so, after having played around with gtx580 for a couple of days, have to say: very impressed, even though i only expected a small upgrade. first, my upgrade history has been 8800GTX to gtx260 while going from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200. then, i got ati 5870 without changing monitor. recently, i bought a 2560x1440 monitor, and then gtx580. main reason prompted me to upgrade is 5870 is struggling very hard to handle the upgraded resolution. my number one game BFBC2 had to have lower details, and many games are very shuttery. this new card, with 1.5GB vRAM. have really smoothed things out. have had zero shuttering issue since this card has gone in. i am sorry to say this, but i think ATI's memory management here is to blame. even at 24inch, where i know the 800MB gtx260 can play GTA4 smoothly, 1GB 5870 was giving me shuttering, unsmooth gameplays when i turn the camera around the car quickly, to see behind of the car. of course, with gtx580, no matter how fast i drive, how fast i spin the camera in busy streets, zero performance issue, same as gtx260. waiting for 6970 have been the plan. but due to constant delays, and the fact i felt ATI's driver still needs work for my liking, i decided to bite the bullet and go for gtx580 before first back of stock runs out. Benchmarks: well, here are some benchmarks, run using my machine with CPU at stock 2.8GHz and 10.10 ATI drivers, 263.09 nVidia drivers. and here's a nice graph: Overclocking: another disappointment with 5870 is its limited overclocking capabilities. ATI have decided to lock the 850MHz core to 900MHz. so basically rendering any effort to overclock using default BIOS a wasted effort. on gtx580, however, there's HUGE headroom in overclocking. i have not done much tweaking. i have already overclocked from 772MHz to 900MHz with a small voltage bump. without voltage tweaking, a 50MHz overclock is easily achieved. still yet to play with memory, but not expecting much because of the hugely complex bus. BUT, i will be running stock speed for all of the card's life, since i really don't see any need to overclock an already fast card for that extra 2 FPS. Noise+Heat: in terms of noise and heat, heat is none-issue because of the excellent vapour chamber. idling at about 35c, and Heaven benchmark load (highest so far) only gets up to around 75c. pretty much exactly the same as 5870 when 5870 was new (now 5870 goes up to 80c during gaming because of dust i presume). For noise, it is actually quieter than 5870, probably due to 5870's fan produce a higher pitched noise. Thoughts: in the end, i must say, i am much more happy with gtx580's purchase than 5870 purchase back then. games just works out of the box, and all the games i've tried have excellent AA support ingame, unlike ATI where have to go into CCC to adjust settings every time launching a game. lack of per-application profile also didn't help. only dislike about gtx580, or any nvidia cards for last two generation is their lack of acknowledgement for displayport. displayport is the future of display connectors, why would nvidia continue ignore it is beyond me. they should change their back panel to be like this: DVI-I, Displayport and HDMI port. that will cover everyone, including 2x DVI users with a HDMI-to-DVI adaptor. tell me which one you would prefer to use? the thinner cable with quick-release clip or chuncky cable with two screws. conclusion: buy it if your current card isn't doing a good job. this one will 100% do whatever you throw at it with ease. even at extreme resolutions. next up on upgrade list: 16GB of RAM or uninterrupted power supply for my NAS probably won't happen for a while due to no need yet. although will be buying a good surge protector with ethernet port protection soon, hunting for discounts.....
it's a shame Amazon didn't honour their prices, otherwise more people would have an awesome card. indeed im finally doing the monitor justice. playing GTA4 all max on this butter smooth is so good. only game having trouble is Crysis as i really don't want to turn of AA...... even at 2xAA, it's still only averaging 30 FPS. having said that, 2xAA is still using 1.2GB of vRAM. KFA2 is actually the same people who was UK arm of BFG, confirmed by a buyer on Novatech, who said he phoned them up. well worth looking out for them. UK RMA centre, UK support and relatively cheap with a fantastic brand. (EVGA is in Germany, Palit is in USA, only other UK based i know of is Zotac, +44 support phoneline)
Do you really need AA at such high resolution though? I'd also try some of the mods/custom configs if you were seriously interested in playing through the game - most of them make the game look better and improve performance at the same time.
Even with a low pixel pitch, jaggies can be glaringly obvious at points. I'm glad to hear you enjoy your new card! I'm amazed at the overclock you've managed to achieve - still, I've unfortunately got a higher chance of having a dud, not to mention temperatures etc.
Yep couldn't agree more, just upgraded from my 2 x 4870 to a 580 gtx and .... WOW...... the drop in noise, the drop in temps, and the drop in power consumption but to top it all the improvement in performance I'm running a 1920 x 1200 and in hawx 2 bench im getting between 150 and 250 fps with 4 x aa and everything high all in all a great card
nice review! alot of people say the 580GTX looks boring, i personaly think it looks quite sleak and sexy!
Nice review, I wanted to pull the trigger and buy one of these so badly but the fact Nvidia still haven't implemented Bitstreaming over HDMI on their high end cards means I'm stuck with ATI, fingers crossed the GTX560 takes after the GTX460 and has it implemented. Very keen to move back over to Nvidia.
zero input lag can be felt. it's not as bad as reviews make it out to be. although im not a fast paced FPS player, and often get killed in CoD because react too slow, hopeless in UT. but that's besides the point. looking at leaked image of GTX570, i do also think GTX580 looks boring. at least put a fake heatpipe there to distinguish between high end and mid-range. for Crysis, i did play through it using gtx 260 with a couple mods such as realism mod. made visual a lot better, but i personally prefer clean, vennila games. only when a mod has significant change i'd keep it, such as the race car mod for UT2004. lack of AA is harder to notice, but it is still there. can still see it in GTA4 where i have yet to find a setting to force AA in that game.
Thanks for the info about the 580 handling the high resolution well! I've been using a 3007 (2560x1600) for a few years, and am still using an 8800GTX (yes, really ) but BFBC2 was never happy at that res and I stopped playing it. I was toying with the idea of getting a 5870 over the summer but didn't want to lose the physx support - it's looking now like it would be criminal not to get a 580 in time for Christmas gaming...
well, here's my stable overclock. stable enough to pass 10min of EVGA OC scanner (same as ATI Tray Tool artefact scanner), 4 runs each of Crysis CPU2 and GPU benchmark and playing a bit of Just Cause 2. for those image cannot load: 900MHz core, 1800MHz shader, 2100MHz memory (4200 effective) vCore at 1.100v Crysis: minimal: 19.98 FPS Average: just over 30 FPS. that's HUGE improvement on minimal FPS in the GPU benchmark run. haven't noticed any actual gameplay improvement though.
Personally, I'd run the Heaven Benchmark fro two hours on maximum everything - do a benchmark at the start, halfway through and at the end. Watch the screen occasionally for artifacts - on my rig they show up as HDR style flashes of blue or red. And those are very, very nice temps!
