NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 Video Card Review @ [H]

Great article. Loved the power and heat section. Too bad about the lower heat output. A pair of 480s in SLI could have saved me a ton of money on oil heat up here in New England.
 
First & after a bit more reading around, most comprehensive review I've read, Excellent.

Triple monitor working & gaming for me, so I'll stretch my 5870 a little more. Yeah I got used to it very quickly, no going back...

Y.
 
Thanks for sharing your personal experience Kyle,

I am really tempted to upgrade to the 580s just for the ambient temperature factor alone. My 480 SLI really puts out a ton of heat. I am disappointed at only a 20% performance increase but at least that translates to an ability to increase image quality settings so I am starting to rethink my previous valuation on the 580. However I have a feeling that when the 6970 releases that will drive down the price of the 580s so I am thinking that I should wait before pulling the trigger.

The current $550 price on newegg is unacceptable to me. This 10% markup happens to coincide with their 10% coupon. I think I should wait it out, the 580 might drop to as low as $450 when the 6970 hits and offers real competition in the high end segment.

PS I'd love to see both SLI and NV Surround performance reviews to track what benefits 580 SLI will offer compared to 480 SLI at 5760x resolutions, and whether or not SLI scaling has been improved any between generations.

PPS Am I right to believe that the 580 does not support quad-SLI? Because you only mention it supporting dual and tri SLI configs in your article. That's gonna disappoint some Quad-SLI capable mobo owners.
 
Just a heads up Kyle, that 5870 you linked is actually $458 after promo code EMCZZYR24 - $30MIR + $8.50 shipping = $438 total. Granted no other 5870 is even close to this low but wow its alot of card for that money.


Oh, and can't wait to see the SLI/Multimonitor update which I'm sure will be soon enough.
 
Didn't expect to like the heat section, but I read it a couple of times now and have to give some kudos as it did answer the core question everyone had. I'm rather curious as to whether you'll find it replicable though.

But anyway, was an awesome review for me as I'm looking at either a GTX 580 or HD 6970 and am pretty set on an RV02, so pretty ideal conditions and pictures of what to expect. Thanks =)
 
I've been looking into both the 6970/6950 and GTX 580 GPU's from early on. I have to say that I'm impressed as to what nvidia has done this time.

They actually pulled it off, They released a GPU that is more efficient, quiet and with performance over 20% faster than GTX 480. I can't believe they were able to pull this off. Last year they could barely get the GTX 480 out in time to be competitive. This time they beat AMD to market, released a GPU that is much better than the previous one and put pressure on their competition.

With driver updates and nvidia's great track record there you can expect an additional 5% performance boost at least come 6970 launch time.

6970 has its work cut out for it. I anticipate these GPU's will be trading blows. For nvidia to truly put a cherry on top of all of this, they have to do something that I doubt they are focusing on at this time. In time for the 6970 launch they should add a Morphological Antialiasing feature to their drivers as well as a single card nv surround on a single card.

Great to see that the canned benchmark results of yesterday are less and less relevant. I honestly could care less if the card is only 14% faster in canned benchmarks when its 22% faster in real world performance testing.

Now to fight the temptation to buy some of these while I wait for the 6970 reviews.

Any chance on a overclocking review with voltage tweaks using the same games with the same driver to see the performance boosts gained there? I've seen results from China showing a whopping 925mhz on the core which begged me to ask WHY!!

Nvidia released GTX 460 at 675mhz on the core. It can easily be overclocked to 850mhz most of the time bringing an additional 30% performance. Seems the case is the same here. We'll have to see more but I wonder why nvidia didn't simply clock the reference GTX 580 card at 850-875mhz.

People seem less appreciative of the efficiency improvements and only harp on how it's not that much better than GTX 480. This would have helped ease those concerns but at the same time made the card look less efficient. I guess when your nvidia, damned if you do, damned if you dont.
 
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While it's dandy on the video front, it's not the perfect home theater/gaming solution I was hoping for. It doesn't support bitstreaming of HD audio (not a deal breaker, but other Nvidia cards DO) and it doesn't support full HDMI 1.4 functionality for 3D either.
 
Yakk said:
First & after a bit more reading around, most comprehensive review I've read, Excellent.

