The Card

Zotac is using an all-metal construction for the cooler, which gives it an ultra-high quality feel. A high-quality, matte black backplate is installed on the back of the card. Dimensions of the card are 32.0 x 13.5 cm.


Installation requires three slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include three standard DisplayPort 1.4a, one HDMI 2.0b, and a VirtualLink connector, which is basically USB-C with DisplayPort routing and USB-PD, so a single cable can power, display, and take input from your VR HMD.

NVIDIA has updated their display engine with the Turing microarchitecture, which now supports DisplayPort 1.4a with support for VESA's nearly lossless Display Stream Compression (DSC). Combined, this enables support for 8K@30Hz using a single cable, or 8K@60Hz when DSC is turned on. For context, DisplayPort 1.4a is the latest version of the standard that was published in April, 2018.


The board uses two 8-pin power connectors. This input configuration is specified for up to 375 watts of power draw.


With Turing, NVIDIA is using NVLink as a physical layer for its next-generation SLI technology. NVLink provides sufficient bandwidth for multi-GPU rendering at 8K 60 Hz, 4K 120 Hz, and other such bandwidth-heavy display resolutions. It's a point-to-point link between your GPUs, and so, latencies will be lower compared to pushing data through the PCI-Express bus.


We shine the light from a self-leveling line laser on to the card, which shows no sagging.

Disassembly

Zotac is using five heatpipes and a copper base on their cooler.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during handling and installation. Note how the backplate actually partially wraps around the card for added protection and improved looks.


Once the main heatsink is removed, a black baseplate becomes visible, which provides cooling for the VRM circuitry.

On the next page, we dive deep into the PCB layout and VRM configuration.