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Zotac 980 Ti AMP Extreme

124K views 966 replies 128 participants last post by  Micheal Ramsey 
#1 ·
WIP

Bios to remove the pwr limits on the card hats off to cyclops on this one.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post

Okay, after some testing, it looks as if the old BIOS wasn't taking in the voltage properly. Here's the modded one for the correct 1.281V load voltage. Update it in the OP if you can:

FanFix-Mod-V2.zip 203k .zip file
We are in search of the specs of this chip [ UP1983A AZG51N ] sister chips have been used on other cards namely the GTX 970 but I am coming up with nothing. Any help tracking this guy down may help us unlock this card with hard mods.

Water block support -

  • Bitspower now makes a gpu block. BP-WBVGNGTX980TIZEXNPAC

  • EK universal block is a fit.
  • alphacool makes a block as well link
Some pcb shots of the board



Owners PM me (I dont always see new post) so I can add you to this list
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Anyone breaking records shall go here
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SYL #56 3dmark single card ultra
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Jarble #86 3dmark single card ultra
 
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#2 ·
I had 2 980 AMP! Extremes that were VERY good cards.

COOL, QUITE and clocked quite well although mis-understood until a DMM was hooked up.
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The ZOTAC 980 Ti is the highest outta the box clocked version yet seen of the 980 Ti line, even the LC cards.

I'm trying to swap my 980 KPE's for a one.
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SS
 
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#3 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ssiperko View Post

I had 2 980 AMP! Extremes that were VERY good cards.

COOL, QUITE and clocked quite well although mis-understood until a DMM was hooked up.
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The ZOTAC 980 Ti is the highest outta the box clocked version yet seen of the 980 Ti line, even the LC cards.

I'm trying to swap my 980 KPE's for a one.
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SS
Awesome to hear, how would you compare the KPE's to them? Hardware wise it's tough to beat the Kingpins hardware by comparison but I've seen 8 phase cards beat 14 so it's not always any specific thing.

I considered running two 980s vs one 980 Ti and then decided I'd go with the 980 Ti since I'm running 4K and will probably add another 980 Ti once prices drop a bit.

DMM? Digital Multimeter?
 
#4 ·
Only just received my 980 Ti AMP Extreme the other day and initial impressions are limited.

My card has a ridiculous always-present coil whine that I can't get rid of (not High-FPS whine like on similar models).

Beyond that however, I've run into a TDP wall and apparent issues with the ability to modify the maximum Power Limit percentage using overclocking tools. Out of the box my card boosts to ~1415 region before scaling back to about ~1370 or so due to power limitations. Power Percentage seems to hit 98/99% resulting in the downclock. The issue however is that setting the slider to 110% in either Afterburner or Precision X doesn't seem to mitigate the issue. The card still downclocks for power percentages of 98/99% and never gets anywhere close to the indicated 110% (never even breaches 100%).

This TDP limit has affected my OC testing for now. Artifacts are present with no voltage increase and a +50 to ~1465 or so (initially, before TDP downclock). Attempts to identify an artifact free/no voltage increase OC limit have been hampered by TDP downclocking/voltage decrease (each TDP downclock corresponds with a step decrease in Vcore).

I can update with more after I've had time to test/debug the power limit issue. I'm running on Windows 10 with 353.10, latest versions of Afterburner/Precision X.
 
#5 ·
I went with a reference card due to the fact that ek has no plans of making a waterblock that would cover the vrms. Plus I just got tired of being without a GPU!

That said, I did quite a bit of reading and I know in the 980 core edition it was required that you run their software which was difficult to figure out where all the settings were but did work once they released a bios update that fixed a voltage issue. Perhaps they will release a bios upgrade if you have no success with their overclocking program.

Btw, I'm really curious how many phases the VRM design has. I know the reference design has 6, gigabyte gaming has 8 and the msi gaming has 10. LN2 cards usually run 14-16.