Triple monitor working & gaming for me, so I'll stretch my 5870 a little more. Yeah I got used to it very quickly, no going back...

Y.
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THis actually begs the question why we haven't seen Triple monitor become part of standard reviews?

with the triple monitor the "highest" playable setting may very well be a 3 monitor resolution instead of the 2560 etc..

the [H] almost needs to do an Eyefinity/NVSurround review - kindof a where it stands a year later.
 
I wasn't even remotely considering a "if and ONLY if I sell my 480 for a great price I might make a move on one of these" until I read this damned piece.

That's meant to be a compliment, Kyle. ;)
 
Lord_Exodia said:
In time for the 6970 launch they should add a Morphological Antialiasing feature to their drivers as well as a single card nv surround on a single card.
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Oh, now this does touch on an area I'd temporarily forgotten about -_- Very little in the way of image quality improvements/features with the GTX 580. I know, I know, it's a glorified GTX 485, given the name of GTX 580 for the sole purpose of separating it from the nasty heat/power/sound/etc reputation of the GTX 480. Still, I expected... something.

But I don't really miss not having MLAA. My roommate has a 6870, and he doesn't bother with MLAA atm (and I haven't liked it when I've seen it on) because it massacres text quality and readability (including server lists for some games). Textures are also subject to its whims- everything is, that's the problem with any post-processing solution.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
I've seen results from China showing a whopping 925mhz on the core which begged me to ask WHY!! Nvidia released GTX 460 at 675mhz on the core. It can easily be overclocked to 850mhz most of the time bringing an additional 30% performance. Seems the case is the same here. We'll have to see more but I wonder why nvidia didn't simply clock the reference card at 850-875mhz.

People seem less appreciative of the efficiency improvements and only harp on how it's not that much better than GTX 480. This would have helped ease those concerns but at the same time made the card look less efficient. I guess when your nvidia, damned if you do, damned if you dont.
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I think the reason they didn't clock the core too high is that would raise the power consumption numbers unacceptably. Nvidia wanted to have the image of the 580 being 'greener' and more efficient and wanted to shed the 480's 'power hog' image. Notice how Nvidia specifically ADDED a chip to disable furmark stress test benching?

This also begs the question Kyle, if you OC those 580s, will that mean that the card suddenly resumes the spaceheater properites of the 480s? I really want lower room ambient temps but at the same time I want to crank up the speeds and performance on those 580s to make em worth my while.
 
I can't wait to see an SLi review. This looks good. The 580 is actually appealing to me, unlike the 480. Maybe my 5870 will be going away soon (along with the crappy OpenGL support that broke 2 of my games).
 
Thanks for the review, hopefully the price competition continues.

Thanks for the extra eyes, that is now fixed. - Kyle
 
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Thanks for the review, I'm still going to wait it out two weeks to see what the other camp is offering and hopefully there will be some corresponding price drops in that time before I jump in. Glad to see some competition heating up that will hopefully benefit us consumers!
 
Wind said:
Thanks for the review, I'm still going to wait it out two weeks to see what the other camp is offering and hopefully there will be some corresponding price drops in that time before I jump in. Glad to see some competition heating up that will hopefully benefit us consumers!
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Yeah, a little Black Friday and holiday sales action would be nice.
 
Great article- Nvidia did a good job making Fermi what it should have been. I liked the power/heat/noise analysis- it makes it clearer what all those numbers actually mean. The only thing I though was missing here really, was a 6870 SLI since its still cheaper (but same price range) to show what AMDs latest perf/watt/architecture as well since the 6970 isn't here yet.
 
Thats it.

I'm getting one for Xmas (once Cayman has launched and any price impact is noticed) and one more for SLI as soon as I can save up afterwards.

They should match the 2560x1600 30" LCD I plan on getting pretty damned well. :)

I'm a little bit disappointed - however - that the [H] reviewed this card without overclocking it...
 
5*General said:
But I don't really miss not having MLAA. My roommate has a 6870, and he doesn't bother with MLAA atm (and I haven't liked it when I've seen it on) because it massacres text quality and readability (including server lists for some games). Textures are also subject to its whims- everything is, that's the problem with any post-processing solution.
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I'm in the same boat as your roomate, and I absolutely agree with you. While the feature has some definite appeal from a performance standpoint, the IQ cons outweigh the pros in my opinion. Thankfully, its an option and people can experiment for themselves.
 
nice review. too bad they didn't drop the price of the 5970 in time for the review.
 
