Packaging and Closer Look
We see a very familiar packaging here, as all Zotac GTX 10 series graphics cards share the same box art and design. On the front side you see the Zotac logo and the model of the graphics card. On the back side you can see the features, specs, system requirements and some photos of the graphics card.
The package includes a quick installation guide, reading materials, a driver CD, a Zotac logo sticker and two dual 6-pin to 8-pin adapters. Seriously guys, if you can afford to buy a GTX 1080 Ti, then you definitely can afford to buy a good power supply that already has a 6-pin and 8-pin VGA power connector; whether it’s modular or not. There are tons of good PSU to choose from these days, from 80 Plus Bronze to 80 Plus Titanium.
This is a common and deadly mistake specially with new system builders; people tend to invest too much on CPU, graphics cards, motherboard, storage, etc; but buys or uses a cheap power supply. Remember, the PSU powers your whole system and it must provide a certain degree of protection in case there’s a power loss or power surge.
Look at that sexy beast! The Zotac GTX 1080 Ti AMP Edition measures 5.83″ in width and 11.81″ in length, and it only occupies two PCI slots. The front shroud features a gunmetal finish; I don’t think it’s a metal shroud but it feels very solid. That pattern design looks really cool; too bad there is no LED lighting near the fans. A little LED on the front shroud wouldn’t hurt and is a welcomed addition, just like on the Zotac GTX 1080 Mini.
It also has a solid metal backplate that protects and covers the components on the other side of the PCB, and adds to the overall aesthetics of the graphics card.
There’s a GEFORCE GTX logo just beneath the two SLI fingers. I’m not sure if this was a last minute addition to the design, but I wish they implemented a LED lighting on the logo as well. I’m just being a little bit nitpicky here, but the GeForce GTX logo looks a bit off. On the opposite side of the SLI fingers, you can see two 8-pin PCIE power connectors. You need at least a 600W power supply to power this graphics card with your system.
The GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition features only three DisplayPorts 1.4 and one HDMI port 2.0b. However, Zotac decided to bring back and include one DL-DVI-D on the output ports. Also, if you have noticed, there’s a micro USB port and a tiny button near the SLI fingers. I’m not sure what their specific function is, but Zotac informed be that those are for internal use only.
If I am not mistaken, there are five copper heatpipes that are contoured to transfer heat from the copper base plate to the aluminum fin stacks. The Aluminum fin stacks are less thick compared to the AMP Extreme edition, making it possible to fit on a two PCI slot design. You can also see that the memory chips are cooled by the copper base plate with the help of quality thermal pads. The MOSFETs are cooled by a separate aluminum heatsink.
Here’s how the Zotac GTX 1080 Ti AMP Edition looks like without the cooler shroud and its back plate. This is a custom designed graphics card and the PCB layout is a little bit different from the Founder Edition. Did you also notice that there’s an empty slot for a memory chip? Now you know why it’s only 11GB, instead of 12GB on the TITAN X (Pascal).
After market GTX 1080 Ti GPU water block may not be compatible with this AMP Edition. If you want a water-cooled version of this, better check out the GTX 1080 Ti ArcticStorm instead.
The Zotac GTX 1080 Ti AMP is using a uP9511 8 Phase Buck controller from uPI. This controller is an 8/7/6/5/4/3/2/1-phase PWM controller specifically designed to provide high-precision output voltage system for next generation GPUs. While it may seem that the card uses 16 phase for the GPU, I think it’s only 8 but doubled.
At the heart of the Zotac GTX 1080 Ti AMP is the GP102-350-K1-A1 GPU chip that powers every GTX 1080 Ti on the market. The GPU102 is based on a 16nm fab process by TSMC and has a die size of 471 mm² and 12 billion transistor count. The graphics card uses 11x Micron GDDR5X memory (D9VRL – MT58K256M321JA-110) chips that are rated to run at 11GHz effective speed.
Thanks for the review. I have just bought it. Waiting to test it.