Graphics GTX580 arrived this morning.....first impressions

Well, my 580 finally arrived this morning, so I put it in my machine and installed the latest drivers from the Nvidia website.

Initial impressions are that it gives quite a significant improvement over my 295, not just in FPS, but in how smoothly the frames seem to follow each other. Benchmarks in Just Cause 2 were (on average) around 10fps more than with the 295. And gameplay was basically flawlessly smooth. All settings maxed and 4xAA

I then gave it a go at Battlefield BC2 with all settings maxed and again 4xAA. Similarly there was quite a substantial improvement in the overall smoothness and speed of the gameplay. However there were still some parts where there was a noticeable decrease in the framerate, but nothing to make the game unplayable. Upon looking at my resource monitor, I saw that all four cores of my cpu were working at 80-90% load (at times 100%). This would lead me to believe that my cpu could be holding the card back a bit.

I ran the Counterstrike Source benchmark just for a laugh and with absolutely everything maxed out I got 365 FPS in the video stress test.

So now I have to ponder whether Sandybridge will be a worthwhile upgrade for me next month, to get that extra performance that I really want, or whack in a second 580 in SLI and wait a couple more months to move to Sandybridge.

Any opinions or comments are most welcome.....

 

Got any pictures you can show, would be much appreciated

 

i'd say sandy bridge.

after some tests, i've seen improvements from P5800 to P6000 in 3dmark11 when overclock my CPU from 3.5GHz consertive overclock to 4GHz. but that is at low 720p resolution.

what sort of frame rates are you getting when you feel BFBC2 get slow? i can record with gtx580 at 2560x1440 8xMSAA Vsync on, get constant 60 FPS, and only get to low 30 FPS when i blow up sticks of C4 right infornt of me.

 

Of the card itself? It's fairly plain looking. Just has the Geforce logo at the back by the power connectors. I'll add a few pictures of the rig.....

 

Depends on the game really... BFBC2 is HUGELY dependent on the CPU as well as the CPU. In any game that's not heavy on the CPU, there won't be any benefit from a gaming standpoint as the 580 should handle it without issue.

My opinion would be to go for a Sandybridge setup once you get squared away to do so.

Also, I was in the same boat with the 5870's... The move over to the 580 was well worth it. Even if some tests are a few FPS lower, it's incredibly smoother. Plus as I said in the other thread, any game played in windowed mode won't be limited like the 5870 setup (CrossfireX and SLI don't work in windowed mode).

As a test, you can also try overclocking the 580 using the latest MSI Afterburner software (2.1.0 beta 5). If the framerate improves in BFBC2, then you're GPU limited... If it stays the same with the stutter, it's the CPU.

I've got my card running 875 MHz Core / 1750 MHz Shader / 2200 MHz RAM @ 1.088v. I would recommend setting up a custom fan profile as well if you do overclock... I've got Afterburner set to 55% minimum (as it's what's inaudible in my system) to 85% at 80*C. I never see temps above 75*C, even looping Heaven.

 

I haven't actually recorded the framerate in BFBC2, but from experience, it feels like it must be around the 20fps mark (this is not a regular occurance btw).

I too am leaning towards Sandybridge. I think I might purchase the i7 2600k on the day of its release and wait for a month until some decent motherboard reviews have been done. As I said, the fact that my CPU is running so hard, It would seem that it could well be the limiting factor.

One question......My current rig uses PC3-12800 ram @ 1.65v. I've seen many of the i7 compatible boards that recommend PC3-10666. Would this have an influence on the compatibility of my current ram with an LGA1155 board?

 

Personally, I'd drop the speed on the RAM you've got, and lower the voltage to be in line with where the Sandybridge i7's are comfortable.

 

which brand is your gtx580? my one is also completely black apart (can't remember if there's nvidia logo)

PC3-10666 is slower than 1600MHz PC3-12800 so you should be fine.

 

Yeh I was actually just about to download afterburner and give this a go. I'll report back once i've done a few tweaks.

