Zotac GeForce GTX 950 AMP! Edition 2GB Review – Best GTX 950 in the Market?

Packaging and Closer Look

Zotac’s box art design has been improving every time they release a new product. The outer front box bares the logo and the name of the graphics card, and at the back you can see the key features of the AMP! Edition. Inside is a thicker box that houses the graphics card itself together with its accessories. The GTX 950 AMP! Edition is wrapped with a protective anti-static bubble wrap.

The package includes, a driver CD, a Zotac logo sticker, installation guide, some reading material, a 4-pin molex to 6-pin PCIE cable adapter and a VGA to DVI adapter.

Above you see the front and rear view of the Zotac GTX 950 AMP! Edition. It measures 208mm (or 8.19 inches) in length and 111.15mm (or 4.38in) in height. As you can see the PCB is fully covered with a metal shroud and backplate. Yes, those are metal covering which feels really solid and sturdy. Other companies use plastic material for their fan shroud and most don’t have a backplate at all. Some may think that a backplate isn’t really necessary since it’s not a long graphics card, but it really adds to the aesthetics and sturdiness of the graphics card. Plus it protects the components on the back of the PCB from direct contact.

Above is a side by side comparison between the Zotac GTX 970 AMP! Extreme Core Edition that we previously reviewed and the Zotac GTX 950 AMP! Edition. We don’t have the GTX 960 AMP! Edition but the GTX 950 AMP! Edition looks the same with the GTX 960 AMP! Edition.

The Zotac GTX 950 AMP! Edition has one DisplayPort 1.2, one HDMI port and two dual-link DVI ports. Both the DisplayPort and HDMI ports support up to 4K resolution at 60Hz. It’s also capable of supporting four displays at the same time. On the rear end you see a single 6-pin power connector. What I would like to see in Zotac’s future graphics cards is an LED indicator for the power connector.

There is a single SLI finger, meaning you can put two of this for a multiple-GPU configuration. Too bad we only got one sample, so we are not really sure how good (or bad) is the performance of two GTX 950.

Above you see the IceStorm and the Carbon ExoArmor with FREEZ technology keeping the GTX 950 AMP! Edition cool and sturdy. It features a dual 90mm fans, and two 6mm copper heat pipes that transfers the heat from the copper base plate to the aluminum fin stack. The front shroud and even the back plate are made out of a sturdy metal, not plastic like what other companies are using.

Above you see the front and rear view of the GTX 950 AMP! Edition’s PCB. Click for a larger view.

Here a closer look on the 28nm GM206-250-A1 silicone based on Maxwell architecture. The GTX 950 AMP! Edition has four Samsung K4G41325FC-HC28 memory chips for a total of 2GB of memory.

Let’s proceed on the next page for the test setup.