The GeForce GTX 770 established itself as the weapon of choice for gamers in the $400 segment. ZOTAC's GTX 770 uses a GTX 680 AMP! Edition PCB but comes at GTX 770 reference design clocks, yet the card is 2% faster than the NVIDIA board when averaged over our benchmarks. It seems as though ZOTAC optimized their cooler's temperatures to run below 80°C most of the time, which lets the GPU sustain boost clocks better.
The new cooler looks pretty nice if you ask me and does an OK job at keeping the card cool, but I would have wished for slightly lower temperatures and noise levels. Idle noise is great, though, making the card almost inaudible outside of games. For its performance class, gaming noise is good too, but other GTX 770s we've tested before do better here, especially the MSI GTX 770 Gaming.
ZOTAC is not asking a price premium for their card; it is simply sold for $399. Considering ZOTAC includes a Splinter Cell series three-game bundle, the card even provides additional value, or potential for cost savings if you sell the coupons. At current pricing, AMD is not competitive at all. The Radeon HD 7970 is slightly cheaper but much slower, and the HD 7970 GHz Edition is more expensive and slower. Both AMD cards also lose to NVIDIA's recent offerings when looking at power consumption and noise. The only thing they bring to the table is the rich Never Settle game bundle, which ZOTAC countered somewhat with its Splinter Cell bundle.