informative review and i like the power comsumption figures, well I mean its nice you included them and interesting to see them drop when compared with reference card. Still seems high to me.

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  • ron
    June 24, 2010
    #40
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    Why do they always have crappy dragons on their boxes? Is their CEO Gandalf or something?

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  • trix
    June 24, 2010
    #41
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    three slot cooling, seems really extreme, but clearly its needed. Still not sold on this range nvidia, runs far too hot and needs extreme solutions to compensate.

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  • Tim Smalls
    June 24, 2010
    #42
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    Nvidia – if you built the door way right the first time, then you dont need to knock it down to slot in 4 wider doors later. The core solution is flawed. Performance is great, but it just seems to me like they slotted an F1 car into a fiats chassis and its all over the place.

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  • Malek
    June 25, 2010
    #43
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    :ROFL:

    Is there a mainboard in the world that would allow you to run SLi with this?

    When EVGA said they’re going early with water cooling it sounded like a mistake

    Now it seems to be the only sensible way to tame this beast

    3 slots

    :ROFL:

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  • Tim Smalls
    June 25, 2010
    #44
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    Yeah SLI would be impossible wouldnt it ? Surely the cards would be too far apart?

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  • DaveyW
    June 26, 2010
    #45
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    I don’t want to buy one. I just want to own one.

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  • iulian
    July 6, 2010
    #46
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    Top Best Graphics Cards For The Money: July 2010 here http://stylishfirst.com/best-graphics-cards-for-the-money-july-2010/

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