Legit Reviews

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GF110 Fermi Video Card Review

This morning NVIDIA has introduced the GeForce GTX 580 video card after many weeks of rumors. It has only been seven months since NVIDIA released the GeForce GTX 480 video card, but that card is officially no longer the flagship GPU of the NVIDIA arsenal. Priced at $499, the GeForce GTX 580 comes at the same suggested retail price as the GeForce GTX 480 did, but the video card has higher clock speeds and all 512 CUDA cores enabled thanks to a new GPU die revision.



Article Title: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GF110 Fermi Video Card Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1461/1/

Very nice review. What a great cooling system. And the thing can play Metro 2033 and 19x12! All for $500.
I agree with your price comparison regarding the HD 5970.
I own a GTX 295 and it has more problems than answers; single gpu card is the way to go.
I wonder how Intel gets so much for their CPU’s in comparison to a card like this.
It seems ridiculous that their high end chip fetches twice the price of this video card…..go figure.

Bottom line: This is the card the GTX 480 was supposed to be.

Glad to see they got the thermals and power consumption in check. Great review as always.

Time to ditch my 480's.

Great Review Nate.

We have an update to the HAWX bench as well. 12% vs 20 some percent. Thanks for the FAST update. (Remember to refresh if you go back)

#1 site for ALL hardware reviews

Hi, I have a question, could you guys post benchmarks on Metro 2033 but GTX 480 vs GTX 580 with both of these cards running at the same clock, shader and memory speeds. Because I have GTX 480 in SLI from EVGA an I have an option to upgrade from my GTX 480s to GTX 580s for little money but what I'm seeing from the reviews GTX 580 is not that much faster. For example in Metro 2033 on 1920x1200 resolution GTX 580 is getting 5 more frames than GTX 480 but we have to keep in mind that GTX 580 used in the reviews has also 72 MHz more core clock, 143 MHz more shader and 98 MHz more memory. With all these settings no wonder it has ONLY 5 FRAMES more. BTW your reviews are superb. I know I'm a new user but I have been reading your reviews for a long time because you guys rock

Nate,

Thanks for the review and keeping nVidia Legit on their dual monitor setup. I'm sensing another BIOS fix. How many times do you think they'll make this same mistake? Lol.

Keep up the good work LR!

sprite wrote:Hi, I have a question, could you guys post benchmarks on Metro 2033 but GTX 480 vs GTX 580 with both of these cards running at the same clock, shader and memory speeds. Because I have GTX 480 in SLI from EVGA an I have an option to upgrade from my GTX 480s to GTX 580s for little money but what I'm seeing from the reviews GTX 580 is not that much faster. For example in Metro 2033 on 1920x1200 resolution GTX 580 is getting 5 more frames than GTX 480 but we have to keep in mind that GTX 580 used in the reviews has also 72 MHz more core clock, 143 MHz more shader and 98 MHz more memory. With all these settings no wonder it has ONLY 5 FRAMES more. BTW your reviews are superb. I know I'm a new user but I have been reading your reviews for a long time because you guys rock

Sprite,

Thanks for the support and joining the forums! I can do that for you for sure. I have the GTX 580 in the test system right now, so I will downclock it and and run the benchmarks for you. Here are the clock speeds on the two cards.
And the results:
Running the GeForce GTX580 and GTX480 at the same clock speeds to see what happens to performance should be interesting. This way you can see the performance boost created by just the extra CUDA cores and the new architecture enhancements on the GeForce GTX580. As you can see the clock frequency boost is where NVIDIA is getting most of their performance increase from. We are seeing a 1.33 to 1.66 FPS increase with just the extra CUDA cores, which translated to just a 3.5% boost in performance in Metro 2033 at 1920x1200. Looks like a very minor boost on this game title with the extra cores and enhancements.

Apoptosis wrote: And the results:

Hmm...interesting.

Another great review. It will be interesting to see if NV does anything (more) about the monitor situation. Good catch!

Apoptosis wrote:

sprite wrote:Hi, I have a question, could you guys post benchmarks on Metro 2033 but GTX 480 vs GTX 580 with both of these cards running at the same clock, shader and memory speeds. Because I have GTX 480 in SLI from EVGA an I have an option to upgrade from my GTX 480s to GTX 580s for little money but what I'm seeing from the reviews GTX 580 is not that much faster. For example in Metro 2033 on 1920x1200 resolution GTX 580 is getting 5 more frames than GTX 480 but we have to keep in mind that GTX 580 used in the reviews has also 72 MHz more core clock, 143 MHz more shader and 98 MHz more memory. With all these settings no wonder it has ONLY 5 FRAMES more. BTW your reviews are superb. I know I'm a new user but I have been reading your reviews for a long time because you guys rock

Sprite,

Thanks for the support and joining the forums! I can do that for you for sure. I have the GTX 580 in the test system right now, so I will downclock it and and run the benchmarks for you. Here are the clock speeds on the two cards.

gtx480.jpg

gtx580_downclocked.jpg

And the results:

results.jpg

Running the GeForce GTX580 and GTX480 at the same clock speeds to see what happens to performance should be interesting. This way you can see the performance boost created by just the extra CUDA cores and the new architecture enhancements on the GeForce GTX580. As you can see the clock frequency boost is where NVIDIA is getting most of their performance increase from. We are seeing a 1.33 to 1.66 FPS increase with just the extra CUDA cores, which translated to just a 3.5% boost in performance in Metro 2033 at 1920x1200. Looks like a very minor boost on this game title with the extra cores and enhancements.

I love this site for this exact reason (well, amongst the many). Personalized benchmarks in little time flat. What response!

