NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580: Fermi Refined
by Ryan Smith on November 9, 2010 9:00 AM ESTFinal Thoughts
Even though NVIDIA is only launching a single card today there’s a lot to digest, so let’s get to it.
Since the GeForce GTX 580 arrived in our hands last week, we’ve been mulling over how to approach it. It boils down to two schools of thought: 1) Do we praise NVIDIA for delivering a high performance single GPU card that strikes the right balance of performance and temperature/noise, or 2) Do we give an indifferent thumbs-up to NVIDIA for only finally delivering the card that we believe the GTX 480 should have been.
The answer we’ve decided is one of mild, but well earned praise. The GTX 580 is not the true next-generation successor to the GTX 480; it’s the GTX 480 having gone back in the womb for 7 months of development. Much like AMD, NVIDIA faced a situation where they were going to do a new product without a die shrink, and had limited options as a result. NVIDIA chose wisely, and came back with a card that is both decently faster and a refined GTX 480 at the same time.
With the GTX 480 we could recognize it as being the fastest single GPU card on the market, but only by recognizing the fact that it was hot and loud at the same time. For buyers the GTX 480 was a tradeoff product – sure it’s fast, but is it too hot/too loud for me? The GTX 580 requires no such tradeoff. We can never lose sight of the fact that it’s a high-end card and is going to be more power hungry, louder, and hotter than many other cards on the market, but it’s not the awkward card that the GTX 480 was. For these reasons our endorsement of the GTX 580 is much more straightforward, at least as long as we make it clear that GTX 580 is less an upgrade for GTX 480, and more a better upgrade for the GTX 285 and similar last-generation cards.
What we’re left with today is something much closer to the “traditional” state of the GPU market: NVIDIA has the world’s fastest single-GPU card, while AMD is currently nipping at their heels with multi-GPU products. Both the Radeon HD 5970 and Radeon HD 6870 CF are worthy competitors to the GTX 580 – they’re faster and in the case of the 6870 CF largely comparable in terms of power/temperature/noise. If you have a board capable of supporting a pair of 6870s and don’t mind the extra power it’s hard to go wrong, but only if you’re willing to put up with the limitations of a multi-GPU setup. It’s a very personal choice – we’d be willing to trade the performance for the simplicity of avoiding a multi-GPU setup, but we can’t speak for everyone.
So what’s next? A few different things. From the NVIDIA camp, NVIDIA is promising a quick launch of the rest of the GeForce 500 series. Given the short development cycles for NVIDIA we’d expect more refined GF10x parts, but this is very much a shot in the dark. Much more likely is a 3GB GTX 580, seeing as how NVIDIA's official product literature calls the GTX 580 the "GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB", a distinction that was never made for the GTX 480.
More interesting however will be what NVIDIA does with GF110 since it’s a more capable part than GF100 in every way. The GF100 based Quadros and Teslas were only launched in the last few months, but they’re already out of date. With NVIDIA’s power improvements in particular, this seems like a shoo-in for at least one improved Quadro and Tesla card. We also expect 500 series replacements for some of the GF100-based cards (with the GTX 465 likely going away permanently).
Meanwhile the AMD camp is gearing up for their own launches. The 6900 series is due to launch before the year is out, bringing with it AMD’s new Cayman GPU. There’s little we know or can say at this point, but as a part positioned above the 6800 series we’re certainly hoping for a slugfest. At $500 the GTX 580 is pricey (much like the GTX 480 before it), and while this isn’t unusual for the high-end market we wouldn’t mind seeing NVIDIA and AMD bring a high-intensity battle to the high-end, something that we’ve been sorely missing for the last year. Until we see the 6900 series we wouldn’t make any bets, but we can certainly look forward to it later this year.
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Sihastru - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
At this point it makes no sense to get rattled up about the 580. We must patiently wait for the 69x0 cards and see what they can bring to the table. I heard rumours of AMD delaying their cards to the end of the year in order to do some "tweaks"...nitrousoxide - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
Delaying is something good because it indicates that Cayman can be very big, very fast and...very hungry making it hard to build. What AMD needs is a card that can defeat GTX580, no matter how hot or power-hungry it is.GeorgeH - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
Is there any word on a fully functional GF104?Nvidia could call it the 560, with 5="Not Gimped".
Sihastru - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
I guess once GTX470 goes EOL. If GTX460 had all it's shaders enabled then the overclocked versions would have canibalized GTX470 sales. Even so, it will happen on occasion.tomoyo - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
My guess is there will be GTX 580 derivatives with less cores enabled as usual, probably a GTX 570 or something. And then an improved GTX 460 with all cores enabled as the GTX 560.tomoyo - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
Good to see nvidia made a noticeable improvement over the overly hot and power hungry GTX 480. Unfortunately way above my power and silence needs, but competition is a good thing. Now I'm highly curious how close the Radeon 69xx will come in performance or if it can actually beat the GTX 580 in some cases.Of course the GTX 480 is completely obsolete now, more power, less speed, more noise, ugly to look at.
7eki - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
What we got here today is a higher clocked, better cooled GTX 480 with a slightly better power consumption. All of that for only 80$ MORE ! Any first served version of non referent GTX 480 is equipped with a much better cooling solution that gives higher OC possibilites and could kick GTX 580's ass. If we compare GTX 480 to a GTX580 clock2clock we will get about 3% of a difference in performance. All thanks to 32 CUDA processors, and a few more TMU's. How come the reviewers are NOW able to find pros of something that they used to criticise 7 months ago ? Don't forget that AMD's about to break their Sweet Spot strategy just to cut your hypocrites tongues. I bet that 6990's going to be twice as fast as what we got here today . If we really got anything cause I can't really tell the difference.AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
32W less for 15% more performance, still on 40nm, is a big deal.7eki - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
32W and 15% you say ? No it isn't a big deal since AMD's Barts GPUs release. Have on mind that GTX580 still consumes more energy than a faster (in most cases) and one year older multi GPU HD5970. In that case even 60 would sound ridiculosly funny. It's not more than a few percent improvement over GTX480. If you don't believe it calculate how much longer will you have to play on your GTX580 just to get your ~$40 spent on power consumption compared to a GTX480 back. Not to mention (again) that a nonreferent GTX480 provides much better cooling solutions and OC possibilities. Nvidia's diggin their own grave. Just like they did by releasing GTX460. The only thing that's left for them right now is to trick the reviewers. But who cares. GTX 580 isn't going to make them sell more mainstream GPUs. It isn't nvidia whos cutting HD5970 prices right now. It was AMD by releasing HD6870/50 and announcing 6970. It should have been mentioned by all of you reviewers who treat the case seriously. Nvidia's a treacherous snake and the reviewers job is not to let such things happen.Sihastru - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Have you heard about the ASUS GTX580 Voltage Tweak edition that can be clocked up to 1100 MHz, that's more then 40% OC? Have you seen the EVGA GTX580 FTW yet?The fact that a single GPU card is in some cases faster then a dual GPU card built with two of the fastest competing GPU's tells a lot of good things about that single GPU card.
This "nVidia in the Antichrist" speech is getting old. Repeating it all over the interwebs doesn't make it true.