PRATAMA BLOG

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX580 Showdown

Not too many people have over $500 to spend on a video card, but for those fortunate to be able to there are there are a fair number of options to pick from. When it comes to spending that much money on a video card there are two companies you'll want to take a closer look at: ASUS and EVGA. These two companies have been developing high-end enthusiast graphics cards for years that usually feature custom designs that will blow your mind. When you are spending over $500 on a single graphics card you usually want more than the AMD or NVIDIA reference design! The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 is the flagship single-GPU solution from NVIDIA and it is pretty darn fast in standard form. The engineers at ASUS and EVGA took that GPU and came up with two totally custom designs that they felt were better solutions for gamers and enthusiasts.
The cards sent to Legit Reviews for review were the ASUS MATRIX GTX580 1536MB (P/2DIS/1536MD5) and EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified 3072MB (3G-P3-1588-AR). These cards represent the fastest air cooled NVIDIA GeForce GTX580 video card from each respective company. The ASUS MATRIX GTX580 comes with clock frequencies of 816MHz core and 4008MHz memory for $529.99 plus shipping.  The EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified comes with clock frequencies of 855Mhz core and 4212MHz memory for $599.99 plus shipping. The question that we hope to answer for you today is which of these two cards is the best.
Let's take a look at the features of these cards compared to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 reference design.

Graphics card	GeForce GTX 580	ASUS MATRIX GTX580 Platinum	EVGA GTX 580 Classified
Fabrication node	40nm	40nm	40nm
Shader processors	512	512	512
Streaming Multiprocessors	16	16	16
Texture Units	60	64	64
ROP units	48	48	48
Graphics Clock (Core)	772 MHz	816 MHz	855 MHz
Shader Processor Clock	1544 MHz	1632 MHz	1710 MHz
Memory Clock / Data rate	1002 MHz / 4008 MHz	1002 MHz / 4008 MHz	1053 MHZ / 4212 MHz
Graphics memory	1536 MB	1536 MB	3072 MB
Memory interface	384-bit	384-bit	384-bit
Memory bandwidth	192.4 GB/s	192.4 GB/s	202 GB/s
Power connectors	1x6-pin PEG, 1x8-pin PEG	2x8-pin PEG	1x6-pin PEG, 2x8-pin PEG
Max board power (TDP)	244 Watts	unknown	260 Watts
Recommended Power supply	600 Watts	700 Watts	600 Watts
GPU Thermal Threshold	105 degrees C	97 degrees C	97 degrees C

• Accessory Bundle
• Gaming Performance
• Overclock
• Power Consumption
• Temperatures
• Noise Level

This should be interesting, so let's get to it!

The ASUS MATRIX GTX580 Platinum

 

First up we have the ASUS MATRIX GTX580 Platinum graphics card that is available under the part number P/2DIS/1536MD5 for $529.99 plus shipping. This card has the GeForce GTX580 GPU core clocked at 816 MHz and the 1.5GB of GDDR5 RAM is clocked at 4008 MHz (1002 MHz GDDR5). The stock core clock on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 is 772MHz, so this card features a 44MHz core clock increase. This is a 5.7% improvement, so it should provide a noticeable bump in gaming performance.
This card doesn't have 3072MB of GDDR5 memory like some GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards, but most gamers are playing on a single monitor with a resolution of 1920x1080, so does it matter? That is one of the questions we hope to answer today in this article.
The first thing we noticed with this graphics card is that it is massive. ASUS uses their DirectCU II dual-fan GPU cooling technology to help keep the GTX 580 nice and cool, but the end result is a card that's fully three expansion slots wide. If you ever plan on running two of these in NVIDIA SLI mode, you need to make sure your motherboard supports a setup like this.
The ASUS MATRIX GTX580 measures in at 11.25" in length, 5.25" in height and is 2.5" in thickness! This is a very large and heavy card that pictures really don't do justice for. As we mentioned earlier ASUS is using their DirectCU II technology on this card. This means that it has 5 copper heat pipes that are directly touching the GPU and then three of them go to one aluminum cooling fin array and two to another. Each of the independent cooling fin sections has a 90mm fan blowing directly over them. ASUS says these two fans deliver 600% more airflow than the NVIDIA reference design, resulting in a 20% lower operating temperatures despite the overclock. The Samsung GDDR5 memory IC's sit bare on the PCB, so we are guessing that the airflow from the fan is enough to keep them cool. Not only does the fan keep the card cooled, but they are also very quiet.
Along the right edge of the card you'll see some features that make this card stand out from the crowd. ASUS has placed their ''TweakIt' technology on the actual PCB, so you can adjust hardware voltage in real-time as well as turning the fan speed up to 100%. By pressing the '+' or '-" button you adjust the GPU core voltage up to +0.125V in 10 jumps. There are also 10 LED lights to show you how far you've increased the voltage. This is great for overclocking as you can be running a benchmark and if you start to see artifacts or issues you can just click these buttons for more or less power.
Just above these buttons you''ll see the six holes that make up what ASUS calls the 'Probelt'. ProbeIt takes the guesswork out of locating the graphics card´s measurement points, identifying them clearly in the form of 6 sets of detection points so you´ll know exactly where to get quick yet accurate readings using a multimeter.
The six Probelt voltage points are:

