The first generation of SPECTRA has been featured on several ZOTAC GeForce graphics cards (mainly the AMP and AMP EXTREME series) as well as the ZOTAC GAMING MEK1 PC gaming system, which was introduced in early 2018. Early versions of SPECTRA provided very basic RGB visual control and display options such as lighting that stayed solid, flashed, faded, and so forth. It works with ZOTAC hardware and controls the integrated RGB lighting that is found in select ZOTAC hardware products. Round the back, it has the same selection of display connectors as pretty much everyone else, comprising three DisplayPorts, one HDMI, and one USB-C output.ZOTAC SPECTRA is a proprietary RGB control application that first came out some years ago. Each 8-pin connector delivers 150W of power and the PCIe slot supplies 75W, which comes to around 375W in total. The card is powered by two 8-pin power connectors, the same as the Founders Edition card. This spans the entire length of the board and helps boost structural integrity while aiding heat dissipation. On top of that, a diecast metal jacket sits between the heat sink fins and the PCB. The heat pipes don’t make direct contact with the GPU though, and the card also features a copper base plate for this purpose. On the cooling front, Zotac uses a thick aluminum fin stack in combination with five 8mm copper heatpipes. Unfortunately, the fans can get pretty loud at times. In addition, they support semi-passive operations, and will stop spinning when the GPU temperature falls below 55☌. The fans can be controlled independent of one another, and you can set different speeds for each of the three fans. It also comes with an onboard PowerBoost control chip that supposedly helps provide live electrical current regulation and reduce ripple noise and power fluctuations. However, it’s possible that this design may contribute to heat being trapped in the card, although there are vents on the backplate to facilitate airflow.īuild quality is pretty good, and the card uses a 16+4-phase power design, which should be good for overclocking. This hides some of the heat sink array from view, and I think it fits in with the overall aesthetic of the card and helps create a more robust feel. One unique feature is how the backplate sort of wraps around the sides of the card in certain places, including the front end. The AMP Extreme Core features a triple-fan cooler with a faceted design and a metal backplate with a matte finish. In addition, this is the only card in this shootout to come with a small bump to its memory frequency, clocking in at 1,800MHz instead of 1,750MHz.
It’s second only to the MSI card, and is a really nice factory overclock to have out of the box. The AMP Extreme Core has a base clock of 1,350MHz and boost clock of 1,755MHz, which is already pretty aggressive. Zotac also makes an AMP Extreme version of the card, but the two are identical save for the higher clock speeds on the latter. The addressable LEDs enable more dynamic lighting effects as well, so Zotac has done good on this front and produced one good-looking card. That said, the company has outfitted the card with addressable LEDs and four individual lighting zones, which you can customize in Zotac’s Spectra 2.0 software.
Of course, I don’t expect this to appeal to everyone, and this is very much a matter of personal preference. I don’t mean this in a bad way, and when the card whirrs to life, it’s quite something to look at. The fat RGB lighting strips are the first thing you notice when you look at it, and they stick out above the card instead of sitting in discreet recesses like on the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming. If I had to use one word to describe it, it would be fun, and the card quite nicely walks the line between appealing to RGB fiends and just being a gaudy monstrosity. The Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 Ti AMP Extreme Core is quite the attention grabber.
Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 Ti AMP Extreme Core Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 Ti AMP Extreme Core