Final Thoughts
So before I get into the Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 AMP Extreme specifically I wanted to talk about the RTX 2080 in general. Frankly speaking it is really a disappointment. Being the 2nd best card in the 20-series product stack it should beat the best previous generation card (GTX 1080 Ti) and it really does not. On top of that it was far more expensive than the GTX 1080 Ti when it launched. Sadly since you really cannot find GTX 1080 Ti’s anymore (unless you want to risk it on a weird unknown retailer) you are more or less forced to get an RTX card.
The new RTX cards do feature ray tracing and DLSS. Ray tracing will make your game look better and more realistic, but at the cost of frame rates, which we illustrated on page 11 of this review. DLSS on the other hand will help improve performance, but the title you are playing has to support it. We have a full list of DLSS supported games listed on page 11 as well.
With that said Zotac basically built the best RTX 2080 they could! The card has a custom PCB and upgraded VRM with 16 phases for the GPU and four for the memory. This enables Zotac to factory overclock the card to 1905 MHz (GPU Boost) and they even overclocked the memory too! As it sits it is the highest clocked RTX 2080 available. So you should see a slight performance boost over other RTX 2080 graphics cards out there and this card is pretty neck and neck with the GTX 1080 Ti.
Besides building an awesome card under the hood the card looks quite amazing on the outside too. Their new shroud design with all of the RGB lighting is massively improved from what we saw from them on the 10-Series and the FireStorm app allows you to easily control the RGB lighting. It is very bright too, so it should help illuminate the inside of your system. You can dial down the brightness if needed though.
The card takes up three slots, so you are going to want to keep that in mind. It makes use of a very large 3-fan cooling system that sits on top of dual heatsink stacks loaded with heatpipes. This cooling solution does a good job, especially considering the out-of-the-box overclock Zotac gave the card.
You can pick this card up at our favorite online retailer for $839.99, which puts it at the high-end of available RTX 2080 cards, but then again it is the highest clocked card out there. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 AMP Extreme Graphics Card a 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Highest clocked RTX 2080 available
– Custom PCB with 16+4 phase VRM
– Memory overclocked as well
– Keeps up with the GTX 1080 Ti
– DLSS improved performance (all RTX cards)
– Card looks amazing with its RGB lighting
– FireStorm app improved and works quite well
Cons:
– RTX 2080 as a whole is disappointing
– One of the most expensive RTX 2080s