• GPU
• MEM
• PLI
• 3V3
• 12V
• GND

Usually we don't have much to talk about on the reverse side of a video card, but the ASUS MATRIX GTX580 is a different card. Here we see that ASUS fitted this card with a black backplate. This is not just for looks as it protects the components on the back of the PCB from being damaged. It doesn't do anything in terms of cooling though as it doesn't directly touch the PCB and no memory chips are located on the back of the card.
Directly behind the GPU you might have noticed that there is a large black component clearly visible through the backplate. This is the NEC/TOKIN 0E907 and that would be a high speed Proadlizers. These are basically some of the best capacitors on the market right now as they feature extremely low ESL and ESR, yet have have high current capability and high capacitance. ASUS uses a 19-phase Super Alloy Power technology on this card and told use they used industrial components on it to ensure a long operating life.
The ASUS MATRIX GTX580 can be run in SLI and has a pair of SLI bridges located along the top edge of the card. You should be able to run four of these together in 4-way SLI in theory, but with each one taking up 3 PCI expansion slots there isn't a desktop case or motherboard that would support that.
You need to feed tons of power to a beast of a video card like this, so ASUS equipped the card with two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Assuming the card can pull the proper 150W from the PCI Express 2.0 slot and each of the 8-pin power connectors it means that this card has 450W of power going to it. Due to this ASUS suggests a 700W power supply with a +12V current rating of 42A for proper operation.
To help alleviate some of your power concerns ASUS placed a pair of red/green LEDs directly behind the PCIe power connectors warn you if you've forgotten to connect the power or if the power connectors are not fully plugged in. Green means the card is getting sufficient power and red means that something is wrong.
On the back of the ASUS MATRIX GTX580 in the lower left hand corner you'll find an area that ASUS calls the 'Mod Zone' for obvious reasons.  This area is for professional overclockers that want to solder on components to enable advanced mods to get the most from this graphics card. The features here are as follows:

• Disable OCP - Remove overheat, overcurrent protection for extreme overclocking under LN2
• FBVDD0 - Adjust the GDDR5 Memory Voltage
• PEXVDD - Adjust PLL Voltage
• Power PWM Frequency - Double the Super Hybrid Engine clock to provide stability under super high clock (from 250KHz to 500KHz).

Since the ASUS MATRIX GTX 580 takes up three expansion slots they can also customize that! Here you see a pair of DVI-I outputs that are rated to support resolutions up to 2560x1600 (2048x1536 w/ D-Sub). You also have full size HDMI and Display Port connectors! It's nice to have regular sized outputs as you don't need any adapters. The highlight of the back interface has to be the 'safe mode' button that ASUS is using for this card. By pushing this button it resets the graphics card back to the default clock frequencies and voltages!  Think of it like a clear CMOS button for a motherboards BIOS. This switch is a life-saver as it keeps you from possibly bricking the card during an extreme overclock. Enthusiasts and overclockers will certainly appreciate this feature as it takes some of the worry out of overclocking, so you can focus on having fun.
Lastly we have the 'MATRIX LED load Indicator' located along the top edge of the video card. ASUS uses five multicolored LED indicators  behind the word MATRIX at the top of the card to give you a visual display of the current GPU load on the card.
As you can see the ASUS MATRIX GTX 580 is major departure from the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 reference design, but in a good way.

EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified 3072MB

 

