Lets start with Zotac’s idle and low load temperature management. Once the card moves out of its 0 RPM idle state, the fans slowly pulse themselves to life instead of offering a linear rotational speed transition where RPMs gradually ramp up in parallel with core temperatures. Once the card reaches a predetermined load, power or temperature threshold (we’re not sure which one it is), the fans remain on but level out at a very quiet 1100RPMs.
For that point on most other cards would gradually reduce or increase fan speeds to align with core temperatures to predictive load algorithms. Zotac doesn’t do that. Rather, their fans remain at a lethargic, very quiet speed which seems to be more than enough to cool off the core. Had the AMP! remained at that level, we’d have nothing more to say.
For whatever reason, the fan controller kicks things up a notch to double-time at random intervals. These instances last for a fraction of a second and typically can’t be heard but they were picked up loud and clear by our decibel meter. Luckily, this card is so quiet that even with a doubling of the RPMs in short spurts, it remained quieter than the reference card. One way to overcome this is to use Zotac’s Firestorm software and force the fan speed to run at 35%, allowing for 65°C to 70°C even in the most intense load environments.
.
