ZOTAC GeForce GTX 650 Ti AMP! Edition Review

After the Asus GTX650TI-DC2T-1GD5, it’s now time to take the ZOTAC GTX 650 Ti AMP! Edition for a spin. The GTX 650 Ti sits in the price range of the GTX 550 Ti all the way up to the GTX 560, depending on which version of the card you get. Let’s see if ZOTAC’s overclocked offering delivers the extra performance that it charges for.

Design and Build
Unlike the Asus offering, ZOTAC has stuck with a much more sensible design and designed the cooler around the size of the card rather than just slapping a large one from one of its high-end cards. Don’t let this miniature size fool you though, as it packs in quite a powerful chipset. The card is quiet tiny, so it will easily fit into most mid-tower chassis. The rear ports include two HDMIs and two DVI (one DVI-D and one DVI-I) ports. There’s a little vent as well for some air circulation. The cooler consists of an aluminium block with fins along the sides. This heat dissipated from the fins is then cooled by a single large fan.

Compact and easy to install

Since this is based on the GK106 silicon, the GTX 650 Ti doesn’t really require any extravagant cooler to keep the temperatures in check. The maximum power draw of the GTX 650 Ti is just 110W, so you only need a single PCIe power connector. Nvidia recommends a 400W PSU as the bare minimum to properly power the card. Overall, ZOTAC has done a pretty good job in the design and build aspect of the GTX 650 Ti, plus the orange accent does add a bit of flair to the card as well.

Good connectivity options

Features
This being the overclocked version of the GTX 650 Ti, ZOTAC has bumped up the core speed from the stock 928MHz to 1033MHz. There’s a total of 768 CUDA cores or stream processors onboard as well. The memory on the AMP! Edition is clocked quite a bit higher as compared to the reference card from Nvidia. The clock speed of the memory now sits at 1550MHz (6200MHz effective) and you get 2GB of it.

Testbench

• Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz
• Motherboard: GIGABYTE P67A-UD3R
• Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB (4GB x 2) @1600MHz
• Hard drive: Intel SSD 520 240GB (Boot Drive), WD Velociraptor 300GB (Secondary Drive)
• GPU: ZOTAC GTX 650 Ti AMP! Edition
• PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro 1000W
• OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bitPerformance