Next we have the EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified 3072MB graphics card that is available under the part number 03G-P3-1588-AR for $599.99 plus shipping. This card has the GeForce GTX580 GPU core clocked at 855 MHz and the 3072MB of GDDR5 RAM is clocked at 4212 MHz (1053 MHz GDDR5). The stock core clock on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 is 772MHz, so this card features a 83MHz core clock increase. This is a 10.8% improvement, so it should provide a very noticeable and significant bump in gaming performance. When it comes to buying a GeForce GTX 580 graphics card the fastest core clock available on the market today is 855 MHz and only the EVGA GeForce GTX Classified and the GIGABYTE Super Overclock are available with those speeds.
The EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified is very different looking and is nothing like the ASUS MATRIX GTX580 Platinum that we just showed you. For starters this this video card is built up rather than out! It takes up only two expansion slots thanks to this fact, which should make running SLI much easier.
The EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified measures in at 11" in length, 5.25" in height and is 2.5" in thickness! We really like that EVGA managed to stick to a two slot cooling design, but it will be interesting to see what the temperatures and noise levels are like with this cooler. The black fan shroud that goes over the heatsink is made from plastic, but it has a nice look to it.
EVGA uses a single 8CM 'hamster wheel' fan to keep the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GPU nice ans quiet. EVGA put some of the features of the card around the cooling fan. The EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified features a 14+3 Phase Power Design that can deliver over 1000W of power. The 8CM fan shown in the image above is said to improve efficiency by as much as 30% when compared to the standard NVIDIA cooler.
Flipping the card over we found that it doesn't come with a backplate and we didn't find any interesting features back here besides just the usual components. Like the ASUS MATRIX GTX580 Platinum, the EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified has the  NEC/TOKIN 0E907 Proadlizer. The NEC Proadlizer, Super Low ESR SP-Cap capacitors, and high frequency 3MHz shielded inductors provide clean and precise voltage control, and the onboard voltage probe points lets you monitor them with ease.
The EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified can be run in SLI and has a pair of SLI bridges located along the top edge of the card. Since it features two connectors it means the card supports everything from a single card all the way up to 4-way SLI. EVGA says the dual slot top cooler design means that you don't have to worry about space or motherboard limitations. Hot air for the GPU heatsink does exhaust out the top slot and into the PC case.
EVGA wanted to make sure you'd never run out of power with this card, so they placed two 8-pin PCIe and one 6-pin PCIe power connectors along the top edge of the card. EVGA suggests a 600W power supply with a +12V current rating of 42A for proper operation. It's odd that ASUS and EVGA both recommend different sized power supplies, but you'll want a beefy PSU.
To the left of the power connectors you'll see three small connectors. These are the onboard voltage probe points that let you monitor the NVDD, FBVDD, and PEXVDD. For those that don't know what those stand for:

• NVDD is voltage for GPU
• FBVDD is Framebuffer voltage
• PEXVDD is PCIExpress Voltage 

These are labeled on the PCB on the back of the card.  You can see these in the image below.
At first glance we thought the switch on the back of the card was a fan speed switch since it said 'normal' and 'OC', but it is actually a for dual BIOS versions. The retail box and the EVGA product page for this card don't explain what this switch does. We blindly tried it on our own and found that the OC BIOS had the fans running at 100% with the thermal monitoring disabled. We were told this is needed for those doing extreme overclocking using LN2, which is something we won't be doing today.
The back panel comes with one of EVGA’s high flow exhaust brackets that allow for more air flow than the stock design. We also know that anything blocking airflow will cause more noise, so it should also keep noise down. For connections EVGA has a pair of DVI-I outputs that are rated to support resolutions up to 2560x1600 (2048x1536 w/ D-Sub). If you want to run HDMI and Display Port you'll have to use the adapters that come with the card in the bundle. The odd looking proprietary plug on the far left is for EVGA's EVBot System accessory kit. The EVGA EVBot tuning Utility costs $101.99 and allows for real time hardware monitoring and voltage/clock adjustments.
Let's take a closer look at the bundles and move on to benchmarking these cards in some games!

The Test System

Before we look at the numbers, let's take a brief look at the test system that was used. All testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and benchmarks were completed on the desktop with no other software programs running.
The AMD Radeon graphics cards were tested with Catalyst 11.11b preview drivers and all of the NVIDIA graphics cards ran GeForce 290.36 Beta drivers.

Intel X79/LGA2011 Platform

The Intel X79 platform that we used to test the all of the video cards was running the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe motherboard with BIOS 0802 that came out on 11/17/2011. The Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1866MHz quad channel memory kit was set to 1866MHz with 1.5v and 9-10-9-27 1T memory timings. The OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD was run with  firmware version 2.15.

The Intel X79 Test Platform
Component	Brand/Model	Live Pricing
Processor	Intel Core i7-3960X	Click Here
Motherboard	ASUS P9X79 Deluxe	Click Here
Memory	16GB Corsair 1866MHz	Click Here
Video Card	Various	Click Here
Solid-State Drive	OCZ Vertex 3 240GB	Click Here
Cooling	Intel RTS2011LC	Click Here
Power Supply	Corsair HX850W	Click Here
Operating System	Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit	Click Here

Video Cards Tested:

• XFX Radeon HD 6970 2048MB - 880MHz Core / 1375MHz Memory
• MSI Radeon HD 6950 1024MB - 850MHz Core / 1300MHz Memory
• Gigabyte Radeon HD 5870 Super Overclock 1024MB - 850MHz Core / 1200MHz Memory
• EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified 3072MB- 855MHz Core/1710MHz Shader/1053MHz Memory
• ASUS GeForce GTX 580 1536MB  - 816MHz Core/1632MHz Shader/1002MHz Memory
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 1280MB  - 732MHz Core/1464MHz Shader/950MHz Memory
• MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Core PE 1280MB - 750MHz Core/1500MHz Shader/975MHz Memory
• ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti TOP 1024MB - 925MHz Core/1850MHz Shader/1050MHz Memory

ASUS Matrix GTX 580 Platinum GPU-Z Information:


EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified 3072MB GPU-Z Information: