Galaxy MDT GeForce GTX 580 Video Card Review @ [H]

Not to sound condescending, but the difference between those opinions, and ours, is that we've actually tested the video card, spent a lot of time with it it, setup different displays, used it in real-world gaming situations, and have gained opinions about it based on facts and data from our physical testing of the video card. Our opinions are educated opinions based on actual experiences using the hardware. You are free to disagree with them, but this is where we get our opinions from.

You mean the experience where you can't really use it if you have bigger than 22" displays (50Hz + performance issues for >1050p resolutions), or the one where it doesn't support nvsurround aware game HUDs, or where it only worked without issues in 2 out of 5 games tested, or the one when it posed serious usability problems in one of them and simply refused to work with the one of the most popular games currently? And all that without even a mention of alternatives. Ah, yes, truly a golden product.
 
For crying out loud. This is a review of Galaxy's offering of the GTX 580. Its for any users who wants to buy a GTX 580.

This is NOT a review of the GeForce GTX 580 GPU.

Please guys, know the difference.

If you haven't make up your mind about getting what GPU, this is not the review for you. Simple as that.
 
For crying out loud. This is a review of Galaxy's offering of the GTX 580. Its for any users who wants to buy a GTX 580.

This is NOT a review of the GeForce GTX 580 GPU.

Please guys, know the difference.

It doesn't make a difference. Its limited added features and usability and the price premium hardly justify the award given.
 
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't spot anything about using displays in portrait format - 3150x1680 or 3600x1920. Given how the card presents the combined displays to the driver, I suspect this is not possible, but it would be nice to know. Similarly, I didn't see anything about pairing it with a second, normal (but similarly clocked) 580 in SLI. Someone buying this card may well want to pick up a second 580 in a year or so.

One thing I would have liked to have seen, but appreciate the [H] team likely didn't have the ability to test is how the card behaves in confined spaces, like a Shuttle PC. This surely must be a target market for the card. Does it fit? Does it overheat?

Beyond that, I do agree with the review's judgement. It does deserve a Gold award. This may be the last gasp of the 5xx series, but it's a card with solid and mature drivers. Yes, it's surpassed by the similarly priced Radeon 7970, but that's a new technology with new drivers and I'm sure all sorts of wrinkles are going to emerge.
 
Beyond that, I do agree with the review's judgement. It does deserve a Gold award. This may be the last gasp of the 5xx series, but it's a card with solid and mature drivers. Yes, it's surpassed by the similarly priced Radeon 7970, but that's a new technology with new drivers and I'm sure all sorts of wrinkles are going to emerge.

And this card was the epitome of wrinkle free usability?! Solid and mature with 2/5 games working, 2/5 working after manual file editing, and 1/5 (GOTY for many, at that) not working at all. And any problems that one encounters with this one are unlikely to be fixed with a driver or game patch.
 
And this card was the epitome of wrinkle free usability?! Solid and mature with 2/5 games working, 2/5 working after manual file editing

A problem with a game (edit: solvable by editing the game's ini files) isn't a problem with the card or the driver.

, and 1/5 (GOTY for many, at that) not working at all. And any problems that one encounters with this one are unlikely to be fixed with a driver or game patch.

I presume you mean Skyrim? A game that's been out a matter of weeks? Looks like a game issue rather than a driver issue to me.
 
does anybody know if you can sli this card with other 580gtx and still use the 3 hdmi? maybe you could purchase this card and then sli it with a lot cheaper card, thus reducing your cost.
 
The only reason I would ever get a 1.5GB 580 is if I gamed on a single 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 monitor. I would probably only use the triple display capability of this card for productivity. Battlefield 3 is my gold standard, so if it draws 1.5-1.8GB at 1920x1200, why would I buy a 1.5GB card for 5760x1080? Isn't that exactly why the 3GB card was created? This thing should have 3GB on it for sure...
 
The same thing happened last time they reviewed an (I believe it was) MSI card that had double the memory ofthe standard GTX580 and a custom PCB. They gave it a gold even though the price for performance was horrible - I think they like rewarding good engineering. I would agree if it makes sense (as in provides something you can't get elsewhere or reduces the price of a nice feature), but here it's another stupid waste of money. You can get multi display gaming with higher performance at a lower cost elsewhere, so it cheapens the gold award imo. There is no point to this card except for Nvidia fan boys. If this were an Nvidia web site, I could see the award, but I thought this was supposed to be a general hardware site. Keep in mind that I run an Nvidia card, but you'd have to be an idiot to buy this thing.
 
Last edited:
Wow, this review is pointless. Not even a stock version of a GTX 580 thrown in for comparison? Not one single other card represented in this review? Pointless. At least put one single other card in the review for comparison's sake. Posting this review the way it is just reflects poorly on [H].
 
I just came here to say 7970 overclock review, the ground will shake.
 
