Zotac Gaming RTX 5080 AMP Extreme Graphics Card Review

When buying a new graphics card, you have certain choices of which brand and model to pick up for that particular GPU. I know that’s not exactly the easiest decision to make right now, with stock and pricing being a slight issue, but cards have been available, are still available, and will get better in the near future. So, it’s always good to arm yourself with the relevant information on various models so that when the time comes, you can make the right choice. This leads me to today’s review of the Zotac RTX 5080 AMP Extreme INFINITY. Zotac claims this card is a completely revamped experience and a new approach to graphics card design, but what does that mean for you, the end user? Well, that’s what we’re going to find out! This card boasts impressive features, including being powered by the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture and DLSS 4. The innovative Infinity Mirror Design adds a unique aesthetic touch. Cooling is prioritised with IceStorm 3.0 Advanced Cooling, a Larger Vapor Chamber, and BladeLink Fans, alongside features like FREEZE Fan Stop, Active Fan Control, and Dual BIOS for optimal performance and noise management. Customisation is key with SPECTRA 2.0 RGB Lighting and a SPECTRA LINK Lighting Sync port. Durability is ensured with a Metal die-cast backplate and added support comes from a bundled GPU Support Bracket. Safety is also considered with the 12V-2x6 Safety Light. Finally, the all-new FireStorm Utility allows for fine-grained control and monitoring of your new GPU. Key Features Powered by the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture and DLSS 4 The ultimate ZOTAC GAMING GPU Infinity Mirror Design IceStorm 3.0 Advanced Cooling Larger Vapor Chamber BladeLink Fans FREEZE Fan Stop, Active Fan Control, Dual BIOS SPECTRA 2.0 RGB Lighting SPECTRA LINK Lighting Sync port Metal die-cast Backplate Bundled with GPU Support Bracket 12V-2x6 Safety Light All-new FireStorm Utility (DOWNLOAD) https://youtu.be/D8Mueu2mo2k A Closer Look As with any factory overclocked model, you’d expect some level of increased performance, and the Zotac RTX 5080 AMP Extreme INFINITY does just that, at least in theory, featuring a boost clock of 2670MHz, which is slightly higher than NVIDIA’s reference spec of 2617MHz, but is only around a 2% increase. While that may not sound like a game-changer, it’s always interesting to see how much extra performance, if any, that actually translates to in real-world scenarios. However, what truly sets this card apart isn’t just the clock speed but the overall design and cooling solution that Zotac has opted for. The AMP Extreme INFINITY features their latest IceStorm 3.0 cooling system, which consists of a triple-fan setup with three good-sized fans. These BladeLink fans aim to reduce turbulence and enhance airflow efficiency thanks to their unique design. The idea here is to push more air across the massive heatsink while keeping noise levels down, and as always, we’ll be putting that to the test. Speaking of cooling, the card features a vapour chamber design with an extended aluminium fin-stack heatsink with copper heat pipes that make direct contact with the GPU die, ensuring efficient heat dissipation. The 34% larger size compared to previous models should, in theory, help maintain lower temperatures even under extended gaming or workload scenarios and now spans the whole of the card, end to end. Additionally, the AMP Extreme INFINITY includes a die-cast metal backplate, which not only adds to the card’s structural rigidity but also acts as a passive heatsink, helping to dissipate some of the heat away from the GPU and VRMs. Size-wise, this is a big card, but in fairness, all 5080s are, with the exception of the Founders model, which is slimmer, but still large. The Zotac card measures 332mm in length, 137mm in height, and 69mm thick, and that puts it as a 3.5-slot design, meaning that while it’s not quite as chunky as some of the highest-end RTX 5090 models, it’s still one of the larger RTX 5080 cards on the market. That means case compatibility will be something to consider, especially if you’re working with a more compact build, but if you’re looking at getting any RTX 5080, I’m sure you’re taking all of that into consideration. It also weighs in at 2.48kg, so again, it’s on the upper end of the scale. One of the standout features of this model is Zotac’s Spectra 2.0 RGB lighting, which spans across the side, end, and back of the card, giving it a bold and aggressive look. Unlike other, more subdued designs like the Founders from NVIDIA or TUF from ASUS that we’ve looked at, the AMP Extreme INFINITY leans heavily into aesthetics, making it a great choice for those who want their build to stand out because whether you have this vertically or horizontally, it’s definitely going to do that. I feel that with the huge popularity of fishtank-style cases, the infinity mirror definitely helps the card stand out from the competition. Of course, as you’d expect, the RGB is fully customisable via Zotac’s FireStorm software, allowing you to tweak colours, effects, and sync lighting with other components. For those who like to have more control over their cooling and performance, the card also includes a Dual BIOS button, offering the choice between an Amplify mode, which pushes the fans harder for lower temperatures, and a Quiet mode, which prioritises reduced noise levels at the expense of slightly higher temperatures. This is a feature we’ve seen on many premium AIB models, but they normally include