How Much Does it Cost?
Let’s talk about value. The £1349 price tag firmly places it in the premium territory. While the design, cooling, and factory overclock add appeal, justifying the near 35% markup over the MSRP is difficult. If you are spending that much, other cards on the market offer similar cooling and performance for the same price. However, I fear that with the lack of stock on these cards, it will come down to what you can get at the time. While the Zotac card is nice, you’re paying heavily for aesthetics and cooling rather than outright gaming advantages. You can check for up-to-date stock and prices at Scan.co.uk here.
Conclusion
So, in terms of performance, the Zotac RTX 5080 AMP Extreme INFINITY offers some measurable gains over the Founders Edition in certain titles, but much like other AIB models, these improvements are often marginal. The 5% uplift in A Plague Tale and the stronger 1% lows in Black Myth Wukong when overclocked are noteworthy, but across the majority of games, the difference is within a small margin, and in some cases, overclocking actually resulted in performance losses, especially in 1% lows. This suggests that the constraints of the 50 series and its early driver optimizations are still a factor, as we saw similar inconsistencies with the TUF model from ASUS and the FE model from NVIDIA and this always makes it harder for AIBs to make a product that warrants buying over what’s already been made possible at MSRP so most of the time, you’re paying more for looks and cooling potential.
One of the bigger talking points with the AMP Extreme INFINITY is its cooling solution. The IceStorm 3.0 cooler does a solid job, keeping temperatures under control with its vapor chamber technology and large heatsink array. The card runs cooler than the Founders Edition in most scenarios, and while the Amplify mode does drop temps slightly, the Quiet mode doesn’t significantly impact performance either. The fan profiles feel well-tuned, and noise levels remain reasonable, though the implementation of the BIOS switch requiring a restart is a bit clunky compared to other brands so I’d definitely mark things down because of that.
Power consumption is another aspect worth mentioning. While the Zotac draws slightly more power than the Founders Edition, it’s not an alarming increase, though the odd behaviour in Quiet mode drawing more power than Amplify mode is a bit of a head-scratcher. Overclocking pushes things up to around 340W, which is still within expectations for a high-end AIB model though again, I don’t really see much benefit to overclocking this card as the juice isn’t really worth the squeeze.
At the end of the day, the AMP Extreme INFINITY is a good card, but much like we saw with the ASUS TUF, NVIDIA’s Founders Edition is becoming increasingly difficult to beat in terms of value. The price premium on AIB cards continues to grow, making it harder to recommend unless you’re specifically drawn to the design, RGB lighting, or slight cooling improvements. If this was priced closer to $1200, it would make for a more compelling option, but as it stands, you’d likely get more enjoyment from pairing an MSRP 5080 with a CPU upgrade like a 7800X3D, rather than spending the extra cash on marginal GPU gains.
