NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 570: Filling In The Gaps
by Ryan Smith on December 7, 2010 9:00 AM ESTMeet the GTX 570
As we quickly touched upon in our introduction, the GTX 570 is a complete reuse of the GTX 580 design. NVIDIA used the same PCB, cooler, power throttling chips, and shroud as the GTX 580; our reference card is even clad nearly identical livery as the GTX 580. Indeed the only hardware difference between the two cards from the outside is that the GTX 580 uses 6+8pin PCIe power sockets, while the GTX 570 uses 6+6pin PCI power sockets.
Top: GTX 570. Bottom: GTX 580
By using the same design as the GTX 580 this no doubt has let NVIDIA bring the GTX 570 to the market quickly and cheaply, but it also means that the GTX 570 inherits the same design improvements that we saw on the GTX 580. This means the cooling for the GTX 570 is provided by a vapor chamber-based aluminum heatsink, backed by NVIDIA’s reinforced blower. For SLI users this also means that it’s using NVIDIA’s angled shroud that is supposed to allow for better cooling in tight spaces. As we’ve already seen on the GTX 580 this design can give the GTX 470 a run for its money, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when we say that the GTX 570 is similarly capable. Overall the only notable downside to this design is that because NVIDIA is using the GTX 580 design it’s also inheriting the GTX 580’s 10.5” length, making the GTX 570 an inch longer than the GTX 470.
As with the GTX 580 the situation with custom GTX 570s will be nebulous. NVIDIA is taking tighter control of the GTX 500 series and will only be approving designs that are equal or superior to the reference design. This isn’t a bad thing, but it means there’s less latitude for custom designs, particularly if someone wants to try lobbing an inch off of the card to make it the same length as the GTX 470. Interestingly, triple-slot coolers are also out – we found out last week that NVIDIA is vetoing them on the GTX 580 (and no doubt the GTX 570) as they aren’t suitable for use in SLI mode with most motherboards, so any custom designs that do appear will definitely be more conservative than what we’ve seen with the GTX 400 series.
Since NVIDIA is reusing the GTX 580 PCB, I/O is identical to the GTX 580. Here it’s covered by the usual NVIDIA configuration of 2x DVI ports and 1x mini-HDMI port, with the second slot occupied by the card’s exhaust. This also means the card can only drive 2 of the 3 ports at once, meaning you’ll need an SLI configuration to take advantage of NVIDIA/3DVision Surround. Meanwhile HDMI 1.4a for 3D video purposes is supported by the card’s mini-HDMI port, but audio bitstreaming is not supported, limiting audio output to LPCM and DD+/DTS.
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Oxford Guy - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
Does Nvidia not want people to use Unigine since it showed the 480 beating the pants off the 580 in minimum frame rate at 1920x1200 and lower resolutions?I've noticed a definite lack of Unigine on review sites for the 570.
stangflyer - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Any idea why the 580 sli takes such a huge dump going from 1920 res to the 2560 res. It loses half its framerate! I has 1.5 gigs of memory vs the 5870 1 gig and the 5870 crossfire goes from 50 fps at 1920 and 37 at 2560. The 580 sli goes from 72 fps at 1920 to 36 at 2560.Any ideas??
SmCaudata - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
It seems that AMD is finally getting cross-fire scaling well. The new 68xx cars are better than the old, but the 5870 is scaling as well as the Nvidia cards in a lot of cases. My guess is that with cross-fire or SLI the memory bandwidth is less of an issue. You don't fully double your framerate afterall. It is likely more dependant on the GPU clock speed..which is an advantage for AMD.I am really just taking a guess here. The other option is that it is simply an immature driver and will be fixed later.
nitrousoxide - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
Only when you used a dual-AMD-card configuration you will realize how much you will suffer from its poor drivers. It's fast but buggy and I've been waiting too long for AMD to finally come up with a Catalyst that at least runs as stable as the nVidia driver. So please AMD, give us a nice driver!Anchen - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Hey,Good review overall for an apples to apples comparison. I would have liked to see what it did overclocked as some have mentioned. On the Metro 2033 page the article says the following:
"While Metro was an outstanding game for the GTX 580 to show off its performance advantage, the situation is quite different for the GTX 470. Here it once again fulfills its role as a GTX 480 replacement, but it’s far more mortal when it comes to being compared to other cards. "
In the first sentence shouldn't it be "...the situation is quite different for the GTX570." and not the 470?
sanityvoid - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Much as I love this site, the color schemes for the charts is really getting old. Why can't all the colors be the same EXCEPT for the one being reviewed. We're mostly all adults and can read so the other GPU's in the charts could be left all one color.Some other sites do this and it is much easier to read what is actually being reviewed, even if the review color is always the same on each chart. It still adds to the clutter of the charts. The human eye/brain gets distracted easy.
Other than that, another good job on the article.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
Thanks for the feedback.The colors are still a work in progress. We had some requests for additional colors in GPU articles to highlight the products we're immediately comparing the reviewed product to, which is what I did for this article. Certainly if you guys this this is too much, we can go back to fewer colors.
ATimson - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
Personally, my problem isn't so much that there are other colors, as that there's no good way to tell what they mean.Maybe one color for "other cards with benchmarks", one color for "immediate competition" (instead of each their own color), and a third for the product proper?
sanityvoid - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
I really like this idea. All one color for 'set' of reviews (if multiple), and one color for primary.BTW, I didn't know others were asking for more colors. I guess do what others want. For me, personally, I like the one color for primary and one color for all others. It is just the easiest for 'first glance' to be easily distinguishable.
Peace.
kirankowshik - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
I dont know why I should go for the Nvidia GTX 580 / 570 series when I am getting the same (almost or more than) performance with ATI Radeon cards for a lower price. ATI HD 5970 is almost 30$ cheaper than GTX 580 but outperforms it in every single test. 5870 is not very close but atleast some what close and the performance of GTX 570 over 5870 does not justify a $100 gap between these two. Anyways, I think NVIDIA is just producing cards for name sake..with HD6900 series coming up, I will not be surprised if they offer huge performance leap over the GTX 580/570 for the same price...Again it will be what NVIDIA was when ATI released their batch of first DX11 cards and NVIDIA was struggling hard to get an answer to those...