NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3070 Ti was launched in June, and we reviewed five models at launch. Today, we're taking a look at Zotac's brand-new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti AMP Extreme Holo. This card is designed to one-up the RTX 3070 Ti Amp Edition that was part of our launch-day coverage. With the new SKU Zotac is introducing a massive cooling solution we've first seen on the RTX 3090 AMP Extreme Holo. The card also comes with the highest factory overclock of all RTX 3070 Ti cards available on the market. 1890 MHz rated boost is higher than any other custom-design as most cards are specced for 1800–1830 MHz; some premium boards from Gigabyte, EVGA, Galax, and MSI reach 1860 MHz.

Averaged over our 22-game-strong test suite at 1440p resolution, the Zotac AMP Extreme is 4% faster than the Founders Edition and 10% ahead of the RTX 3070 non-Ti. That's a pretty solid improvement, also compared to other RTX 3070 Ti custom designs. The Zotac AMP Extreme Holo is without any doubt the fastest RTX 3070 Ti we ever tested–good job, Zotac! Still, the increase over the RTX 3070 isn't that big, especially when you consider the investment by NVIDIA: full GA104 GPU, GDDR6X, new PCBs, and completely new cooler design for the FE. Compared to the Radeon RX 6800, the AMP Extreme Holo is able to match it, at 1440p, and beat it by 2% at 4K, an important win. The GeForce RTX 3080 is 10% faster than the Zotac card, and the newly released RTX 3080 Ti is 18% faster. Last generation's GeForce RTX 2080 Ti flagship is 13% behind the RTX 3070 Ti, and the difference to the RTX 2070 Super is 34%.

Memory size on the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti remained at 8 GB, same as the RTX 3070 non-Ti, probably because the only other feasible option is 16 GB, which would have increased cost significantly without major performance improvements. The underlying reason is that the VRAM capacity is tied to the memory bus width on the card. In theory, a 12 GB 192-bit design like the RTX 3060 is possible, but the performance loss from the narrower memory bus would more than negate any gains from the larger memory buffer. On the other hand, AMD is offering 16 GB of VRAM on the Radeon RX 6800, so NVIDIA achieving parity would have certainly had a psychological effect. Personally, I'm not a fan of going all out on VRAM size, none of our benchmarks show any noteworthy performance issues arising from 8 GB VRAM capacity. Actually, it seems likely DirectStorage, a technology that was first pioneered on the new consoles, will reduce VRAM pressure by optimizing the disk to GPU memory path.

With those performance numbers, the RTX 3070 Ti is the perfect choice for the huge 1440p gamer crowd, but the card also has enough muscle to drive many titles at 4K 60 FPS, especially if you are willing to dial down settings a little bit. The RTX 3070 Ti is also a great choice for 1080p Full HD if you want to drive a high-refresh-rate monitor with 120 or 144 Hz. For just 1080p at 60 Hz, it's overkill unless next-generation titles go overboard with their hardware requirements, which is highly unlikely. Raytracing performance of the RTX 3070 Ti is better than the Radeon RX 6800 because NVIDIA executes more raytracing functions in hardware and is on their second generation of the technology. Differences vary between titles, though. The new consoles are built using AMD RDNA 2 technology, so going forward, game developers may invest more resources into optimizing RT for AMD's architecture, or they simply dial down the RT effects to reduce the performance hit, which is what happened recently with Resident Evil 7.

