 The GeForce GTX 970, eh, it's not exactly new at this point. We already know it's a wicked beast of a graphics card at a great price with some cool new features like dynamic super resolution super sampling, multi-frame anti-aliasing, aka MFAA, and an unbelievably power-efficient new architecture. The best evidence for all of this is that you can't seem to buy them anywhere. So then Linus, why are you taking another look at it? Well, our last GTX 970 didn't really overclock that well compared to some results I've seen around the web, and we needed some more of them anyway for a three-way SLI test later on. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss that. So when Zotac reached out and asked if I wanted to try out their ludicrously overkill looking GTX 970, Amp Omega, and Amp Extreme, I was like, aw hell yeah! Something like that. Corsair Gaming RGB keyboards feature precision Cherry MX RGB key switches for 16.8 million color-per-key backlighting for virtually unlimited customization. Click now to learn more. Let's start with the general overview and physical tour of these bad boys. You get the usual Nvidia staples, two-way and three-way SLI support, 3D vision, G-Force Experience, GPU Boost 2.0, Dynamic Power Thermal and Performance Optimization, G-Sync, Adaptive Refresh Display support, and up to four simultaneous monitors connected with three and surrounding one auxiliary one. But Zotac wanted to add their own special sauce, and I think they pulled it off. So first up is the stuff that both of these cards have in common. If it wasn't already obvious, they are non-reference boards in every possible way. They're physically larger with a significant PCB bulge behind the two SLI connectors that is covered by fancy pants heat sinks in both cases. Moving further back, we find two 8-pin power connectors compared to the reference dual 6-pin design. At the rear of the card, we get multimeter voltage checkpoints for folks who don't want to rely on software for that stuff, and a USB plug for the OC Plus module that communicates with Zotac's Firestorm overclocking software to give you real-time diagnostics from the way overbuilt power delivery system on the card, some of which is visible from the back, where you'll also find one of the thickest back plates I've ever seen. This is good from a, wow, this is beefy perspective, but because it's also on risers, it could hurt compatibility with dual slot cards installed directly above the graphics card in your system, and it even interfered with a heat sink above the top PCI Express slot in my Rampage 5 Extreme motherboard. Rear I.O. is nearly identical with three DisplayPort outputs for up to three simultaneous G-Sync or 4K displays, HDMI 2.0, and dual-link DVI, which leaves us just with the main differences between these cards, which are, well, pretty much the coolers. The Omega is up first with its all-metal shrouded dual 90mm fan design that keeps the GPU under 70 degrees, under an overclocked load with fan speeds under 50%. It's a triple-slot cooler, but Zotac used the extra space well, and opted to use thicker fans with better static pressure rather than just going overkill on, like, more metal. This is one of the quietest graphics cards that I've ever encountered when fully overclocked under a gaming load. And my praise for the Omega's cooler is very similar to my praise for the Extreme's cooler, just more of the same. It's also triple-slot, it's got the same quiet optimized well-spaced fin structure, the same 90mm fan size, which is a really good sweet spot, but it gets a larger heatsink fin array with more heatpipes, and an additional fan that translates into slightly better cooling. The shroud is made of plastic, which is unfortunate, but it gets a faux carbon fiber finish that, and please forgive me for this, I think actually looks pretty darn cool. And it gets a few sort of green and red LED illuminated zones that have this breathing effect, and change colors when the GPU is under load. You can turn that off in Zotac's Firestorm utility if you want to, though. Which I guess brings us to Firestorm and the overclocking experience. It's not the most polished out of all the OC tools out there, and I had to have Afterburner running at the same time to monitor things like GPU power limit, so I could determine what was holding back my overclock, but it's also got some really neat functionality. With OC Plus plugged into the motherboard's USB header, you can see board input power, GPU power consumption, VRM efficiency, voltage and current in real time is actually super cool. You can also change most of the usual settings, so adjusting GPU boost clock and voltage, setting temp targets, manually overriding fan speeds, adjusting power limit, and all that stuff, and you can monitor your clock speeds, temps, and the like. You can even update your BIOS. But unfortunately, a lot of this stuff ends up getting held back by Nvidia as usual. Zotac did manage to get the maximum voltage unlocked to 1.26 in the latest version of the software, but setting it higher than 1.212, the old Max, caused the power limit of the board to trip pretty much instantly under any load, crippling performance, even at the same overclocks I was already getting anyway, so I left it at auto while I was overclocking. The good news is that the overclocking experience is actually still pretty good on these cards. The Extreme is clocked higher on both core and memory out of the box, but, thanks to the Silicon Lottery, didn't actually overclock as high as the Omega. They both ran nearly silently at 1546 MHz and 1513 MHz observed clock speeds in games across my entire test suite. Both are very solid results. Which brings us to performance. Luke's on vacation, so I had to run benchmark numbers myself, which means I guess I'll talk about them. Our bench was our standard 4 GHz Octa-Core Extreme Edition with 16 GB of DDR4, and as usual, all of our cards are overclocked. Check the link in the video description for all their clock speeds. Both Zotac 970s, thanks to their much higher clock speeds, outperformed our strict sample, but neither of them was able to do as well as an overclocked GTX 980, particularly at 4K, where the extra SMs and the 980 give it better pixel throughput. No real surprises here, though, other than the similarity between the performance of these two Zotac cards, given their different price points. So I think for the prospective buyer, this one is pretty much going to come down to which one is actually in stock anywhere, and which one they think is going to both fit and look better in their system, because either of them looks like a pretty solid choice. Speaking of solid choices, Zotac has made the choice to have us give away a GTX 980 AMP Extreme, yes, the fully enabled bigger brother of the 970 Extreme that I'm holding right here. All you need to do is watch this review, so that part's done, check out the pricing and discussion link in the video description, and post in our forum where we will randomly draw a winner from anywhere in the world to start enjoying the fastest single GPU gaming experience on planet Earth. Thanks Zotac on behalf of myself and the Linus Tech Tips community for doing this giveaway. Thanks to you guys for watching, like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment letting me know which you prefer, the metal shroud on the Omega or the carbon fiber finished LED adorned shroud on the Extreme. Check out the support us link in the video description to give us a monthly contribution, buy a cool t-shirt like this one, or change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a kickback whenever you buy graphics cards or whatever else it is you buy, all that stuff helps us out a lot. And as always, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more daily tech videos, just like this one.