As for overclocking my reference card can hit 1520mhz core and 8000 memory but ends up throttling due to the heat(even at 100% fan which sound's lIke a jet). I'm hoping to achieve a stable 1500mhz after moving to water cooling.
 
#6 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by patriotsfan82 View Post

Only just received my 980 Ti AMP Extreme the other day and initial impressions are limited.

My card has a ridiculous always-present coil whine that I can't get rid of (not High-FPS whine like on similar models).

Beyond that however, I've run into a TDP wall and apparent issues with the ability to modify the maximum Power Limit percentage using overclocking tools. Out of the box my card boosts to ~1415 region before scaling back to about ~1370 or so due to power limitations. Power Percentage seems to hit 98/99% resulting in the downclock. The issue however is that setting the slider to 110% in either Afterburner or Precision X doesn't seem to mitigate the issue. The card still downclocks for power percentages of 98/99% and never gets anywhere close to the indicated 110% (never even breaches 100%).

This TDP limit has affected my OC testing for now. Artifacts are present with no voltage increase and a +50 to ~1465 or so (initially, before TDP downclock). Attempts to identify an artifact free/no voltage increase OC limit have been hampered by TDP downclocking/voltage decrease (each TDP downclock corresponds with a step decrease in Vcore).

I can update with more after I've had time to test/debug the power limit issue. I'm running on Windows 10 with 353.10, latest versions of Afterburner/Precision X.
are you using Firestorm? A digital multi-meter to read voltages?

You SHOULD be able to get 1.26v outta them.

My KPE's are for extreme stuff.... I don't extreme stuff so I'd benefit more from something less.

SS
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ssiperko View Post

are you using Firestorm? A digital multi-meter to read voltages?

You SHOULD be able to get 1.26v outta them.

My KPE's are for extreme stuff.... I don't extreme stuff so I'd benefit more from something less.

SS
Not running into voltage issues or anything yet - can't even get that far.

I'd love to hear from someone else with this GPU to find out what's going on. On my second card and I still have the same issue. Namely, this thing is Power Limited out of the box and the Power % override is broken. In analyzing the default VBIOS, 111% Power Limit should be ~ 435W, 100% should be 390W. I highly doubt I'm hitting those - so it points to there being something wrong with the design of the card.

Out of the box: Boost to ~1430 MHz. Overclocking the VRAM and Core immediately causes Power throttling. So if I bump the core clock by +30 MHz, the card will immediately downclock to 1442 or 1430 MHz. If I bump the voltage at this point, the card will downclock even further (Higher Voltage = More power). The card hits a reported 95-99% TDP, but with the slider set to 111%, it still throttles around that 99% mark.

I haven't played around with modifying the BIOS yet because they concern me. They are set to seemingly allow 390W-435W TDP already which tells me that the card is completely ignoring the VBIOS TDP limits internally (which would explain why it isn't responding to the 111% slider value). There is no way this card is drawing 400W at 1.168V and 1430MHz (what it stabilizes at).

The 980 AMP Extreme played this game by having a completely separate Overclock chip that you could communicate with via USB and the Firestorm software. This card has no such thing, so if Zotac is running with a "fake" VBIOS layer on this card again... it will be very disappointing. Unfortunately, outside of Guru3D no one has reviewed this card and I don't know anyone else who actually owns it - can't compare anything.
 
#9 ·
Ordered one. Amazon is receiving them on the 20th but sabre pc already has it. Lets hope I don't get coil whine! Byt he 25th I should have some impressions!

Funny how little interest people have on the highest speed out of the box 980 ti.

I'm not a big fan of Zotac but I'm betting on them.
 
