Asus ENGTX580 GeForce GTX 580 Review

Nvidia unveiled its first Fermi graphics cards last March, the GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 were about six months late. Based on the GF100 architecture, both cards consumed a surprising amount of power and as a result ran extremely hot. It goes without saying that we were a bit disappointed in the launch, here's a snippet of what we had to say about the GTX 480 then…

"By all accounts the GeForce GTX 480 is not the beast we were hoping it would be. It's main competitor, the Radeon HD 5870 is no slouch, so beating it in almost every test is a real accomplishment, however in many cases it wasn't a great deal faster which makes it harder to justify a price step up against the 6 month old Radeon."

Nvidia was able to improve the performance of both, the GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 over the following months, which did improve their position. But still the cooler, quieter, and cheaper Radeon HD 5870 made a very compelling case and we preferred it to the flagship Fermi offerings.

By early July, Nvidia had enough time to develop a proper cut-down version of the GF100, codenamed GF104. The new GPU gave life to the GeForce GTX 460, a more power-conscious offering that went on to offer the perfect performance vs. price ratio for mainstream consumers.

To answer the immediate threat of the GTX 460, AMD was forced to cut pricing of its Radeon HD 5830 and followed that up late last month with the launch of its Radeon HD 6800 series. The Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 graphics cards out-compete both the 768MB and 1GB GeForce GTX 460, effectively ending its 3-month reign and putting pressure back on Nvidia.

Now staring down the barrel of AMD's 6900 series (due next month), Nvidia has decided to fire the first shot. Fermi is back with vengeance, introducing the new GF110-based GeForce GTX 580.

Despite its new naming scheme, the GeForce GTX 580 is basically a refined GTX 480. When it launched back in spring, the GeForce GTX 480 was not the product Nvidia intended. It was light on streaming multiprocessor cores and TAUs (Texture Addressing Units), packing only 480 of 512 possible cores and 60 out of 64 potential TAUs. The GeForce GTX 580 features all 512 SMs and 64 TAUs along with a few other tweaks.

 The GF104 (GTX 460) architecture was updated with new texture hardware that improved performance, and this same design is used in GF110 boards. Originally, the GF100 was able to compute a single texture address while fetching four 32bit/INT8 texture samples, two 64bit/FP16 texture samples and one 128bit/FP32 texture sample per clock. The GF104 and GF110 are able to compute a single texture address while fetching four 32bit and 64bit texture samples.

Nvidia says the tessellation boost is possible thanks to improved Z-culling, another critical adjustment which means the card spends less time rendering polygons you won't see. This should make the new GeForce GTX 580 even more potent in titles that make heavy use of tessellation such as Metro 2033.
Nvidia also claims the GeForce GTX 580 runs cooler and quieter than the GeForce GTX 480 while delivering better performance. That's an exciting prospect for gamers, so we look forward to put this Asus GeForce GTX 580 board through its paces, but first let's take a closer look at the hardware itself.
With a suggested retail price of $499 ($529 at launch via e-tail), its intensions are quite clear, the GeForce GTX 580 was designed for maximum gaming performance. At this price point, the card is around $200 more expensive than the Radeon HD 5870 and about $60 less than some Radeon HD 5970 graphics cards (those are getting harder to get).
This also means that the GeForce GTX 580 is fetching up to $100 more than some GeForce GTX 480 graphics cards. With such a premium, we are expecting big things from the new arrival.
As mentioned before, based on Fermi's third-generation Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) architecture, the GeForce GTX 580 boasts 512 CUDA cores, which is more than twice the shader power of the GT200 core used by the GeForce GTX 280/285. There are also 48 ROP (Raster Operations) units, the same number used by the GeForce GTX 480. The TAU (Texture Addressing Units) have been increased from 60 to 64 which is just 6.6% more than the GeForce GTX 480.To break it down, the GeForce GTX 580 has 4 Graphic Processing Clusters, 16 Streaming Multiprocessors, 512 CUDA Cores, 64 Texture Units and 48 Raster Operations Units. The graphics clock speed for fixed function units is set at 772MHz, 10% higher than the GeForce GTX 480. Nvidia has also increased the shader frequency by 10% to a more aggressive 1544MHz.
The GeForce GTX 580 is paired with 1536MB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1002MHz (4008MHz DDR). Combine that with a memory interface of 384-bit and you get a peak theoretical bandwidth of 192.4GB/s, or 8.5% more bandwidth than the GTX 480 and 25% more than the Radeon HD 5870.
Nvidia has slightly reduced the Thermal Design Power (TDP) of the GeForce GTX 580 to 244 watts from the GTX 480's 250 watt rating. Although the TDP has been lowered by a mere 2.5% Nvidia has employed other measures to help keep the GeForce GTX 580 cooler and quieter. The card has a number of power monitoring chips that oversee power draw from the PCIe slot and PCIe power connectors.
By monitoring power consumption, the card determines if it is drawing too much power and throttles down. We saw something similar on the Radeon HD 5970, which would regularly reduce its operating frequency when running load programs such as FurMark and OCCT. Using these programs to measure the load consumption of the GeForce GTX 580 can't really be done accurately anymore.Other than the PCIe slot, the GeForce GTX 580 pulls power though a pair of external PCIe power connectors. The GTX 580 requires a 6-pin and an 8-pin connector, just like GTX 480. Nvidia recommends using at least a 600-watt power supply with the GTX 580.The GTX 580 has also received a substantially overhauled cooling design. Notice there are no heatpipes sticking out the top, while the PCB ventilation has also been removed. Whereas the GeForce GTX 480 used a traditional heatpipe heatsink, the GTX 580 utilizes a heatsink with a vapor chamber.This type of design was first implemented in the Radeon HD 5970 and it seems like a natural progression for the GeForce GTX 580. The fan has also been slightly changed to mimic a design used by AMD. Nvidia now includes a ring around the blower fan fins to reduce vibration and lower the operating volume.
Finally, the I/O end of the GeForce GTX 580 is identical to the GTX 480, featuring a vent across the top of the panel and a pair of DVI ports with a mini-HDMI port below. The display controller now supports HDMI 1.4a, though we should point out that full audio bitstreaming is not supported, which was also the case with the GeForce GTX 480.
This is disappointing because the newer GeForce GTX 460 does carry this feature, so we're not sure why it wasn't ported over the GF110 architecture. Furthermore, the GeForce GTX 580 only supports two displays, so anyone wanting to take advantage of Nvidia's 3D Vision technology will require a second card.

from : techspot.com