While I appreciate the engineering, what makes this a GOLD award?

The card can't run games at reasonable resolutions or graphics settings?

The connetions are proprietary, and the included cables are probably not going to allow most people to run three screens without ordering extra-long cables or adapters.

Why did you not compare this card to a Radeon 6970?
It does the same thing on one card, and I bet it will run the games at higher graphic settings.

As I said, I appreciate the engineering, but being first doesn't make you best.

Triple screen for nvidia is best done in SLi, period.
 
The only way I can see this being a gold award is if you strictly need an nvidia card and want to avoid AMD at all costs, but these people are few and far in between and often don't choose team green because of things like CUDA or PhysX but pure fanboyism.

I can't understand not including other cards priced within the same bracket for this review. Claiming that if you want a comparison between the 7970 and a GTX580 to go read the 7970 review makes little sense considering that same logic can be applied with the 7970 review... If consistency is something to strive for then wouldn't you have had zero nvidia cards in that review? That makes no sense.

Frankly, this card isn't worth anywhere near the cost at the moment and it gets a gold award. What? It's without question a niche product with a far-too-costly price tag. How are you guys overlooking this? Why?

NVIDIA has a multi-display gaming technology as well, called NV Surround. However, NV Surround requires that you install two video cards (2 GPUs) in order to benefit from triple-display multi-monitor resolution displays. Galaxy is the first, and only, to overcome the limitations of NV Surround and provide a multi-monitor solution for gamers that directly addresses this issue and allows multi-display gaming with a single video card.

That I understand, but why it's not compared to the competition makes absolutely no sense at all. It would be like claiming AMD's BD is a fantastic chip because it offers AVX but the Thubans don't, ignoring Intel completely and then giving it a gold award.

Frankly, this just isn't a very good review at all. Probably the worst I've read on here. There are 0 other products that you compared it to so how the hell am I supposed to make an informed decision? You've gotta treat this article as if you didn't write other 580/7970/6970 reviews and throw competing cards' benchmarks on it. If it loses, it loses. The card isn't a stellar performer anyway and it's a niche product, remember? That's about all it's got going for it considering the price tag. Had this come out a couple of months earlier this would have been an easy gold award, but Galaxy was late to the game and they shouldn't be awarded anything but scrutiny considering how much they're asking for this.
 
Last edited:
Ugh, I just can't not step in this one.

The whole "real world" paradigm of reviews was supposed distill the review process to presenting what the user is going to experience when they get home with their shiny five hundred and eighty dollar video card. To use the cop out of blaming the makers of major gaming titles for not supporting a very niche multi-monitor solution is utter rubbish. These are titles you know your readers are playing (because, as you state , you pick the games based on sales and popularity) and will be loading up as soon as they get the drivers installed. Whenever CF/SLI multi-monitor problems crop up in other reviews, there is no hesitation to jump all over AMD/NV for failing to properly support advertised features with software available at release. And to think that those same developers will decide to take that same niche into account when developing future titles is pure fancy. The only reason we have the support we do today is because the 5xx0 AMD, and eventually 460 SLI, granted the masses turn key multi-monitor support. If AMD enables dissimilar monitor support, as has been rumored, that market expands even more.

You're really up front about the problems, but make too many excuses for the short comings.

If you want to highlight a unique card to praise its engineering achievments, awesomesauce :) I love learning about cool new tech I'll likely never lay hands on, because it's not practical. The problem arises when you slap a Gold Award on something that only competes against itself, doubly so after explaining how barely worked. It sort of cheapens what a Gold Award means. This was why I was so glad when you just went to Pass/Fail for PSUs, since you never really had them compete against each other.

2 cents added, no change needed.
 
It's good to discuss things and criticism shouldn't hurt.
however i think we're beating a dead horse with the gold award critiques
I'm guilty of making multiple posts about it, But it's getting kind of sour.
[H] staff has heard all our bitching and i'm sure it takes this stuff into consideration.


why don't we try to answer some of the questions for the people who actually are interested in getting this. here is one i have, If i SLI this card with a non galaxy 580, will it be able to display everything out of the galaxy card along with the added processing power of the additional card?
 
I can justify buying a single high end videocard and three monitors. I can't justify over $1,000 in videocards and then three monitors.

Galaxy has innovated and filled an area that NVIDIA lacks, and has expanded the capabilities of the GeForce GTX 580. Now, you can get NVIDIA's fastest single-GPU and also have triple-display gaming, in combination with a fourth display for desktop use. Setting up this multi-display gaming couldn't be easier. Our evaluation is right in stating that Galaxy deserves kudos for this innovation. This video card may not be for you, or may not be what you are looking for, but that is ok, it does have a place in the market.


Two very good reasons for this card and it is probably excellent at GPU folding when not gaming ;) but I've got an abhorrence to spending more than $500 on ANY videocard. Then again they included alot of handy adapters, hmmm...
 