#10 ·
I ordered one last week. Got it Monday but it was unstable at stock clocks.
Mine boosted to 1405 megahertz out of the box. It would crash running 3dmark fire strike, and fire strike extreme (tdr) (latest whql NVidia driver 335.30). Asic quality is a low 68.2 percent. According to kingpin, Maxwell doesn't scale very well with additional voltage past 1.25-1.275, unless using dice or ln2. I noticed this when I applied more voltage to this card. It still couldn't run 1480 stable with additional voltage.
I also noticed the power limit never exceeding 95 percent, even with maxed out voltage, mem, and core overclock. I still had throttling as well when increasing voltage. Gpu-z was telling me that I had reached the power limit, which I wasn't (power at 111 percent). At stock settings, the card stayed at its boost frequency.
Currently my card is rma'd. I will be receiving a new one hopefully by next week. Hopefully New Egg's shipping will be God speed, since I'm a premier member:thumb:
BTW here is the text from kingpin's post:

Honestly speaking, I think most end users don't even realize how maxwell gpus are voltage capped at ambient type cooling. I can tell by many of the comments at OC.net, elsewhere, and also here in these card XOC bios threads. Especially compared to kepler. KP 780ti scaled great on voltage with air/water temps. Basically, more voltage = more clocks no matter what temperature.
With 980 and later gpus including titanX, the scaling on air/water has all but almost gone. I would say about 95% of all maxwell 980,titan-X, and 980ti gpus NO MATTER what vga brand pcb it is on, DO NOT SCALE with more voltage than 1.25v-1.275v at temps warmer than 25c or so. There is no magical bios that can effectively remove this.

This is exactly why almost every moderate-good asic titanX, 980, and yes 980ti clock around 1550mhz MAX AVERAGE at say 45-60C loading temps.
If you put 0c and colder on the card, you will see MUCH different behavior than what you see on air (green garbage all over screen when raising volts over 1.23-1.25vv or so)
Cards with very good ASIC value (75% and up) will tend to have the most "overclocking", but just like about every other maxwell gpu, they cannot overvolt past 1.23v-1.25v.
So highest asic cards like 80% +are almost always going to be the ones that can 1600+ on air/water, and again they do it pretty much WITHOUT overvolting over 1.23v-1.25v. Maxwell gpus with lower asic value like 65% will not be so great at air/water because these low asic gpus need voltage to scale compared to match the overclock of the high asic gpus( USING SAME USABLE VOLTAGE 1.23-1.25v)

The bios's I posted basically allow you to set a higher voltage on air/water. Some gpus can scale more, some cant, some actually will NEED more voltage than was previously needed to run same frequency. All different.
 
#11 ·
@patriotsfan82 I'm having the exact same problem. Same bios version as you and the card seems to ignore TDP limits. It immediately clocks to 1440 and downclocks to 1330ish once I start a stress test(furmark). Afterburner shows 99% TDP while gpu-z shows 70%. Changing the power sliders does nothing, even when using FireStorm. I checked the bios like you and it's the same power targets but I highly doubt it's drawing 390W at those speeds. Did you have any luck contacting zotac support?
 
#14 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkz0r View Post

Sucks, so many RMA reports. I hope my card at least can run at stock speeds...

Is there any chance they release a better bios?
Doubtful most of the better bios come from the community waiting for the manufacture is a bad idea just ask the 980 evga crowd. But there is a very strong bios modding group here so they might be able to help out in that department. I still have hope for this card it has a very good cooler and a solid design we just need to stop getting sub par asic chips.
 
#15 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by jarble View Post

Doubtful most of the better bios come from the community waiting for the manufacture is a bad idea just ask the 980 evga crowd. But there is a very strong bios modding group here so they might be able to help out in that department. I still have hope for this card it has a very good cooler and a solid design we just need to stop getting sub par asic chips.
You'd think that the card with the highest clock would have decent asics...lol.

At least there's some hope. What made me buy it was the good comments about the cooler and I'm ok with 3 slots. Seems like every card has a bit of coil whine (sad we have to accept it right?) so if it runs properly at stock I'll be happy already. I'll post my impressions at the end of the week.
 
#16 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkz0r View Post

You'd think that the card with the highest clock would have decent asics...lol.