Dual 470's or Single 580? I think the 580 makes the 480 obsolete.
 
Nice review as always Kyle, weird that there is not more info about cayman with all the resent rumors about its delayd. Any news on that?
 
A bit suprised it wasn't compared to the 5970 instead of the 5870, considering the 5970 is amd's top end and the 580 nvidia's.
 
Honestly, two of these 580's for SLI, the cost? Scares the hell out of me. $1,000 is a lot of money. A LOT of money.

And we all know for a fact that the new AMD 6990 ( dual GPU ) card will not be anymore than $600 to $700 dollars based off past pricing which I would be surprised if it changed to a higher dollar amount.

No doubt the AMD 6990 will be king of the hill and for 30% - 40% cheaper than two 580's in SLI.
 
thanks for the review, I purchased one from NewEgg based on it! (since I skipped last generation, I figured It was time for an upgrade....I've been an ATI guy the last few generations, so it will be interesting going back to nVidia)
 
WorldExclusive said:
Ok. Great Review as usual.

AMD will have to make up 30% from the 5870 to beat the GTX 580. Tall order.
Drivers aren't the best and stock clocks are too high to OC beyond 1000MHz stable in gaming.
The 6970 and the GTX 580 will trade blows depending on the game. I think it will come down to which company you like better or single card Eyefinity support.
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I completely agree with you here. A very tall order in this scenario. I decided to wait with multimonitor gaming anyway, since I want more progress to happen in the 120Hz field before moving on to a setup like this. One important factor for me is the superior higher order tessellation performance compared to what we have seen from AMD so far. Not that it matters much in current games, but here is hoping it will down the line. So this time it is green team for me, it has been a good while (GF4 Ti 4400) now. Need to hit that commission link and get spending :D
 
Glad I sold the GTX480; now to just pick one up; Along with a new PSU :( but it's been long over-due for me & this OCZ :eek:

Thanks for the review Kyle & company, always a pleasure.
 
Anything but a clear performance win for 580 vs 6970 would be a big fail for Nvidia, seeing how 580 is much larger, and probably will consume more power.

GTX 580 is really not impressive at all. Yes, it is much better than 480, but it's only 20-30% faster than a card that is one year (!!!) older, waaaaay smaller, consumes much less, and is 40 % cheaper. :eek:
 
Well informed review thanks. Can't help but feeling that despite being the newly crowned fastest card the nvidia cards are still a work in progress due the the heat issues. Plus I don't think I'll ever pay $500 for a video card. Still quite happy with my 5870 and interested to see what amd will bring soon.
 
Meeho said:
Anything but a clear performance win for 580 vs 6970 would be a big fail for Nvidia, seeing how 580 is much larger, and probably will consume more power.

GTX 580 is really not impressive at all. Yes, it is much better than 480, but it's only 20-30% faster than a card that is one year (!!!) older, waaaaay smaller, consumes much less, and is 40 % cheaper. :eek:
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We don't know anything on that yet vs. 6970.

GTX 480 is 40% cheaper? Where? I don't see any for $300... also 580 is faster, quieter, consumes less, and cooler.
 
hesho said:
hmm, will you guys show comparision from like a 6850/6870 crossfire and a 460 sli?

Also, i think your conclusion is spot on, this IS what the 480 should have been. I do wonder why it's named 580 though, i thought it would be 485 *shrugs.
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the techreport review has these http://techreport.com/articles.x/19934

THANKS for the review guys, I especially liked Kyle's subjective review of the power and heat output. It was a very interesting read. Kudos to NV for a finally working full-blown GF architecure.
 
fatboy32 said:
Kyle, I was looking at the pictures of your case (yes I did read the article:)). It seemed that the external cables were blocking (some of) the airflow from your H50. Is this the case or am I looking at it wrong? As usual it was an excellent article thank you.
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Don't think so....
 
Kyle - since as I understand it ati basically cheated in their 68xx release by lowering quality at the same settings in the drivers reviewers were meant to use to raise fps by 5-6%, what did you do for the 5870 in this review?
 
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