The Test

For our look at the GTX 580 we will only be looking at single card performance. As a measure of promotion for their OEM partners, NVIDIA would only make a second GTX 580 available to us if we also agreed to review a high-end gaming system. Because the high-end system was completely unnecessary for a GPU review we declined NVIDIA’s offer, and as a result we were only offered 1 GTX 580 which you’ll be seeing here today. We will be looking at SLI performance once we can acquire a second GTX 580 farther down the line.

For our testing we’ll be using the latest version of our GPU benchmark suite, which was introduced back in our Radeon HD 6800 series review two weeks ago. We’re using the latest drivers from both AMD and NVIDIA here – Catalyst Hotfix 10.10d for AMD, and Forceware 262.99 for the NVIDIA cards.

Finally, as we mentioned earlier, AMD doesn’t have a direct competitor to the GTX 580. The closest competitors they have are dual-GPU setups in the form of the closeout 5970 and the 6870 in Crossfire. Meanwhile NVIDIA has cut GTX 470 prices so far to the bone that you can pick up a pair of them for as much as a single GTX 580. Two slightly crippled GF100 cards versus one GF110 card will not be a fair fight…

CPU: Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz
Motherboard: Asus Rampage II Extreme
Chipset Drivers: Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel)
Hard Disk: OCZ Summit (120GB)
Memory: Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3 x 2GB (7-7-7-20)
Video Cards: AMD Radeon HD 6870
AMD Radeon HD 6850
AMD Radeon HD 5970
AMD Radeon HD 5870
AMD Radeon HD 5850
AMD Radeon HD 5770
AMD Radeon HD 4870
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216
Video Drivers: NVIDIA ForceWare 262.99
AMD Catalyst 10.10d
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Meet the GTX 580 Crysis: Warhead
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  • spigzone - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    Any 'bandwagon' here belongs to Nvidia.
  • mac2j - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    Actually the new ATI naming makes a bit more sense.

    Its not a new die shrink but the 6xxx all do share some features not found at all in the 5xxx series such as Displayport 1.2 (which could become very important if 120 and 240Hz monitors ever catch on).

    Also the Cayman 69xx parts are in fact a significantly original design relative to the 58xx parts.

    Nvidia to me is the worst offender ... cause a 580 is just fully-enabled 480 with the noise and power problems fixed.
  • Sihastru - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    If you think that stepping up the spec on the output ports warrants skipping a generation when naming your product, see that mini-HDMI port on the 580, that's HDMI 1.4 compliant... the requirements for 120Hz displays are met.

    The GF110 in not a GF100 with all the shaders enabled. It looks that way to the uninitiated. GF110 has much more in common with GF104.

    GF110 has three types of tranzistors, graded by leakage, while the GF100 has just two. This gives you the ability to clock the core higher, while having a lower TDP. It is smaller in size then GF100 is, while maintaining the 40nm fab node. GTX580 has a power draw limitation system on the board, the GTX480 does not...

    What else... support for full speed FP16 texture filtering which enhances performance in texture heavy applications. New tile formats which improve Z-cull efficiency...

    So how does displayport 1.2 warrant the 68x0 name for AMD but the few changes above do not warrant the 5x0 name for nVidia?

    I call BS.
  • Griswold - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    I call your post bullshit.

    The 580 comes with the same old video engine as the GF100 - if it was so close to GF104, it would have that video engine and all the goodies and improvements it brings over the one in the 480 (and 580).

    No, GT580 is a fixed GF100 and most of what you listed there supports that because it fixes what was broken with the 480. Thats all.
  • Sihastru - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    I'm not sure what you mean... maybe you're right... but I'm not sure... If you're referring to bitstreaming support, just wait for a driver update, the hardware supports it.

    See: http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-580-revi...

    "What is also good to mention is that HDMI audio has finally been solved. The stupid S/PDIF cable to connect a card to an audio codec, to retrieve sound over HDMI is gone. That also entails that NVIDIA is not bound to two channel LPCM or 5.1 channel DD/DTS for audio.

    Passing on audio over the PCIe bus brings along enhanced support for multiple formats. So VP4 can now support 8 channel LPCM, lossless format DD+ and 6 channel AAC. Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio bit streaming are not yet supported in software, yet in hardware they are (needs a driver update)."

    NEVER rely just on one source of information.

    Fine, if a more powerful card then the GTX480 can't be named the GTX580 then why is a lower performing then the HD5870 card is ok to be named HD6870... screw technology, screw refinements, talk numbers...

    Whatever...
  • Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    To set the record straight, the hardware does not support full audio bitstreaming. I had NV themselves confirm this. It's only HDMI 1.4a video + the same audio formats that GTX 480 supported.
  • B3an - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    You can all argue all you want, but at the end of the day, for marketing reasons alone, NV really didn't have much of a choice but to name this card the 580 instead of 485 after ATI gave there cards the 6xxx series names. Which dont deserve a new series name either.
  • chizow - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    No ATI's new naming convention makes no sense at all. Their x870 designation has always been reserved for their Single-GPU Flagship part ever since the HD3870, and this naming convention has held true through both the HD4xxx and HD5xxxx series. But the 6870 clearly isn't the flagship of this generation, in fact, its slower than the 5870 while the 580 is clearly faster than the 480 in every aspect.

    To further complicate matters, ATI also launched the 5970 as a dual-GPU part, so single-GPU Cayman being a 6970 will be even more confusing and will also be undoubtedly slower than the 5970 in all titles that have working CF profiles.

    If anything, Cayman should be 5890 and Barts should be 5860, but as we've seen from both caps, marketing names are often inconvenient and short-sighted when they are originally designated......
  • Galid - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    We're getting into philosophy there. Know what's a sophism? An argument that seems strong but isn't because there's a fail in it. The new honda 2011 ain't necessarily better than the 2010 because it's newer.

    They name it differently because it's changed and wanna make you believe it's better but history proved it's not always the case. So the argument of newer generation means better is a false argument. Not everything new ''gotta'' be better in every way to live up to it's name.

    But it's my opinion.
  • Galid - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    It seems worse but that rebranding is all ok in my mind as it comes the 6870 comes in at a cheaper price than the 5870. So everyone can be happy about it. Nvidia did worse rebranding some of the 8xxx series into 9xxx chips for higher price but almost no change and no more performance. 9600gt comes to my mind...

    What is 9xxx series? a remake of a ''better'' 8xxx series. What is GTS3xx series, remake of GTx2xx, what is GTX5xx, .... and so on. Who cares? If it's priced well it's all ok. When I see someone going at staples to get a 9600gt at 80$ and I know I can get a 4850 for almost the same price, I say WTF!!!

    GTX580 deserve the name they want to give it. Whoever tries to understand all that naming is up to him. But whoever wants to pay example 100$ for a card should get performance according to that and it seems more important than everything else to me!

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