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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 graphics card review

by Tarinder Sandhu on 9 November 2010, 14:00 4.0

Tags: GeForce GTX 580, NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

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Final thoughts and rating

There's been a lot to get through on the previous 19 pages: let me summarise it for you. NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 580 graphics card comes to market as the best GPU that the company has ever produced. Better than incumbent GeForce GTX 480 by having a more-complete architecture allied to higher clocks, making it plain faster, NVIDIA rights pretty much everything that was wrong with the released-too-early GTX 480.

GeForce GTX 580 is, on average, 15 per cent faster than GTX 480 across our eight games. Better still, it comes to retail with matching power-draw and a better cooler that is quantifiably quieter. We think that GeForce GTX 580 is absolutely what the high-end Fermi card, released in March 2010, should have been.

Now almost as quick as the twin-gun Radeon HD 5970 and miles ahead of the single-GPU Radeon HD 5870, the £399 asking price for GTX 580 is reasonable, once all the performance-enhancing factors have been factored in. Yes, you can gain similar performance with a £300-ish multi-GPU setup from both AMD and NVIDIA, bringing value into sharper focus, so folk who can't quite stretch to GTX 580 would be advised to go down this route.

Thunderously fast and relatively quiet for a truly high-end card, GeForce GTX 580 1,536MB is NVIDIA's solid attempt that's designed to go head-to-head with AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 6970 Cayman GPU. The battle line has been drawn by the green team. AMD, just what can you wring out of Radeon HD 6970?

The Good

Fastest single-GPU card on the planet
Better than GTX 480 in every way (bar price, of course)
Relatively quiet for a truly high-end GPU
Overclocks well for a range-topping model

The Bad

Not the fastest graphics card in the world
Still need two cards for 3D Vision Surround
Not solely NVIDIA's fault, but where are the triple-A games to justify investment?

HEXUS Rating

4/5
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1,536MB

HEXUS Awards

HEXUS Recommended
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1,536MB

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HEXUS Forums :: 45 Comments

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Nice review Tarinder, a shame most etailers are charging more than the RRP already. Hopefully just early adopter price.
Naming this card the 580 is such a cynical move by NVIDIA. This isn't a next-gen card, it's just a tweak on the 480. This should have been called the 490. But I guess the same could be said of the 6870 from AMD. Oh well. Yawn. Next please.
After being delayed The GTX480 must be Nvidia's most short lived high-end card.
I'm not sure that I would want anything in my PC which can reach almost 100C during a game….

how long do we have to wait for the 69xx release?
I'll take two, please.