Odd review.

It doesn't seem to have enough memory for triple display gaming (I did read the summary), especially with the future considered, and there are much, much cheaper options if you just want three displays for productivity. As someone has said previously a 1.5GB card is really only good up to 1920x1200 (2.3 megapixels) so I'm not sure how 5760x1200 (6.9 megapixels) isn't ram limited. I understand you're saying it's not powerful enough to run this resolution regardless of ram, but isn't triple display gaming the entire point of this card?

"more than half of the games we used could not properly detect the available custom resolutions possible with the Galaxy MDT GeForce GTX 580" << This is pretty major issue, you seem to want to shift the blame to the games, but this is as you mention many times a unique solution so game support is really Galaxy's problem.

So it works out of the box in less than half of the games you tested, it's not really powerful enough or has enough ram for triple display gaming and it costs a boatload. But then Gold? Odd.
 
Read: Our deal with Galaxy is still intact, so we don't care

If a "deal" gets us, the consumer, amazing tech that we have been asking for, then pass me the Koolaid.

Shame on Asus, EVGA, MSI and all the rest for shamefully sitting on the sidelines for so long. I have been running Galaxy SLI for a year an a half of Hardcore gaming with 0 issues. When I upgrade they will be at the top of my list.
 
You mean the experience where you can't really use it if you have bigger than 22" displays (50Hz + performance issues for >1050p resolutions), or the one where it doesn't support nvsurround aware game HUDs, or where it only worked without issues in 2 out of 5 games tested, or the one when it posed serious usability problems in one of them and simply refused to work with the one of the most popular games currently? And all that without even a mention of alternatives. Ah, yes, truly a golden product.

Just going to reiterate what's been said, this review is definitely lacking a lot more that needs to be said in the Bottom Line section at the least. We expect more from you HardOCP!

I mean heck if someone were to just to read page 10, and then see the Gold Award, you'll leave them going o_O I think Galaxy deserves the praise for developing the MDT line of cards, but the card itself doesn't deserve a Gold Award
 
Last edited:
A problem with a game (edit: solvable by editing the game's ini files) isn't a problem with the card or the driver.
No, but it does affect the value proposition offered by the card. Why would you pay a price premium on a product based on a year old design, when the features you are paying for are minimally functional?

This is the first time I think I have really disagreed with the [H]'s review of a product. I can't see why you would choose this card unless you have an exceedingly narrow goal. If you must use NVIDIA, you can get two 570s in SLI that would outperform this card handily, while offering traditional NVSurround support that would suffer none of the problems associated with Galaxy's custom chipset implementation (such as many games failure to detect the correct resolution). If you want a single slot solution, the 7970 is clearly superior to this card, as it is both faster, cheaper and has native Eyefinity support. The only time I could see this card being worth it is if you for some reason wanted triple monitor support on a single NVIDIA card, but with only 1.5GB of RAM and the software issues mentioned in the article, it's not a very compelling solution.

I understand that as a standalone product, it is a very impressive design. But you really need to look at this card's position in the market - it's a year after the launch of the GTX580. We have superior single card, triple monitor solutions (albeit not from NVIDIA). We have much cheaper multi-monitor gaming solutions from NVIDIA if you are willing to run two cards. I can't see this card offering a compelling reason to spend nearly $600 on it at this point. You'd be better off waiting for Kepler and hoping that NVIDIA has implemented 3 monitor support on a single card.

So, why the gold award?
 
If a "deal" gets us, the consumer, amazing tech that we have been asking for, then pass me the Koolaid.

Shame on Asus, EVGA, MSI and all the rest for shamefully sitting on the sidelines for so long. I have been running Galaxy SLI for a year an a half of Hardcore gaming with 0 issues. When I upgrade they will be at the top of my list.

No one said Galaxy make shitty products.

The deal here is the card just isn't on the level with the technology that is currently available, whether that be a single AMD card in EyeFinity or two nvidia cards in SLi.

As a "proof of concept" it's just dandy. As an everyday solution it isnt. That's probably why the other vendors do not offer this card this way.

The 1.5Gb RAM is also an issue if you are designing from scratch.

The need to edit .ini files is nothing new to multiscreen monitor gaming. In 1/3 to 1/2 of the games I play in EyeFinity I have to change something or use some guy's editing program to get my games to look good and have a desent HUD......I could care less about that.

The fact this card can't hold its own, for what it was designed "to do" makes it less than golden.:eek:
 
Thanks for review I like it.
Strange thing is overclocking with extra voltage and only 890mhz. My Light XT can go over 980mhz for gaming, 1000 for benchmarks, ex. Asus 580 ref could do 940 for gaming..
3gb would be very handy on MDT and price is the biggest problem.
 
