If you’re a PC gamer, you’ve already probably heard about NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080. It’s the company’s top-of-the-line video card, and as such, it’s on the top of every hardcore gamers’ wishlist in the event that they rob a bank or if they suddenly win the lotto. And just like any new videocard, NVIDIA’s partners have already started offering their own interpretation of the new monster on the block, decked out with their proprietary cooling systems, hardware and software tweaks.

Zotac is one such partner, and they’ve sent over their top-of-the-line, GeForce GTX 1080 AMP Edition! for us to play with. Unfortunately, we’re still waiting for a new case and hardware for us to really stretch the legs of this beast (we’ll go into why later) so for now, we’ll just have to take a look at what’s inside the box and the card’s physical dimensions and listed specifications. Let’s get right to it.

Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 AMP Extreme! Edition

• GPU: GeForce® GTX 1080
• CUDA cores: 2560
• Video Memory: 8GB GDDR5X
• Memory Bus: 256-bit
• Engine Clock: Base: 1771 MHz/Boost:1911 MHz
• Memory Clock: 10.8 GHz
• PCI Express:3.0

Packaging and contents:

Zotac’s packaging for the GeForce GTX 1080 AMP Extreme! Edition is pretty simple and straightforward, not something you’d expect from a product that retails more than Php 40K. Fortunately, everything that you need to know about the card is printed on the carton sleeve.

Once you remove the sleeve, you’ll see the actual cardboard box that holds the videocard.

The actual card is massive, takes up two slots and is more than 12 inches long – around 12.8 inches, in fact, or 325mm. You’ll have to account for the card’s length when you buy it – our rig is unfortunately too tight to accommodate the massive card, so we’re getting a new case plus a Skylake upgrade to properly use the beast for our full review.

Aside from the card, you’re also getting two dual 6-pin to 8-pin adapters for the card, as well as a driver disk and a user manual. Unfortunately, that’s it – there’s no other freebies like games or other things in the package, which is a little disappointing, especially since you’re handing over quite a bit of cash for the card to begin with.

Initial impressions: absolutely massive, with a triple fan setup

Like we said earlier, this thing is absolutely massive. With an overall length of 325mm or 12.8 inches, it’s one of the biggest cards we’ve ever reviewed here in Unbox. And just like other companies, Zotac has their own take on the GTX 1080 compared to the reference card.

Let’s start with the outer shell. Zotac’s swathed their GTX 1080 with what they call Carbon Exoarmor, which tries to mimic the look and feel of carbon fiber. Unfortunately, it’s not really carbon fiber, but on the upside it really does look very cool and is perfect for transparent cases when you need to show off the card. Speaking of showing off, Zotac’s also included a lighting system in the GTX 1080 Amp Extreme Edition, dubbed Spectra, that allows you easily change the lighting of the card while in operation depending on your tastes.

Zotac’s also particularly proud of the Freeze tech embedded in their iteration of the 1080. When idle, the three fans on the card shut down completely, which reduces both noise and wear on the cooling system. While in this state, the cooling duties are passed on to the passive cooling system.

On the rear you’ll see the DVI port, as well as the HDMI and three DisplayPorts. Zotac recommends a 500W power supply for their GTX 1080, which is a step down from the 600W that they recommend for their GeForce GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme.

The card itself is a monster of epic proportions. NVIDIA’s really done quite a spectacular job on the new Pascal architecture that’s essentially jumped two full generations -from 28nm to 16nm since NVIDIA had trouble with 20nm GPUs. You’re looking at 2560 CUDA cores, a baseclock 1771MHz (which can be boosted up to 1911 MHz), 8GB of GDDR5X Memory and the ability to support VR systems like the HTC Vive and the Oculus VR out of the box.

Of course, we’ve yet to see the card in action – like we said earlier we’re waiting on new hardware to properly test this beast, which should arrive later this week. Once we’ve set up the new rig we’ll start the full review and give you guys our full take on this monster, and if it’s really worth the Php 40,330 SRP that Zotac is asking for it.