At least there's some hope. What made me buy it was the good comments about the cooler and I'm ok with 3 slots. Seems like every card has a bit of coil whine (sad we have to accept it right?) so if it runs properly at stock I'll be happy already. I'll post my impressions at the end of the week.
I guess I am downing on this card more than I should tbh. The card sits at ear level on a open test bench not three feet from my head so I am super aware of coil wine. I would assume that if it was in a case you would never know this had any wine at all. And while I did fail the asic lottery I still can make it to 1480 so it is not a horrible card by any stretch. I am coming from a trio of very powerful 780 lightnings so my bar is set very very high
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#18 ·
Wow
Quote:
Originally Posted by lester123 View Post

Guys, i think its better to buy other brand, it seems mine cant overclock as well, 74.3 asic, i use their firestorm program and afterburner but cant seem to overclock past 1440, even added voltage and power limit 111%.
Wow that is worse than I am getting with my low 60's asic

Edit Well I am going to test the bios cyclops made and see what I can get out of that. If that is no good I will try to hard mod the resistors and see if that gets the job done. And all done before I box it back up to newegg for another spin on the wheel of asic coil whine possibility's
rolleyes.gif
 
#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by jarble View Post

Wow
Wow that is worse than I am getting with my low 60's asic

Edit Well I am going to test the bios cyclops made and see what I can get out of that. If that is no good I will try to hard mod the resistors and see if that gets the job done. And all done before I box it back up to newegg for another spin on the wheel of asic coil whine possibility's
rolleyes.gif
Let us know how it goes with the bios! Mine is arriving later this week! =)
 
#20 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by lester123 View Post

Guys, i think its better to buy other brand, it seems mine cant overclock as well, 74.3 asic, i use their firestorm program and afterburner but cant seem to overclock past 1440, even added voltage and power limit 111%.
Before I returned the cards, The top card has 77 ASIC, bottom has 67. Would not go past 1490/1980 core/mem. Anything After that, instant crash. Also, Driver crashes randomly. I tried the WHQL and hotfix. It's a random crash because I would be watching youtube or just typing in this forum then I would get a black screen then bottom right of notification in windows would show driver crash.

To make matters worse, I have to restart everytime it happens since there would be no sound.

ASUS strix is a card I really wanted since it fits my "Harley Quinn" red/black build. But saw reviews and no memory cooling. No pad at all. MSI is great but saw a vid where it looked like a toy next to strix.
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AMP Extreme/Omega has the best look & feel but performance & warranty is questionable.
 
#22 ·
Bios to remove the pwr limits on the card

Stock-Mod.zip 202k .zip file
hats off to cyclops on this one. I am still not stable at 1500 with this but others are having good luck.
 

Attachments

#23 ·
Just set up mine Zotac AMP! Extreme Edition was an Evga customer
Evga starts selling binned chips for ASIC rating 80%+ for $1,049.99 time to make a move
Happy I did... This card is a beast
No coil whine,No fan ripple
Firestrike 15,ooo plus out of the box never broke 70 degrees
ASIC quality rating 84.6
Zotac binn's their chips for a lot less
 
#24 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by roberta507 View Post

Just set up mine Zotac AMP! Extreme Edition was an Evga customer
Evga starts selling binned chips for ASIC rating 80%+ for $1,049.99 time to make a move
Happy I did... This card is a beast
No coil whine,No fan ripple
Firestrike 15,ooo plus out of the box never broke 70 degrees
ASIC quality rating 84.6
Zotac binn's their chips for a lot less
youre lucky! mine only have 74.6 asic
 
#25 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by jarble View Post

Bios to remove the pwr limits on the card

Stock-Mod.zip 202k .zip file
hats off to cyclops on this one. I am still not stable at 1500 with this but others are having good luck.
Cheers, keeping it for later!
smile.gif

I`m gonna be happy if I can run stable/silent at 1450.

BTW: Since this seems to be a semi-official amp extreme thread, is there anything I can do on my CM Storm Stryker to better support the card? Maybe use the power cables or something...lol
 
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