different clock speeds too, while on the Zotac card, it’s purely a fan speed button and it works slightly differently to other cards too. While other cards have a switch that you change and then boot the card up, the Zotac card actually requires the card to be powered on, press the button and wait for the red light to indicate the performance BIOS or the blue light for the Quiet mode, and then restart your machine. It’s a bit clunky compared to the competition, and I do feel that a better implementation could be done. Power-wise, the RTX 5080 AMP Extreme INFINITY sticks to NVIDIA’s 12V 2x6 connector with a safety light, capable of delivering up to 360W to the GPU. Given that this is a factory-overclocked model, you can expect power draw to push towards the upper end of that limit and Zotac recommends an 850W PSU as a minimum, though as always, if you’re running a high-end CPU alongside this card, a 1000W unit would be a safer bet. So, where does the Zotac RTX 5080 AMP Extreme INFINITY sit in the market? With its robust cooling, aggressive aesthetics, and factory overclock, it’s positioned as one of the more premium RTX 5080 options available, but with that comes a price premium of $1349, and as always, the question remains—does the added cooling and design justify that extra cost? That’s what we’ll be putting to the test in our benchmarks, but first, we wanted to see what was capable in terms of overclocking. Overclocking What we were able to achieve was a 250MHz overclock on the GPUs core clock, and a 1000MHz increase on the memory. This now brings the boost clock up to 2920MHz and the memory now up to 2000MHz, so a subtle increase of just over 9%, which is nice to see, but is lower than what we’ve seen on other cards from rival brands. GPU-Z Stock GPU-Z OC Software Settings Power & Temperatures To get an idea as to what this overclock, the amplify mode, and the quiet mode mean for cooling, we booted up F1 24 for an hour long loop to see what levels of performance we get in terms of temperatures, fan speed and power usage, along with looking at clock speed behaviour. What we find is that the amplify mode does push things a little harder and we end up seeing the GPU temperature two degrees lower than what we see in the Quiet mode, with 63 Degrees on average as opposed to 65 degrees. Both of these do fall just under the Founders editions temperatures, but with this only being by 1 degree when compared to the quiet mode, it really could be argued as margin of error. We also see that the overclock doesn't change a whole lot, and when we consider that we were using the amplify preset when overclocking in hopes of getting some better results, we see that the temperature only actually increases by 1 degree to 66 on average, so really nothing to complain about. Memory junction temperatures don't really tell much of a story at all since the founders edition, Zotac's Quiet mode and the overclock all fall into the same 66 degree average, with the only outlier being the amplify mode which sits 2 degrees lower than everything else at 64 degrees. In terms of the fan speeds we can see why things are so close here, as everything is pretty close with the Founders Edition and amplify mode generally falling within 10 RPM of each other, and as a result they both sound pretty similar, which is already hard to notice amongst the rest of the system, so the mere 150-ish RPM drop that we see from changing to quiet mode seems a little pointless, since you can't actually hear a difference and we see pretty much no change to temperatures. The overclock, interestingly, reduced the fan speed down to around the same level that we see from the quiet mode, which doesn't really make sense to me, especially since we triple checked that we were in the amplify mode when overclocking, so what happened here is anyone's guess, not that it seemed to make a huge difference to temperatures anyway. Power is another weird one, as if we look at averages we see that there is a small but steady increase as we move through each test, starting with the founders edition that ran at around 320 watts of power throughout the run which then went up to around 325 watts when we compare to Zotac in the amplify mode, but weirdly, enabling the quiet mode actually brings the power draw up again to around 330 watts. Then when we look at the overclock we see that the power draw increases to average at about 340 watts. Finally as we look at clock speeds we see that the Zotac Increases the base clock that we see on the founders by around 120 MHz on average which stays consistent with the quiet mode too. Overclocking did allow us to up the core and boost clock up by 250 MHz which does translate pretty well to the real world clock. In terms of memory we were only able to see a 1000MHz increase over stock when we overclocked the card, so don't expect this to make a huge difference to performance overall and any further, due to the GDDR7 having ECC, can cause performance to drop. GPU-Z Founders Edition ASUS TUF Gaming How We Test We continue to update our testing methods around once per year. As such, we re-test older hardware to reflect changes over time. These can be driver updates, Windows updates, game patches, and more; all of which have an impact on performance figures. Furthermore, we update our test benches to newer and more relevant hardware. This means that our new reviews aren’t always comparable to those of older reviews, so please compare the testing methodology on older reviews should you be trying to compare them with newer ones. Replicate Our Results