Now over just this past year, it's interesting to see how affordable high-end video cards have become. We remember looking on some websites a few years back and finding some of the top-end video cards priced close to a thousand dollars. Today, the best single graphics card from NVIDIA that is available to consumers is the GeForce GTX 280. How much better is the GeForce GTX 280 than the previous best GeForce 9800 class of graphics cards? With this card being priced in between $400-500, it is definitely not for the average Joe. However, there are many users who need to have the best available. If you're looking for the absolute single best video card available, this might just be it. - Overclockers Club

Zotac GeForce GTX 280 AMP! 1GB Card Style Review

The particular GeForce GTX 280 that we will be looking at today is manufactured by Zotac. This graphics card is pre-overclocked and features 1GB of GDDR3 memory. Zotac specifies this card is being part of their AMP! product line which is a line dedicated essentially to pre-overclocked video cards. How will this Zotac GeForce GTX 280 GTX AMP! edition perform against some of the best cards from NVIDIA as well as ATI? How will Zotac's latest creation fare while being pushed to the extreme? The Zotac GeForce GTX 280 AMP! edition comes shipped in a yellow box with a fire breathing dragon on the front panel.

On the top right corner of the box, you will see some of the key features that separate this Zotac card from a lot of the other video cards out on the market today. One of the things that stands out is the extended warranty sticker. The back of the box breaks down some important features as well as multiple languages listing out what is included in the box for international users. Inside the outer sleeve is the box that holds the Zotac GeForce GTX 280. Opening this up reveals the closed cell foam used to secure the card and bundled accessories during shipping, which makes sure all is well proctected.

The Zotac GeForce GTX 280 is a massive card, taking up two expansion slots. The card plugs directly into the PCI Express port of your motherboard. The card has the dragon on top of it but features nothing but black on the rest of the card giving it a sleek look. On the sides of this video card, you will find some serial numbers, a GeForce logo and some other stickers. What the balance of this information does not tell you is that this board is a hopped up version of the standard GeForce GTX 280, hence the AMP! edition graphics on the bottom edge of the card. So just what does this mean in terms of performance?

Well, for starters it gives you a 700MHz clock speed on the GT200 core and 2300MHz on the 1GB of GDDR3 memory with 1400MHz on the shader cores. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 supports not only standard SLI but 3-way SLI so Zotac has placed SLI bridge connectors on this graphics card for users to take full advantage of that technology. And there is a rubber like boot used to provide protection when not used. The business end of the Zotac GeForce GTX 280 AMP! edition houses the display out connections. Pretty much standard fare for video cards at this time with two dual link DVI connectors.

At this point in time the Zotac GeForce GTX 280 AMP! edition is the highest performing single GPU video card we have checked out. Even the Radeon HD 4870 1GB model fell short against this card. There were several benchmarks where the Radeon HD 4870 1GB models performance was equal but they were few and far between. On the other hand the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is still a monster but it should be with two GPU cores providing the high performance. As an overclocked card we expected the performance to be at the upper end of the spectrum and we were not disappointed in any way.

The GeForce GTX 280 uses CUDA technology to enable the GPU to do massive parallel computing operations such as video transcoding as well as distributed computing. With the reduced time to code video you can spend more time enjoying the video instead of making the trips back and forth watching the CPU chug along slowly as it completes the work. In the Zotac GeForce GTX 280 you have a video card that offers incredible single GPU performance, comes with a great bundle and is currently priced below $400 with a rebate. Without a down side this card from Zotac would easily fulfill your gaming needs.