sla70r :
I like Zotac and their 5 year warranty. Excellent company and their high level cards are blazing fast with excellent fans. Many of the people here who do not like Zotac have never even owned or used one and just repeat what they hear from others. Tootles !
Agreed. Zotac is a PC Partners Inc. brand. PC Partners also produce AMD Radeon cards as Sapphire. I have owned and used multiple Sapphire cards, and they were quick, ran cool, and were very reliable *for me*. I have not seen any reviews on the Amp! Extreme, but I have seen multiple write ups on the Amp! Omega (the card below the Extreme). They say it is built very well, gives great tweaking tools, and is fast...so hopefully that is a sign of things to come for the Extreme (I get mine Friday).
I have always purchased EVGA when I have had NVidia cards, but decided to go with Zotac this time. The 980 Amp! Extreme is the fastest 980 available, the classified will barely top it (not by a significant margin). They give a 5 year warranty which is great. I trust Zotac, and I agree that people will talk about things they have never experienced first hand - many people think Zotac is a discount/chintzy brand. Truth is that almost every brand makes a bad card once and a while. I have heard nothing but mediocre/negative feedback about EVGA's 980s this time around...so buy what you like, if it doesn't do the job - send it back to the retailer or manufacturer.