We encountered Zotac's cooler design before, on the RTX 3090 AMP Extreme Holo; actually, it seems they're using exactly the same cooler here, which of course provides awesome cooling potential for the RTX 3070 Ti. In our thermal testing, we saw excellent temperature results with the default "Performance" BIOS, only 71°C under full load, which is a huge improvement over the 82°C on NVIDIA's Founders Edition. Noise levels are a bit better than the FE too, at the same time. While quieter than the FE, I still wouldn't call 37.6 dBA "quiet" as it's still well audible and a bit of a lost opportunity for low-noise output given the solid cooler. Thanks to a dual-BIOS feature, this can be solved easily, not by the flick of a button, but a mouse click. Zotac is the only vendor offering a software-only dual-BIOS feature. While not having to crawl under your desk to switch the BIOS is convenient, you'll have to install Zotac's FireStorm software. I feel like a physical switch wouldn't have added any significant cost, but given users additional freedom. With the "quiet" BIOS active, noise levels are very quiet, only 32.7 dBA under full load, which is quieter than most RTX 3070 Ti cards we've tested. Even in that mode, temperatures are low, reaching only 74°C. Given these temperatures, an even more relaxed fan curve would have been possible; "whisper quiet", like the MSI Suprim X seems in reach. I've complained about Zotac's noise levels many times in the recent past–for the RTX 3070 Ti AMP Extreme Holo, I have to congratulate them—they are on the right path to finally getting things right. With Ampere, NVIDIA introduced idle fan stop on their Founders Edition, which makes fan stop a mandatory capability for custom designs, too. In idle, during desktop work, internet browsing, and light gaming, the card will turn off its fans completely for the perfect noise-free experience.

In my RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition review, I talked a lot about the increased power consumption of the RTX 3070 Ti and the reasons behind it. The bottom line is that the RTX 3070 Ti is not nearly as energy efficient as the RTX 3070 non-Ti, and can't match AMD's Radeons, either. Usually, you'd expect factory-overclocked custom designs to lose some additional energy efficiency due to higher clock speeds and possible voltage increases. This isn't the case with the Zotac AMP Extreme. The card offers 4–5% higher performance and consumes 6% more power, resulting in pretty much the same energy efficiency as the NVIDIA Founders Edition; congrats to Zotac for making smart improvements on their card that don't cost any efficiency—other RTX 3070 Tis we've tested don't do so well here.

Zotac's AMP Extreme wants to sell you the "OC champ" feeling, and given our test results, that doesn't seem to be a marketing fantasy. After manual overclocking, the card achieved the highest overall OC performance of all RTX 3070 Ti cards we've tested. Especially memory did OC well because it ran at lower temperatures than on some other cards thanks to the good heatsink design. In terms of power limits, Zotac was fairly conservative—the 310 W default power limit is comparable to other cards we've tested, and the manual adjustment power limit is set to 350 W. While higher than others, it is not spectacularly high. Given the 8+8+6 power configuration, I had hoped for higher limits. Looking at the out-of-the-box performance and good efficiency, it seems Zotac did find a good balance for its default settings, though. Still, overclockers always want more, so a higher adjustment range would have helped win their hearts over.

NVIDIA has announced a $600 price point for the RTX 3070 Ti, which is $100 higher than the RTX 3070 and hard to justify given what we're seeing in terms of performance, power, heat, and noise. With current market conditions being what they are, such price points are of course completely irrelevant. In recent days, we've seen card prices come down a little bit, but they're still super high. The RTX 3070 Ti is now sold at around $1100, and I feel like Zotac's AMP Extreme Holo could end up $100 higher than that, which is why I've used $1200 as the price point throughout this review. Zotac was unable to give any indication of pricing for this review. Given the large cooler, its cooling capacity, and the awesome RGB lighting, I think I'd be willing to spend that much, that but not more. That's of course given a $1100 price point for the "base" cards. If the actual price were $600, then +$100 would be way too much. When looking at price/performance, strong competition comes from the RTX 3070, which is around $1000—considerably cheaper, but only marginally slower, so better price/performance. The RTX 3070 is also more energy-efficient than the RTX 3070 Ti. AMD's Radeon RX 6800 non-XT goes for $1300 at the moment, which is not good value since the RX 6800 XT at $1400 would be the better choice and also much closer in value to the RTX 3070 Ti. This also puts a lid on the maximum price you should be willing to pay for any RTX 3070 Ti because at some point, the RX 6800 XT will offer more performance with much better energy efficiency, but slower raytracing. If you can live with lower overall performance, but want better price/performance, the RX 6700 XT at "only" $770 could be an option, or just wait a bit longer. It seems the crypto bubble is nearing its end, and the GPU supply situation is improving a bit, too.

I'm giving the Zotac RTX 3070 Ti AMP Extreme Holo our "Editor's Choice" award because it's probably the best RTX 3070 Ti available at this time, and you should consider it above others if you are in the market for an RTX 3070 Ti and can live with the currently inflated prices.