When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory and are kept as simple as possible, although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of a graphics card, CPU, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there’s always a margin for error when using any software. Links are provided below, as well as the settings we use. We encourage you to not just look at how one product compares to any other, but how it compares to your own. If you’re looking to build a new system, you should benchmark your current PC using the benchmarks available to you. You should then look at the percentage improvement from your current hardware to the hardware tested here to give you a ballpark figure of how much of an upgrade this will provide you with. Processor Test Systems Test System (GPU) Motherboard Gigabyte B650E AORUS MASTER Buy Now Processor Ryzen 7 9800X3D Review Buy Now GPU Changes Per Review RAM 32 Corsair VENGEANCE RGB 6000MHz CL30 Review Buy Now CPU Cooler NZXT Kraken Z73 RGB Buy Now Power Supply NZXT C1000 Gold Review Buy Now Storage Seagate FIRECUDA 530 1TB Review Buy Now Chassis NZXT H9 Flow Review Buy Now OS Windows 11 Pro Version 21H2 Drivers Software We use a variety of software from different developers to assist in our testing and to give us the most consistent results possible. Some applications are specifically used for testing, while others are simply used for monitoring and to aid us in making sure that our results are as accurate as possible. Software Used 3DMark FireStrike & TimeSpy (download) Gaming To gauge performance levels which are easily reproduced time after time, by both ourselves and our readers, we now stick strictly to games default profiles. Given how powerful most modern cards are getting, we've began using more demanding profiles for most games, but will otherwise state on a per game basis if we use other profiles beyond High, Ultra, Maximum or their respective equivalent at all resolutions. V-Sync is always disabled in our testing, and all FPS caps that can be removed are. We also enable XMP and Resizable bar technology across all platforms to keep things as fair as possible. Games While we test a lot of games, it's not possible to display all of the data on the website or in our videos. Instead, we include access to all of our testing data for our Patreon members (link), where members get a ton of other benefits as well. What we do, however, is display charts for averages across all game titles to give a better picture of performance across all titles tested. A Plague Tale: Requiem Alan Wake II Baldur's Gate 3 Black Myth Wukong CS2 Cyberpunk 2077 F1 24 Fortnite Hogwarts Legacy Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Starfield War Thunder Resolutions 1080 (Full HD) 1440 4K Some tests will also include features such as NVIDIA DLSS and Ray Tracing. However, these will be clearly labelled and may only appear in reviews for graphics cards that support those features. Power Consumption Not being content with simply reading total system power draw, we now run F1 24 for an hour loop and measure power draw at the end of the loop for the most accurate measurement that represents real-world gameplay experience. Temperatures We take temperature readings after the same hour-long F1 24 loop with no other background programs running, again to simulate a real-world gaming experience. A Plague Tale: Requiem A Plague Tale: Requiem is a stealth-survival horror adventure that serves as a direct sequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence. Players continue the harrowing journey of Amicia and Hugo de Rune, two young siblings navigating a plague-ridden France in the 14th century. The game features stunning visuals, intense action sequences, and a gripping narrative that explores themes of family, resilience, and the darkness within. Looking at some gaming performance, and starting with A Plague Tale, we see that the Zotac does provide a bit of a boost over the Founders Edition with 5% more frames on average and 7% more in the lows. This isn’t quite enough to match the performance increase we saw from the ASUS TUF card though, as that sits 4% ahead of the Zotac in the averages, but only 1 FPS in the lows. Interestingly when we overclock the GPU we actually see a decrease in performance, though not in the averages, as they remained identical, but we now see a 6% decrease in performance in the lows, showing that our overclock is putting some limits on us in places. Black Myth Mukong Black Myth Wukong is an action role-playing game inspired by the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West." Developed by Game Science, it features stunning graphics, challenging combat encounters, and a captivating story based on the legendary Monkey King. Players can expect a unique blend of Chinese mythology and action-packed gameplay. Moving onto Black Myth Wukong, and here we see the Zotac card only just ahead of the Founders edition, with a single frame more in the averages and an identical low result. This also happens to fall just a single FPS behind the TUF in the averages but falls 2 FPS behind in the lows so not much in it. What is nice to see here though is that when we try overclocking we actually see a decent performance uplift, with 5% more performance on average and 8% more in the lows when compared to how the card runs at stock and this increase now places the Zotac 4% higher than the TUF in both the averages and the lows. Cyberpunk 2077 Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world action role-playing game set in the dystopian metropolis of Night City. Developed