NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580: Fermi Refined
by Ryan Smith on November 9, 2010 9:00 AM ESTBattlefield: Bad Company 2
The latest game in the Battlefield series - Bad Company 2 – remains as one of the cornerstone DX11 games in our benchmark suite. As BC2 doesn’t have a built-in benchmark or recording mode, here we take a FRAPS run of the jeep chase in the first act, which as an on-rails portion of the game provides very consistent results and a spectacle of explosions, trees, and more.
Compared to the GTX 480, the GTX 580 has a rather straightforward 20% lead at both 2560 and 1920, once again surpassing our theoretical shader + clock numbers. Meanwhile in the SLI/CF camp this game has always favored AMD, so it’s not surprising to see the GTX 580 fall well behind the AMD multi-GPU solutions.
The waterfall minimum framerate test on the other hand usually erases any AMD lead and this is no exception. In spite of the GTX 580’s notably lower average framerate, here it pops ahead of its peers and falls just short of 30fps. Given the MP-centric design of the game, this could very well be the more important chart to look at.
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deeps6x - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
Really, who has to have this card when for less money, you can get better results with a pair of 460s in SLI or a pair of 6850s in CF (even better than 460s in almost all cases) to give you better numbers than this card.Take the extra $100+ and bump your CPU up a speed bin or two.
Alberto8793 - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
I will give Nvidia some props they have a very fast card, but interms of performance per dollar, AMD beats them out, go to newegg and click on the 5970 its 499$, go and check the 580, a cool 560$ now return to the anandtech review and check out the benchmarks, they speak for themselves, and finnally load and idle consumption of a two gpu card are lower than a single gpu?!?!?!?!? OUTRAGEOUS!slick121 - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
I mean this is the "enough said!" post. So true, totally agree!ClagMaster - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
Looks like Nvidia has done their homework optimize the GF100 after business pressures to release the GTX-480.Nvidia did a competent makeover of the GF100 and GTX-480 to reduce power, heat and noise.
The GF-110/GTX-580 offers about 10% more performance for the Watts, which are still too high. for my liking.
AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
I think it's more like 30% more performance per watt. Crysis power is 389W vs 421W and averages 15% more fps.the_elvino - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
I would take Anand's power consumtion measurements of 421W for the GTX 480 and 389W for GTX 590 with a few pinches of salt.HardOCP compared the power draw in SLI and recorded following numbers for the entire system under full load:
GTX 480 SLI: 715W
GTX 590 SLI: 700W
Difference per card between 480 and 590: 7,5W!
The 590 is noticeably cooler though.
http://hardocp.com/article/2010/11/09/nvidia_gefor...
7Enigma - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Why would HardOCP's numbers be any more accurate than Anand's? One is comparing SLI and one is single card. We have no clue the differences in system configuration (individual variances of parts not the part name), not to mention the inherent variability of the cards themselves.I've said it in the 6850 article and before but power consumption numbers (and thus noise/heat) have to be taken with a grain of salt because there is no independent unbiased source giving these cards for review. A really good or poor cherry-picked sample can completely change the impression of a cards efficiency. And since we know NVIDIA ships cards with varying load voltages it is very easy to imagine a situation where one card would be similar in power draw to the 480 while another would show lower thermals.
Anand/Ryan I've said it before and I'll say it again, you have the chance to be a pioneer in the review field by getting independent sources of cards slightly after release. Yes your original review would have to exclude this (or have a caveat that this is what the manufacturer supplied you with).
Decide on a good number (3-5 shouldn't be unreasonable), and purchase these from etailers/locally anonymously. Test them for power/noise/temp and then either sell them on Ebay at slightly reduced cost or even increased price? (Anandtech approved!...touched by Ryan himself!....whatever....you've got a marketing department) :), and/or take one/all and give them away to your loyal readers like the other contests.
Then have a followup article with the comparisons between the "real" cards and the cherry-picked ones from NVIDIA/AMD. Just think how if the manufacturers know that you might call them out on a cherry-picked sample in a follow-up review, they might just try to avoid the bad press and ship one more closely in line with the product line.
Goblerone - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
I'm confused here. In your review of ATI's new 6870, you were comparing against factory overclocked NVIDIA cards but here you are using reference ATI cards.What gives?
AnandThenMan - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Why even bother asking. It's clear that Anandtech is not about fairness in reviews anymore. Nvidia got special treatment, plain and simple.Just wait until we see Anandtech preview AMD's Brazos with some benches, you will see even more bizarre and head scratching benchmarks. Wait and see.
Sihastru - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Lol, give it a rest man... and while you're at it tells us about some similarly priced factory overclocked cards that AMD has on the stores shelves and could be used at the time the review was conducted. Relevent models only please, that have the same performance as the GTX580.