ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 680 AMP! Edition comes with one of the largest out of the box overclocks on the whole market. Its base clock is 100 MHz higher than the reference design, when conditions allow, it will boost up to 1202 MHz. In our testing this results in a 7% performance increase when averaged over our benchmark suite.
Thanks to the large triple slot, dual fan cooler, the card runs at cool temperatures of 75°C - despite the 10% clock increase over the reference design. Fan noise under load is also improved quite a bit, yet it can not reach the low noise levels of the ASUS GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II, which is also a triple slot design. Unfortunately idle noise levels are not improved, the fan emits basically the same amount as the GTX 680 reference design cooler.
Manual overclocking potential was very slim on ZOTAC's new card. We saw only 2% additional headroom, in the end the card reached 1130 MHz which is a bit lower than other GTX 680 overclocks we've seen so far. Memory overclocking works exceedingly well reaching 1890 MHz, which is a new record for our GTX 680 reviews.
ZOTAC is asking $579 for their card which seems like a lot, considering that other custom design GTX 680 cards are sold at $499. The included triple game Assassin's Creed bundle helps offset the cost, but most serious gamers will already be done with those. ZOTAC's GTX 680 AMP! Edition does seem to be a good choice for gamers who want maximized potential from their card right after unpacking, without any manual overclocking or tweaking. This comes at a price of course.