First Impressions
Like many other GTX 260 based video cards, the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP! Edition is fairly similar in design to the more powerful GTX 280 based cards. The heatsink is practically the same, with the same variable speed fan and cooling configuration.
Moving to the rear of the card, we do find one minor change in the GTX 260. There’s still two DVI ports and a video out port on the end. There’s also an exhaust above the ports. So what’s changed? Well the status LED is no longer present on the GTX 260 card. I know…huge difference.
Behind the ports you’ll find the SLI connectors. Like the GTX 280 this card supports triple SLI, so there are two ports to allow for the required SLI bridge. When not in use, the SLI connectors are concealed by an included rubber cover.
Moving to the rear of the card, we find another simple difference. Even though the chipsets used in the GTX 280 and GTX 260 are similar, the card supporting the latter needs less power. This means that the GTX 260 based card has two 6-pin PCIe power connectors, compared to the one 8-pin and one 6-pin found on the GTX 280.
Even though the power requirements for the ZOTAC GTX 260 AMP! are less then the GTX 280, the memory on the card still gets just as hot. Since both cards have RAM on either side of the card, they require some form of cooling on both sides. Unfortunately the shell on the ZOTAC GTX 260 seems to be as difficult to remove as the shell of the GTX 280, so I was unable to get any good pictures of what lies beneath.
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