ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 AMP Edition Overclocked: 50% faster than 9800 GX2

We all know how great the old 9800 GX2 GPU was, but there is now a big boy on the block and that is the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 AMP Edition. This Graphics card has been overclocked and is thought to be at least 50% faster than 9800 GX2. As with all GPU’s that state they are a 50 percent faster than another model, this does not always seem to be the case so the guys at TweakTown have decided to put the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 AMP Edition through its paces, they have even pitted it against the top of the range AMD HD 3870 X2.

TweakTown’s thoughts on the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 AMP Edition are “So, that’s the GTX 280. There is no doubt that you’re probably left as underwhelmed as myself at the moment. The rumors that the card was going to be 1.5x faster than the 9800 GX2 were clearly un-true, which is disappointing. But at the same time, it’s probably a bit optimistic.

There are definitely some good things about the card; the performance we got in World in Conflict with AA and AF on is extremely impressive and does show that the card has massive potential.

The other thing that is worth noting is that we still don’t have a PhysX driver for the card, which is a bit of a joke I must say. It seems that NVIDIA these days is so rushed to get the cards out the door that the drivers aren’t yet ready to make full use of the card. This was also seen with the release of the GX2 were the Quad SLI driver wasn’t available at launch.
The other thing is that unlike the 9800 GX2 we tested with today, the GTX 280 is overclocked out of the box from ZOTAC, making the card a little faster than the stock clocked offerings that we will no doubt see.

So what are my actual thoughts on the card? – Okay, yes it’s nice that we’ve got the performance of two GPUs on one card that takes less power, but at the moment an immature driver doesn’t give us the gains that we probably expected to see with a 512-bit memory interface and an increase in stream processors. Do I think that the GTX 280 is going to be performing significantly better in a months’ time? - Absolutely! Will it be too late? - We’re not too sure.

The other thing I have to say before I wrap this all up is that I’ve tested the HD 4850, and I’ve tested it in Crossfire. Now, if I hadn’t tested those cards I may have been more impressed with the GTX 280, but I have. I’ve seen the performance figures the cards put out. We also know the price on a pair of HD 4850s is going to be under $600 AUD, while the new GTX 280 in stock form seems to be launching at the absolute cheapest in Australia in the low $700 AUD area. Ouch.”

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