GeForce GTX 580 - Fermi Done Right!
This is simultaneously the top kept and the most brought up secret in the business right this moment. The GeForce GTX 580 - it's been rumored to become everything from dual GF104 chips to a Friv 2018 different monster concoction of epic proportions. Just about all the rumors first got it wrong until concrete evidence did start to disseminate with the leaky pipes of the supply chain. Even then, because the specs started to bubble up for the surface, a lot of people came on the wrong conclusions.It all started back in the March/April time period, around when NVIDIA launched their first part built on the well-hyped Fermi architecture, the GeForce GTX 480. Reviews were mixed; it was the easiest single GPU about the planet, no hassle. It was a tessellation monster and its particular scaling in games, as much as 3-way SLI, was incredible. It was an incredible advance for gaming computers.But it was also hot and loud. And that was compounded with the press using open-air test beds to check the GeForce GTX 480 - which meant the credit card were required to do all the work in moving air over its hot components without the assistance of a well-ventilated chassis.In fact, it is proven that the heat-stack vertical design with the MAINGEAR SHIFT custom built pc aided the GeForce GTX 480 in such a way that it turned out dramatically quieter in 3-way SLI than an identically configured Corsair 800D chassis which includes terrible airflow.The GeForce GTX 580 is a fully-realized GF100 with all of 512 shaders. It has higher memory bandwidth, as well as a higher core and shader clock. And it does all of this while drawing less power at half the noise level. It's the last two features that may blindside everyone. Once the specs caused it to be from the rumor department to accepted, on-line "fact," everyone did start to speculate it would seem to be a hair dryer and draw the power generated by way of a flux capacitor. And require 1.21 jiggawatts and 88mph to return in time.In reality, NVIDIA created a wicked vapor chamber a la ATI Radeon 2900XT, threw out the exposed gigantic heat pipes, and were able to tweak the style to attract less power, all while delivering around 20% more performance.I was fortunate enough to get to check out a MAINGEAR SHIFT with both 2-way GTX 480s and 2-way GTX 580s which enable it to teach you some numbers. So let's begin.By now you might have heard the numbers, and recently the rumored specs have solidified to the truth. Yes, it has 512 shaders. Yes it's clocked at 772MHz and delivers 192.4GB/s of bandwidth.Here's what we shoved in a SHIFT just for this test:Core i7 970 @ 4.135GHz 6GB of DDR3 2000MHz memory Rampage III Formula 128GB Crucial RealSSD C300 And all the remainder.In comparison towards the Nvidia 480, the truth is from a 10-20% rise in performance. There is a good amount of reason to have looking forward to this though. Dual GTX 580's consumed about 40 watts under dual GTX 480's. And you may not believe the amount quieter they are. It is striking. Unfortunately I didn't bring a SPL meter with me at night, but NVIDIA reports it is more about 50% quieter. I do not doubt for any second that is an accurate assessment. I was floored.Can the thing is that Billy Mays selling this thing? "THE NEW NVIDIA GTX 580 IS FASTER. IT'S QUIETER. IT USES LESS POWER! AND BEST OF ALL, IT'S THE SAME PRICE. THAT'S RIGHT FOLKS, THE ALL NEW GTX 580 IS NOT ONLY THE WORLD'S FASTEST SINGLE GPU ON THE PLANET, IT'S THE SAME PRICE AS THE GTX 480! BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. BUY THE GEFORCE GTX 580 AND GET FREE(!) SUPPORT FOR CUDA. FOR 3D VISION. FOR PHYSX! ALL OF THESE COME BUNDLED IN THE NEW NVIDIA GTX 580 GRAPHICS CARD!"OK, so maybe it's only me. But no matter what, this bad boy is replacing the GTX 480 in my book, ASAP. EVGA also provides a Superclocked version for those of you who still want "MOAR POWAH!"