If a "deal" gets us, the consumer, amazing tech that we have been asking for, then pass me the Koolaid.

Shame on Asus, EVGA, MSI and all the rest for shamefully sitting on the sidelines for so long. I have been running Galaxy SLI for a year an a half of Hardcore gaming with 0 issues. When I upgrade they will be at the top of my list.

Wow, your definition of amazing is vastly different than mine. So let me get this straight, a card with half the memory, 20% less performance even when memory doesn't factor into the performance, and costing $50 more than the competition, is amazing? By that logic, I should be able to sell you a voodoo2 for about $50k.
 
Wow, this review is pointless. Not even a stock version of a GTX 580 thrown in for comparison? Not one single other card represented in this review? Pointless. At least put one single other card in the review for comparison's sake. Posting this review the way it is just reflects poorly on [H].

crap man they didn't want to compare it to the 7970 either......but they had no problem comparing this to the 7970 when they did their review of that card......all I know is that the 7970 should have been a DOUBLE [H] Gold for doing all this card can do and more plus being cheaper.....
 
crap man they didn't want to compare it to the 7970 either......but they had no problem comparing this to the 7970 when they did their review of that card......all I know is that the 7970 should have been a DOUBLE [H] Gold for doing all this card can do and more plus being cheaper.....

This and large fries.:D
 
Wow, your definition of amazing is vastly different than mine. So let me get this straight, a card with half the memory, 20% less performance even when memory doesn't factor into the performance, and costing $50 more than the competition, is amazing? By that logic, I should be able to sell you a voodoo2 for about $50k.

If you have a voodoo2 that runs non-Matrox triple monitors on a single card, then you could probably get $50k for it.

While it has some flaws, this card will do something that we have been requesting from Nvidia cards for years. I agree with the argument that the 7970 appears to do it better, so if you swing for the red team then that is the obvious single card solution.
 
Surely it should be compared to this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130737

Or maybe a pair of normal GTX560 Ti's which will come to about the same price.

I agree with the others, this is a fairly weak gold award considering that it wasn't compared and constrated to the other options availble in the same price range, and that it had major compatibility issues in the games you tested with.
 
So it's faster than any chip AMD has available. Does "eyefininty", along with 3D, CUDA, PhysX, etc. and it does not deserve the gold award because??? It can't be the price because many people seem to think $550 is fine for the fastest chip, it can't be features because it has more than the competition. I must be missing something.
 
So it's faster than any chip AMD has available. Does "eyefininty", along with 3D, CUDA, PhysX, etc. and it does not deserve the gold award because??? It can't be the price because many people seem to think $550 is fine for the fastest chip, it can't be features because it has more than the competition. I must be missing something.

We are not talking about some vaporware card that won't be here for months with uncertain performance. A card that's cheaper, has more ram and is faster is getting released in less than a week.

Nice try Nvidia marketing!

(GTX 560ti owner here btw)
 
Thanks for the review. I understand that the 580 MDT was not to be compared against the 7970 in this article, but there is more competition in the same price range.

Specifically, the dual-GPU boards that also support 3 monitors and have been available for quite some time already:
PowerColor 6870X2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131446
EVGA 460 2win http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130626 and 560 2win http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130737
It would have been interesting to see where the dual cards' raw GPU power had an advantage and where the additional VRAM on the 580 had an advantage, and how the power consumption compares.

EDIT: and you could have used the Zotac ZT-DP2HD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812500001 to compare to GTX 580 3GB models.
 
Last edited:
So it's faster than any chip AMD has available. Does "eyefininty", along with 3D, CUDA, PhysX, etc. and it does not deserve the gold award because??? It can't be the price because many people seem to think $550 is fine for the fastest chip, it can't be features because it has more than the competition. I must be missing something.

simple it only worked properly with 2 out of 5 games.....
 
While it happens sometimes that [H]ard|OCP's enthusiasm for a particular piece of technology is greater or smaller than their readers', that is no reason to call them bought.

I think the main reason for the gold award is to tell NVidia in no uncertain terms that they should get their act together on multi-monitor gaming. And maybe encourage more vendors besides Zotac and Galaxy to produce such cards. If in the end that happens, then all gamers will have benefited.
 
even just brushing over the review i have to agree 2 570 or 580 cards is an better buy

this be an first to agree with users this time gold is not best recomendation silver i would say as its an good try but you cant game on this video card at native res in 3x mode due to under powered GPU for 3 screens (you really need 2 570 or 69xx or 79xx cards for 3 way gaming)
 
Brent, are you sure you're not VRAM limited on BOTH 5760x1200 and 5040x1050? in Battlefield 3, you surely are on 5760x1200, but from the data it's hard to estimate if it isn't the case on the lower resolution (both in BF3 and the other games). This is why I miss the 7970 (or even a 6970) from this test - to see if Galaxy was right going with 1.5GB.
 
Back
Top