NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580: Fermi Refined
by Ryan Smith on November 9, 2010 9:00 AM ESTThe 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 |
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TonyB - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
But can it play Crysis?Etern205 - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
It already has a benchmark on Crysis...And it's no surprise as being the fastest Direct X 11 card in the single GPU category.
mfenn - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
whooooshdeputc26 - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
"Red 580 Load" instead of "Ref 580 Load" at the top of the power temp & noise page.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
Let it go.taltamir - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
only in reduced quality, the specifically said it, and any other card on the market, can't play a maxed out crysis.B3an - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
It can play Crysis maxed out. If this thing can get 38FPS (playable) on "gamer quality" at 2560 res with 4xAA then it can certainly run crysis maxed out at the way lower 1080p res.The 480 that i owned could do this. And one of my 5870's can also do it...but with no AA.
limonovich - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
more like gtx 485Sihastru - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
And what would you call the 6870/6850?Goty - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
The 6870 and 6850 since there were real architectural changes and there are still faster cards to come.