Thank you very much for the review. From what I see now the GTX 580 is not worth extra $80. I talked to EVGA and they have told me that I would have to send them my 2 GTX 480s and pay extra $160 to get 2 GTX 580s. You have just saved me $160

That vapor chamber thing or w/e , and i thought it will run @ 50C , nope i'm wrong .
It's still hot as ever .
Why not benchmark crysis ?
A Real Way to See if the 580 is still as hot as ever .

INeedAFnSuffix wrote:That vapor chamber thing or w/e , and i thought it will run @ 50C , nope i'm wrong .
It's still hot as ever .
Why not benchmark crysis ?
A Real Way to See if the 580 is still as hot as ever .

50C is a bit of an expectation for a mean card like this. I've never seen an Nvidia card run that cool other than when it's idle.

It's still a good deal cooler than the 95C(& higher) temps I've seen on the GTX 480

I'm disappointed in both Nvidia and AMD. This new generation seems like a waste. It's definitely not deserving of a jump in series number. Hopefully the upcoming die shrink will bring in much better results.

I've put off replacing my 8800GTS 512 for quite a while now (killed my 9800GX2) and this *may* be what I pick up. I'm going to wait for AMD's next GPU release to make my final decision, but I'm definitely not wasting my money on a mid-range card again - I want something that's going to be beefy for at least another year and a half to two years. Thanks for the review!

stopthekilling77 wrote:I've put off replacing my 8800GTS 512 for quite a while now (killed my 9800GX2) and this *may* be what I pick up. I'm going to wait for AMD's next GPU release to make my final decision, but I'm definitely not wasting my money on a mid-range card again - I want something that's going to be beefy for at least another year and a half to two years. Thanks for the review!

AMD's next GPU is the Cayman (6970/6950) and it will be out mid next month according to rumors

InspectahACE wrote:

INeedAFnSuffix wrote:That vapor chamber thing or w/e , and i thought it will run @ 50C , nope i'm wrong .
It's still hot as ever .
Why not benchmark crysis ?
A Real Way to See if the 580 is still as hot as ever .

50C is a bit of an expectation for a mean card like this. I've never seen an Nvidia card run that cool other than when it's idle.

It's still a good deal cooler than the 95C(& higher) temps I've seen on the GTX 480

Yeah sure . Not even their 6150 Mobile chips .
And quite recently a failed driver blown my fans ( yes , i had to replace it ) , but it didn't wipe out my gpu and CPU , honestly .

INeedAFnSuffix wrote:

InspectahACE wrote:

INeedAFnSuffix wrote:That vapor chamber thing or w/e , and i thought it will run @ 50C , nope i'm wrong .
It's still hot as ever .
Why not benchmark crysis ?
A Real Way to See if the 580 is still as hot as ever .

50C is a bit of an expectation for a mean card like this. I've never seen an Nvidia card run that cool other than when it's idle.

It's still a good deal cooler than the 95C(& higher) temps I've seen on the GTX 480

Yeah sure . Not even their 6150 Mobile chips .
And quite recently a failed driver blown my fans ( yes , i had to replace it ) , but it didn't wipe out my gpu and CPU , honestly .

so? driver problems happen, nvidia or ATI (and more commonly ATI for that matter). the hottest card ever made by NVIDIA is the 480, plain and simple. and the 580 offers marginally greater performance per clock, except 30 degrees colder with the stock heatsink, can you still honestly complain about a card with that much power loading at 70C stock? yea it's not a game changer for current upper end 400 owners unless they can't stand the heat or noise, but people that wanted a cooler and quieter card to upgrade to that didnt want 480 are happy as can be. not to mention second hand 480's will be a very logical upgrade now since everyone will be wanting the 580 for the reasons i just said (the people that have a spare hundred $ or so anyways) so what you save on the card you can put into cooling and have very similar performance

I know hypothetically if i had the money to buy a 480 when it launched or even a few months after release I wouldn't have due to its absurd temps. If I had the money today to upgrade from a lower tier card, a 580 would certainly be in my shopping cart (I wouldn't get either for a long time because a 460 1GB has me happy as can be(would possibly buy one or the other once they get below $200 though))

skier wrote:

INeedAFnSuffix wrote:
Yeah sure . Not even their 6150 Mobile chips .
And quite recently a failed driver blown my fans ( yes , i had to replace it ) , but it didn't wipe out my gpu and CPU , honestly .

so? driver problems happen, nvidia or ATI (and more commonly ATI for that matter). the hottest card ever made by NVIDIA is the 480, plain and simple. and the 580 offers marginally greater performance per clock, except 30 degrees colder with the stock heatsink, can you still honestly complain about a card with that much power loading at 70C stock? yea it's not a game changer for current upper end 400 owners unless they can't stand the heat or noise, but people that wanted a cooler and quieter card to upgrade to that didnt want 480 are happy as can be. not to mention second hand 480's will be a very logical upgrade now since everyone will be wanting the 580 for the reasons i just said (the people that have a spare hundred $ or so anyways) so what you save on the card you can put into cooling and have very similar performance

I know hypothetically if i had the money to buy a 480 when it launched or even a few months after release I wouldn't have due to its absurd temps. If I had the money today to upgrade from a lower tier card, a 580 would certainly be in my shopping cart (I wouldn't get either for a long time because a 460 1GB has me happy as can be(would possibly buy one or the other once they get below $200 though))

Oh okay , is the 580 loud ?

INeedAFnSuffix wrote: Oh okay , is the 580 loud ?

actually reading the whole article would help

the GeForce GTX 580 runs at just 47dB and the company claims that it has nearly half the noise level as the GeForce GTX 480 (53db)