E-zines are simply swamped with GeForce 8800 GT news and articls, but you're really lucky if you actually manage to get your hands on a GeForce 8800 GT. The manufacturing costs of the small 65nm chip are low, hence the price is great, and same goes for performance. Today, we're about to look at one of the fastest GeForce 8800 GT models on the market, and that is Zotac's GeForce 8800 GT AMP! card. Although this card runs at 700MHz, which is 100MHz more than reference speeds, Zotac's AMP! edition price is just a tad higher. For a measly $20 more you get a great AMP! edition. Current GeForce 8800 GT prices are higher due to enormous demand, but that should change. - FudZilla

Zotac GeForce 8800 GT 512MB AMP! Version Review

Zotac also offers a somewhat slower card running at 660MHz, but the trick is that its price is identical to that of NVIDIA's reference GeForce 8800 GT. The sad thing is that we would sincerely recommend these cards, if only they found their way to the retail stores. In the meantime, let's see why Zotac named this card as the GeForce 8800 GT AMP! edition graphics card. The Zotac GeForce 8800 GT AMP! version is significantly faster than the reference cards. So, the core runs at 700MHz, which is 100MHz more than reference, and the memory at 2000MHz effective 2000MHz, which is also a 200MHz increase.

Zotac was the first company that dared to soar to these heights, and we've already seen that only Gainward did better. Their version is a dual slot GeForce 8800 GT but only the memory was faster, and only by 50MHz. The AMP! version card's shaders run at 1700MHz, which is faster than reference by 200MHz. The card has 112 stream processors, and they are optimized much better than on the G80 generation, which is one of the reasons why this card has done so well. The GDDR3 memory came from Qimonda and its designation as 1.0ns, which means that memory is running at 2000MHz.

The cooler is based on NVIDIA's reference cooler design, but Zotac opted for a bigger fan. From the outside it's rather hard to tell it apart from the reference one, and you might think that no significant changes were made, but the interior begs to differ. Copper heatpipes that transfer the heat from the core are stacked differently, the aluminum fins are packed more closely together and there are more of them. Still, the cooler width stayed the same. The fan is not significantly bigger, we're talking about less than a centimeter more in diameter but it surely can make a difference on the cooling efficiency.

Zotac did a great overclocking job with the GeForce 8800 GT AMP! version. The best part of this offer is the price, and it shouldn't be much higher than the reference cards, but due to severe unavailability of these cards, the prices are indeed too steep. The card is overclocked from default 600MHz to 700MHz and this is the first card to reach these core speeds. Other partners have only recently showcased their overclocked cards, but it's unlikely that you will find a faster card. The memory is clocked at 2000MHz and shader processors at 1700MHz, which has a very positive effect on the gaming performance.

In order to improve the cooling Zotac altered the reference cooler design and opted for a tad bigger fan, which didn't affect the size. The card is quiet and a bit cooler than the reference one, although the speeds are significantly overclocked. There are no games in the box, although some partners consider this to be a must, but on the other hand the price is just a tad higher than reference cards. Finally, this is a great product for a great price.