by CD Projekt Red, it offers a vast and immersive world filled with diverse characters, complex storylines, and a wide range of customization options. Players can create their own unique cyberpunk character and explore the city's underbelly, completing missions, engaging in cybernetic enhancements, and making choices that shape their destiny. The next game in the list is Cyberpunk 2077, where we see the Zotac making a decent 8% improvement in frame rate over the Founders Edition card, now matching performance with the RTX 4090 but with 4% more FPS in the lows as a cherry on top. Whilst this improvement is welcome it’s still not quite enough to match the TUF card, which sits another frame ahead in the averages, just beating the 4090, but what we also see here is a much better 1% low figure, with it sitting 12% ahead of the AMP EXTREME. Overclocking doesn’t do anything to help improve things here and instead reduces our average frame rate by 1FPS, making it kind of pointless here. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Indiana Jones And The Great Circle is an upcoming action-adventure game based on the iconic film franchise. Developed by Bethesda Game Studios, it promises to deliver an epic and cinematic experience with a globe-trotting adventure, thrilling action sequences, and a captivating story. Players will step into the shoes of Indiana Jones and embark on a quest to uncover the secrets of a mysterious artefact. Next up is Indiana Jones, with 4% more FPS on average when compared to the Founders there really isn’t too much to complain about, we are still just barely behind the TUF card here with only 1FPS less in the averages and the lows fare worse with the Zotac falling 12% behind. What is particularly impressive though is our overclocking result, when we compare how the card performed before and after we can see that it has gained 7% more frames on average and 8% more in the lows. Despite this improvement being enough to have the Zotac ahead of the TUF by 6% in the averages, it’s still not enough to compete with the low results that the TUF saw, and the overclocked Zotac still falls behind, but this time by 5%. Starfield Starfield is a highly anticipated space exploration role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios. It offers a vast and immersive galaxy to explore, with countless planets, star systems, and alien civilizations to discover. Players can create their own custom character and embark on a journey to uncover the secrets of the universe, completing missions, engaging in space combat, and making choices that shape their destiny. Starfield is next and here we see some better placements, but not much in the way of performance increases. The AMP EXTREME does manage to see 5% ahead of the Founders Edition and 1 FPS ahead of the TUF card, still with worse lows though. What is interesting in this game though is that the overclock was able to give us an extra frame in the averages but has seriously affected the lows, where we actually see a 27% drop in performance, bringing us below the 60 FPS mark. What we found was that this result was consistent even after retests, so whilst we do enjoy a very slight improvement in the averages, it doesn’t seem worth it when the way the game feels is so much worse. Ray Tracing - Black Myth Wukong Black Myth Wukong is an action role-playing game inspired by the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West." Developed by Game Science, it features stunning graphics, challenging combat encounters, and a captivating story based on the legendary Monkey King. Players can expect a unique blend of Chinese mythology and action-packed gameplay. Looping back around to Black Myth Wukong but this time with ray tracing enabled and here we see that the Founders Edition, the TUF and The Zotac card all have the same average frame rate, with the TUF and Zotac both sitting 1 FPS higher than the founders edition in the lows so nothing of significance. Overclocking does again give us some better frame rates, with us now seeing 6% more performance when compared to the rest of the cards, but again, we do see a decrease when it comes to the lows, though only by a negligible 1 FPS this time, making it tie with the Founders Edition card, though that all being said, at around 30 FPS, you’ll want to harness the benefits of upscaling to play this game on these settings anyway. Ray Tracing - Cyberpunk 2077 Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world action role-playing game set in the dystopian metropolis of Night City. Developed by CD Projekt Red, it offers a vast and immersive world filled with diverse characters, complex storylines, and a wide range of customization options. Players can create their own unique cyberpunk character and explore the city's underbelly, completing missions, engaging in cybernetic enhancements, and making choices that shape their destiny. Finally is Cyberpunk again, but now with ray tracing enabled, and here we see a very similar story to black myth, but a little more tame. What we see is that the TUF and the Zotac both sit just a single frame ahead of the Founders card in both the averages and the lows, whilst the overclock was able to gain us another frame in the averages but saw no difference to the lows. I’d prefer no difference to a decrease though so this result isn’t too bad though still falls under margin of error. Again this is a game that needs upscaling, and luckily enough Cyberpunk supports all forms of upscaling including multi-frame generation. 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.