The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 is the fastest DirectX 11 GPU card available in the market today. The GTX 580 is based on Nvidia’s new Fermi core codenamed GF110. The GF110 has been optimized for better performance per watt ratio by cutting down on the transistor count. This has also lead to lower heat and power consumption.
The GTX 580 has chips for monitoring current and voltage utilization in real-time and is able to adjust its performance such that the power consumption remains in the specified range. The GTX 580 also features huge improvement in functions like tessellation, shading, texturing, core timings and memory clocks.
The GTX 580 runs 7-8 degrees cooler than its competitors thanks to the vapor chamber cooling. The vapor chamber consists of a hollow metal block filled with a special liquid. As the GPU chip starts heating up, the liquid in the vapor chamber evaporates and hits the ceiling of the chamber. The heat is quickly transferred to the heatsink fins which are above the vapor chambers. The heatsink fins are cooled by the air blown through with the help of the cooling fan on the card. Meanwhile, the vaporized liquid condenses after losing the heat and returns to the bottom of the vapor chamber for another cycle of vaporization. This quickly and effectively cools the GPU and you don’t even need a fan spinning very fast. It is because of this design that GTX 580 run quieter than other graphic cards.
The GTX 580 costs $ 500 and comes with an Instruction manual, a DVI to VGA adapter, a mini-HDMI to HDMI adapter, a 6-pin PCI-e to Molex and a 8-pin PCI-e to Molex power adapter. The GTX 580 has a mini-HDMI port and two dual link DVI-I ports. The rear of the card has a 6-pin and an 8-pin power connector.
Performance
The GTX 580 ripped through the performance benchmarks and achieved and a score of P27308 in 3DMark Vantage. This is the highest by any graphics card present in the market today.
We ran Metro 2033, a DirectX 11 game with a 1080p resolution and very high settings with advanced anti-aliasing and recorded a frame rate of 33 fps, which was a pleasant surprise considering the fact that Metro 2033 can bring down the fastest graphic cards down to its knees with its full settings.
Older games like Crysis Warhead yielded fps rate of 52 at 1080p with advanced anti-aliasing and all settings set to max. The GTX 580 ran newer games like Call of Duty Black Ops and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2010 with similar results without breaking any sweat.
Thanks to the vapor chamber cooling, the GTX 580 recorded temperature of 50В°C while idle and around 75В°C while playing games.
GTX 580 Specifications
CUDA Cores \t\t\t\t\t512
Graphics Clock (MHz) \t\t\t\t772
Processor Clock (MHz) \t\t\t\t1544
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec) \t\t\t49.4
Memory Clock (MHz) \t\t\t\t2004
Standard Memory Config \t\t\t1536 MB GDDR5
Memory Interface Width \t\t\t384-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) \t\t\t192.4
NVIDIA SLI Ready \t\t\t\t3-way
NVIDIA PureVideo Technology \t\t\tHD
NVIDIA PhysX Technology \t\t\tYes
NVIDIA CUDA Technology\t\t\tYes \t
Microsoft DirectX \t\t\t\t11
OpenGL \t\t\t\t\t4.1
Bus Support \t\t\t\t\tPCI-e 2.0 x16
Certified for Windows 7 \t\t\tYes\t
NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready \t\t\tYes
Maximum Digital Resolution \t\t\t2560x1600
Maximum VGA Resolution \t\t\t2048x1536
Standard Display Connectors \t\t\tMini HDMI, Two Dual Link DVI
Multi Monitor \t\t\t\t\tYes
HDCP \t\t\t\t\t\tYes
HDMI\t \t\t\t\t\t1.4a
Audio Input for HDMI \t\t\t\tInternal
Maximum GPU Temperature (in В°C) \t\t97
Minimum System Power Requirement (W) \t600
Height \t\t\t\t\t\t4.376 inches (111 mm)
Length \t\t\t\t\t\t10.5 inches (267 mm)
Width \t\t\t\t\t\tDual-Slot
Conclusion
The Nvidia GTX 580 is the fastest available single graphic card available in the market. If you looking for a cool, quiet card which blazes through every game available in the market today and don’t want to go for a CrossFire/SLI based solution, GTX 580 is for you provided that you can afford a $500 hole in your pocket.