A Closer Look

Zotac's massive cooler uses six heatpipes of which several are extra thick for as much heat transfer as possible.


Once the main cooler is removed, you can see a small secondary heatsink for the VRM circuitry. Also visible is how the metal backplate wraps around the PCB, which not only looks great, but adds some extra protection against physical damage.


ZOTAC has added a "PowerBoost" capacitor onto the back of the card, which promises to smoothen GPU voltage. Other vendors have tried this approach as well, and it does deliver measurable effects, but provides no noticeable real-life improvements.


Power delivery requires two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors. This configuration is specified for up to 375 W power draw.


Zotac is using an uP1983A voltage controller, a rare high-end controller only the Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 Gaming uses as well.


The GDDR5 memory chips are by Hynix and carry the model number H5GQ4H24MFR-R2C. They are specified to run at 1750 MHz (7000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


NVIDIA's GM200 graphics processor is the company's flagship GPU. It is produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC, Taiwan, with a transistor count of 8.0 billion and a die-size of 601 mm².