NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580: The SLI Update
by Ryan Smith on November 10, 2010 10:00 AM ESTNormalized Clocks: Separating Architecture & SMs from Clockspeed Increases
While we were doing our SLI benchmarking we got several requests for GTX 580 results with normalized clockspeeds in order to better separate what performance improvements were due to NVIDIA’s architectural changes and enabling the 16th SM, and what changes are due to the 10% higher clocks. So we’ve quickly run a GTX 580 at 2560 with GTX 480 clockspeeds (700Mhz core, 924Mhz memory) in order to capture this data. Games that benefit most from the clockspeed bump are going to be memory bandwidth or ROP limited, while games showing the biggest improvements in spite of the normalized clockspeeds are games that are shader/texture limited or benefit from the texture and/or Z-cull improvements.
We’ll put 2 charts here, one with the actual framerates and a second with all performance numbers normalized to the GTX 480’s performance.
Games showing the lowest improvement in performance with normalized clockspeeds are BattleForge, STALKER, and Civilization V (which is CPU limited anyhow). At the other end are HAWX, DIRT 2, and Metro 2033.
STALKER and BattleForge hold consistent with our theory that games that benefit the least when normalized are ROP or memory bandwidth limited, as both games only see a pickup in performance once we ramp up the clocks. And on the other end HAWX, DIRT 2, and Metro 2033 still benefit from the clockspeed boost on top of their already hefty boost thanks to architectural improvements and the extra SMs. Interestingly Crysis looks to be the paragon game for the average situation, as it benefits some from the arch/SM improvements, but not a ton.
A subset of our compute benchmarks is much more straightforward here; Folding@Home and SmallLuxGPU improve 6% and 7% respectively from the increase in SMs (theoretical improvement, 6.6%), and then after the clockspeed boost reach 15% faster. From this it’s a safe bet that when GF110 reaches Tesla cards that the performance improvement for Telsa won’t be as great as it was for GeForce since the architectural improvements were purely for gaming purposes. On the flip side with so many SMs currently disabled, if NVIDIA can get a 16 SM Tesla out, the performance increase should be massive.
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medi01 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
They've implied dual card nevertheless.Haydyn323 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
It very specifically says "Dual-GPU Records". Everyone is fully aware at this point that a 5970 has dual gpus in a single card, so there's no reason to make the distinction.soonerkevin - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
Can we get Crysis Warhead benchmarks using the Enthusiast setting? It's odd that you use the highest setting for all the other games but not Crysis.Ryan Smith - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
Assuming we don't drop it entirely the next time we refresh our suite, we'll probably go to all Enthusiast for at least 1 resolution. Up until now, only a couple of cards have been fast enough to run it at anything resembling a playable framerate.Soldier1969 - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
2560 x 1600 res and a AMD 6970 FTW.silverblue - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
Let's wait and see. If the model numbering is as skewed as with the 68xx series, the 69xx series may not be as fast as you think... though the dual GPU card should perform better thanks to the improved Crossfire performance with the new cards. Again, let's wait and see, however as two 6870s are quicker and less greedy than one 580, and noting that the 5970 uses much less power than two 5870s (granted, it's technically two 5850s but that doesn't explain all the difference), AMD could have a good dual GPU card on the way.medi01 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
If you ran out of budget could you please ask AMD to send you second 5970 card please?Haydyn323 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
They are unlikely to do so. The 5970 is being phased out of production completely to make way for the 6000 series version that is likely to come soon or to encourage people to instead buy 2x 6870s. Not to mention it's a 700 dollar card.medi01 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
Oh, and suddenly it is such a big problem for review site to find several hundred bucks for a card, eh?Haydyn323 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
I don't see what the big deal is. Yes, most likely 2x 5970s will beat 2x 580s.If that's all you want to hear; there it is. Just picture an added graph bar with higher fps above the 580 sli in your mind. It works just as well.
There's really not much point in trying to prove it at this time as ATI doesn't intend to keep selling them much longer. They have no incentive to push it.
Again for most of the 5970s currently being sold, buying 2 would cost someone $1360 whereas buying 2 580s would be $1000, so it's expected that 5970s should have more total power. Switch this up to 3x or 4x 580s and both price and performance probably go higher for the 580s.