Zotac GeForce GTX 470

Retailing for US $470 Zotac's GeForce GTX 470 is a pricey proposition but not as expensive as Gigabyte's GV-N470D5-13I-B (also reviewed on ITP.net).

The lack of the ‘AMP! Edition' text signifies that this particular Zotac graphics card is a standard card, rather than one that is factory overclocked. If you're a fan of Zotac's AMP! Edition cards however don't fret, the company will likely have these pre-overclocked monsters available in the coming weeks. Our particular test sample, being a standard clocked card, runs its GPU and 1280MB of GDDR5 memory at 607MHz and 3348MHz respectively.

Like the other cards in this grouptest this graphics card needs a 550-watt power supply to function. If you're planning to add another GTX 470 to your system so you can take advantage of nVidia's SLI multi-GPU technology, you'll need at least an 800-watts power supply to maintain stability.

Putting the Zotac through its paces it returned competitive figures that kept pace with all the cards here, with the exception of the pre-overclocked Galaxy GeForce GTX 470 GC.

One trump card the Zotac holds over its competitors is that it is covered by a five-year warranty, meaning you're covered even after this card is well past its useful performance life. Considering the GPU regularly hits temperatures of 90-degrees Celsius we think a long warranty period adds considerable value.