Performance Analysis

It may be bigger and bulkier than the Founders Edition, but the Zotac Gaming RTX 2080 Ti Amp uses its size to deliver some great cooling, shaving 11°C off of the former’s load temperature, and it’s a bit quieter too. On that note, the 1,300 RPM idle fan speed is also whisper quiet, but we still think it’s a shame they don’t turn off altogether.

With the extra boost headroom that the superior cooling gives the RTX 2080 Ti GPU, plus the 30MHz higher boost clock speed, the Zotac card is about 4.5 percent quicker across our suite of tests and the new fastest card we’ve ever tested – hooray! It’s not enough of a difference to make a difference experientially – fast games are still fast – but it is categorically the faster card. FAST. It is absolutely suitable for smooth 4K gaming (although a bug still persists in Total War: Warhammer II), and at 1440p it will be a great pairing with a high refresh rate G-Sync screen.

Power consumption is noticeably higher – about 20W – than the FE, but not by enough to be of any real concern, especially to the prospective buyers of a card like this.

While the sample lottery is always a factor, our Zotac unit also achieved better performance when overclocked (again with slightly higher power consumption). Temperatures and fan speed do go up, though, as the RTX series is pretty power-hungry when you overclock it, and that results in more heat and thus stress on the cooler.

Conclusion

The Zotac RTX 2080 Ti Amp runs a little faster, a little quieter, and significantly cooler than the Founders Edition card, so in raw numbers – excluding power consumption – it’s clearly a compelling alternative.

However, it nevertheless comes across as a little rushed in some places, especially when it comes to the software control of the clock speeds and lighting. To be fair, even the Nvidia-supplied version of EVGA Precision X1 was ropey at launch, so it seems all board partners are in a similar position here, and the situation will undoubtedly improve over time

Other faults won’t be remedied by the passage of time, however. The plastic cooler shroud just feels cheap, which is the last thing you should experience when dropping this much cash. The lack of semi-passive fans, a cover for the NVLink connector, and an anti-sag bracket are also oversights. Perhaps we’re nitpicking, but we think that £1,250 gives us a right to do so. Sadly, the Founders Edition feels like the more premium product despite this card costing about 11 percent more. This all means that despite the impressive performance on paper, many people may not be willing to add even more to the already massive asking price of the FE.

Our feeling is that cards like this could struggle in the face of the new FE models. We know that many board partners have more premium cards in the works with custom PCBs and even more tailored coolers (Zotac might have an Amp! Extreme, for example, although that’s just speculation), but most seem to have opted for the idea that it’s better to have something than nothing at launch. That’s probably true, but if we were in the market for a RTX 2080 Ti and it were our money right now, the FE card would be our choice over this Zotac, despite the latter’s improvements in some areas.