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Inno3D GeForce GTX 580 HAWK Edition 3GB graphics card review

by Parm Mann on 10 June 2011, 09:00 3.5

Tags: Inno3D

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qa6bc

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Final thoughts and rating

Benchmarking with a variety of modern games has revealed a truth; for single-monitor gaming with a GeForce GTX 580, 3GB of GDDR5 memory is overkill.

At resolutions of up to 2,560x1,600 with ultra-high image quality settings, it's tough to distinguish between a stock-clocked GTX 580 armed with a 1.5GB or a 3GB frame buffer - both deliver near-identical performance across a range of current games.

A pointless product, then? Not quite. Taking NVIDIA's fastest GPU and attaching one of the largest servings of GDDR5 memory currently available on a gaming card is a recipe for bragging rights, and extreme users connecting two or more cards in SLI for niche configurations such as 3D Vision Surround may find that multiple GPUs benefit from a large, shared frame buffer.

A competitive £400 price tag ultimately makes the HAWK Edition card a strong contender, and the large quantity of memory does have an element of future proofing about it. However, if it's high-quality, single-monitor gaming you're after, a pre-overclocked GTX 580 with a standard 1.5GB frame buffer will deliver better results at around the same price.

The Good

Competitive pricing; one of the cheapest 3GB GTX 580s on the market
Excellent cooler keeps temperature and noise down to a minimum
3GB frame buffer may benefit extreme SLI configurations

The Bad

3GB of GDDR5 memory is largely overkill for single-monitor gaming
Near-triple-slot width makes SLI configurations a tight squeeze
No factory overclock

HEXUS Rating

3.5/5
Inno3D GTX 580 3GB HAWK Edition

HEXUS Where2Buy

The Inno3D GeForce GTX 580 HAWK Edition 3GB graphics card is available to purchase from ebuyer.com.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.


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HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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Posted by Brewster0101 - Fri 10 Jun 2011 09:17
My big issue with these kind of heatsink designs is because the fins on the heatpipes point in the direction they do, air flow is not pushed out the back of the card, instead its kept in the case. Otherwise looks lovely.
Posted by mark22 - Fri 10 Jun 2011 12:50
While that is true they are still much more effective in a well ventilated case, which someone buying a 580 should really have. Venting out the back is noisy a lot warmer.
Posted by MSIC - Fri 10 Jun 2011 13:35
Have i mis-read, or are the bang4buck / bang4watt charts mis-labeled?
Posted by Chris M - Fri 02 Sep 2011 14:01
Shame that the 3GB buffer is rather useless currently
Posted by keyston - Thu 27 Oct 2011 04:52
I wouldn't expect the 3GB to make much difference in the test scenarios used.
And of course the overclocked cards will be faster.
But if you run a bench test using say 3ds max with iray, vray rt, or any other gpu renderer, maybe some heavy physics calculations, and a few 2-3 monitor games, that's when you will see the advantage of the 3GB and extra cooling.
I'd like to see a test similar to what I just mentioned, using Inno3d's GTX 580 3GB, as well as Palit's, Gainward's, and eVGA's 3GB versions, along side a Quadro 6000.
That would be a bench test worth carrying out considering all cards have similar specs and
pricing (except of course for the Quadro @ $5000 usd.
Even throw in your favorite overclocked 1.5GB version of the GTX 580 to watch it fail under those conditions. And don't just render a car or something small. I can do that with my
geforce 9800 gtx+. Try say, a house/building with trees, a car or 2 in the driveway, a couple of people, hi res texture maps with displacement etc…. to really work the memory and coolers.