nVidia GeForce GTX 580
Priced at £400, nVidia’s GTX 580 sits at the upper echelons of the graphics market ,aimed squarely at the enthusiast who will suffer nothing less than the best.nVidia’s GTX 480 (Page 143)was the company ‘s first DirectX 11.0 card ,built on the fledgling Fermi architecture.It was quite a beast –a confluence of blistering performance and matching temperatures that generally topped performance charts, but stumbled in light of the ATI DirectX 11.0 competition.
With the GTX 580, nVidia went back to the drawing board.The graphics –processing unit (GPU) inside the 480 was re-tooled from the transistor level, as nVidia worked to mitigate power and temperature issues .The GTX 580 is quiter,cooler and more power –efficient.
We pitted the GTX 580 againts its predecessor ,plus ATI’s Radeon HD 5870 (Page 143)and HD 5970(tinyurl.com/ydt29x).We used unigine heaven as our benchmark, a strenuous DirectX 11.0 test laden with geometry –heavy scenes and tessellation-the Fermi architecture’s bread and butter.The GTX 580 took a decisive lead,outsing even the HD 5970’s ample muscle.
The HD 5970 clambered back on the 3DMark Vantage benchmark,albeit not by very much – 7 percent, on the Extreme setting.Our gaming tests saw more of the same.The dual –GPU 5970 maintained a near-contant lead, while the GTX 580 nipped at its heels.The Dirt 2 Demo’s result reversed the ranking, with nVidia puling ahead by as much as 80 percent over the HD 5870, and a steady 40 percent lead over the HD 5970.
The GTX 480’s main failing was its unwieldy power demands,and nVidia has gone to recte a long way to rectifying that.ATI’s HD 5870 was the least demanding,but the nVidia GTX 580 managed to shave 20W off its predecessor’s idle and full load power ratings.
Verdict
In the six monts since nVidia released its GTX 480,the company has worked hard to turn its successor into quite a showpiece.The nVidia GeForge GTX 580 is everything the 480 should have been.There’s still no answer for AMD’s EveFinity for running multiple monitors,however.This new card outpaces the competition and quite rightly earns the title of ‘world’s fastest graphics card’.
Specification
nVidia Geforce GTX 580;
1.536MB GDDR5 RAM;
1.544Mhz core clock;
2004MHz memory clock:384 bit memory
Interface ; PCI express;
Direc tX 11.0;nVidia
SLI/3D Vision/PureVideo/
PhysX/Cuda-ready
Price £400
Priced at £400, nVidia’s GTX 580 sits at the upper echelons of the graphics market ,aimed squarely at the enthusiast who will suffer nothing less than the best.nVidia’s GTX 480 (Page 143)was the company ‘s first DirectX 11.0 card ,built on the fledgling Fermi architecture.It was quite a beast –a confluence of blistering performance and matching temperatures that generally topped performance charts, but stumbled in light of the ATI DirectX 11.0 competition.
With the GTX 580, nVidia went back to the drawing board.The graphics –processing unit (GPU) inside the 480 was re-tooled from the transistor level, as nVidia worked to mitigate power and temperature issues .The GTX 580 is quiter,cooler and more power –efficient.
We pitted the GTX 580 againts its predecessor ,plus ATI’s Radeon HD 5870 (Page 143)and HD 5970(tinyurl.com/ydt29x).We used unigine heaven as our benchmark, a strenuous DirectX 11.0 test laden with geometry –heavy scenes and tessellation-the Fermi architecture’s bread and butter.The GTX 580 took a decisive lead,outsing even the HD 5970’s ample muscle.
The HD 5970 clambered back on the 3DMark Vantage benchmark,albeit not by very much – 7 percent, on the Extreme setting.Our gaming tests saw more of the same.The dual –GPU 5970 maintained a near-contant lead, while the GTX 580 nipped at its heels.The Dirt 2 Demo’s result reversed the ranking, with nVidia puling ahead by as much as 80 percent over the HD 5870, and a steady 40 percent lead over the HD 5970.
The GTX 480’s main failing was its unwieldy power demands,and nVidia has gone to recte a long way to rectifying that.ATI’s HD 5870 was the least demanding,but the nVidia GTX 580 managed to shave 20W off its predecessor’s idle and full load power ratings.
Verdict
In the six monts since nVidia released its GTX 480,the company has worked hard to turn its successor into quite a showpiece.The nVidia GeForge GTX 580 is everything the 480 should have been.There’s still no answer for AMD’s EveFinity for running multiple monitors,however.This new card outpaces the competition and quite rightly earns the title of ‘world’s fastest graphics card’.
Specification
nVidia Geforce GTX 580;
1.536MB GDDR5 RAM;
1.544Mhz core clock;
2004MHz memory clock:384 bit memory
Interface ; PCI express;
Direc tX 11.0;nVidia
SLI/3D Vision/PureVideo/
PhysX/Cuda-ready
Price £400
