Overclocking, Power, Temperatures and Noise

To give a complete overview of the Zotac GTX 480 AMP! Edition we have taken readings from the card when it comes to temperatures, noise and power use.

For power and noise readings the entire use of the system is measured. To provide a baseline we ran the same components with a passively cooled Radeon 5350 prior to the testing below and it registered the following readings:

130w Idle (43.1dBA)
154w Load

	Zotac GeForce GTX 480 AMP!	Zotac GeForce GTX 480 AMP! SLI
Idle Power	184w	262w
Load Power	488w	823w
Idle Temp	40°C	43/41°C
Load Temp	84°C	86/84°C
Load Noise	47.5dBA	48.3dBA

When looking at the thermal, noise and power performance of the Zotac cards we have a set of results which compare favourably to the reference design. Idle and load power barely change, despite the overclock and temperatures fall significantly from the standatd 90+ celcuis thanks to the Zalman cooler. The use of this cooler also allows Zotac to reduce noise levels by 10dBA in SLI mode when compared to a pair of reference cards.

	Stock	Max OC
Zotac GeForce GTX 480 AMP!	756/950	775/990

As the AMP! Edition is already overclocked when it leaves the factory we didn't expect too much from it in this test. An increase of 20MHz core and 40MHz memory is reasonable as it takes us to 75/90MHz above stock.