 

The brand is PNY. The main reason I went for this brand as it was all I could get at the time. I also read a few reviews and tests and people seemed to think it was a decent brand. I guess time will tell. TBH it just looks like a reference card really.

 

I was hoping someone would get the joke! I had thought about adding 'and the CPU' on the end, but I figured it might be a bit too much.

Yeah, dead beat, see what your voltage is running at stock, I'm curious to find out.

 

Right Jared, I've just tweaked the GPU settings to the same as yours using Afterburner. It's made a massive difference in BFBC2. I just played an intense battle scene and the gameplay was silky smooth. However, now about every minute, the fan ramps it's speed right up for about 3 seconds and then immediately slows back down again. When this happens, the card becomes LOUD!

The performance increase is incredible though. No jittering whatsoever. Maybe my AMD cpu does still have the grunt that's required for high resolution intensive gaming. However, I can see that fan speed increase becoming annoying. I've set the idle fan speed to 50%, as this is the point (for me) where it is no longer audible.

Now I'm gonna give it a run on the Just Cause 2 benchmarks to see what impact the overclock has had.

I have to say though, that Afterburner utility is awesome.

 

The Concrete Jungle benchmark in JC2 (which seems to be the most demanding) has seen a minimum framerate increase of 4fps from 23 up to 27, so that's nice. No noisy fan issues on this one either. The average framerate has seen around the same increase, returning 34 fps as opposed to 30 previously.

 

Did you setup a custom fan profile? You can try dropping the voltage to 1.075 and testing as well. Mine was mostly stable at 1.075, with a single firework here or there after looping Heaven benchmark. I bumped it up to 1.088 to remove the fireworks completely.

It's surprising what an extra few FPS can do for you in a game.

 

All I did was set the minimum fan speed. I'll have a go at dropping the voltage a little and see how stable it can run.

With the overclock, this GPU is seriously impressive, I never thought that an AMD system with a single GPU would be capable of this kind of game play.

Althoguh it still doesn't take away my desire for Sandybridge.......Haha.

 

I was wondering how you could be GPU bottlenecked with the 580 in JC2, but then I have seen your specs - a Dell 3007 wfp. Those 30 inchers sure do need some grunt to play on high detail settings.

 

I'd set a minimum and a maximum. Straight line curve from minimum to maximum at your max temperature you're comfortable with. Mine's 80*C with the extra voltage / speed, so I set it to 85% at 80*C. As said, it never goes above 75*C. Fan can get a bit annoying at times, though most of the time I've either got the speakers cranked, or the headset on. I've also got an Accelero Xtreme PLUS (with the ram / volt reg sinks) on the way in tomorrow. Should give a 20*C ish drop in temps.

 

Yeh I'll try setting up a custom profile. It sounds like the fan is literally going 100% speed, but just for short bursts, even with the voltage drop (it's only in BFBC2 that this is happening). But at least it seems to be stable at this voltage. Haven't had any problems as of yet anyway.

Buying this card has changed my whole perspective. I honestly thought that my platform needed a serious upgrade. It makes the 295 look like 9600GT.

 

I just ran the 3DMark Vantage GPU bench tests and got the following results. I don't know much about the scoring system so can't tell whether the score is good, average or bad, but the framerates are great and it walked all over the 295 in these tests.

 

Actually, by default the maximum speed is 85% (with the minimum at 40%). Imagine what 100% fan would sound like.

Honestly, it's all about scaling. The GTX 295 is a great card, though since it's a dual GPU solution it's gotta deal with driver scaling issues. I will say that scaling is much better than it used to be, but still in most games you're getting less than 2x the performance over a single GPU core, and in windowed mode you're getting less than a GTX 275 for performance.

That being said, folding@home does scale linearly, so 2x the cards = 2x the performance. Can't imagine what the folders will do if they release a twin GTX 570 in a single card setup (since they usually don't do top of the line cards in pairs).

After switching from 5870's, I've not looked back once. Not a single thing I dislike about this card.