NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GF110 Fermi Video Card Review

A Closer Look At The GeForce GTX 580

Say goodbye to the old GeForce GTX 480 video card!

And hello to the new GeForce GTX 580 video card that is said to be better in every possible way!

The GeForce GTX 580 graphics card that we have on the test bench today is a dual-slot single GPU video card that measures in at 10.5″ in length. The first thing you’ll notice with the GeForce GTX 580 is that the ‘front radiator’ or ‘George Foreman cooking grill’ is gone as the card sports just a plain plastic fan shroud.

Flipping the GeForce GTX 580 over we don’t find too many interesting things, but we did notice that the holes in the PCB for the GeForce GTX 480 are missing. We are told this card’s GF110 core runs more efficiently and that the vapor chamber cooler is better, so maybe it isn’t needed. We asked NVIDIA why it is gone and got this as a response:

“We chose not to implement the PCB cutout on GTX 580 for a variety of reasons which I cant disclose.” – NVIDIA PR

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GDDR5 graphics card has a pair of dual-link DVI-I outputs along with a mini-HDMI output header. Both the Dual-link DVI and HDMI outputs can be used to send high-definition video to an HDTV via single cable (audio too, if running HDMI). A regular sized HDMI header was not used since it couldn’t fit next to the pair of DVI outputs.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 video card requires a 600 Watt or greater power supply to power the GeForce GTX 480 as it has a max board power (TDP) of 250 Watts. NVIDIA also suggests that your power supply have a minimum of 42 Amps on the +12V rail. It also requires that the power supply has one 6-pin PCI Express power connector and an 8-pin PCI Express power connector for proper connection. It should be noted that the NVIDIA minimum system power requirement is based on a PC configured with an Intel Core i7 3.2GHz CPU.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards do support SLI and the card has a pair of SLI bridges located along the top edge of the graphics card. The NVIDIA GTX 580 series supports two, three, and quad SLI configurations.

The next thing that needs some explaining on the GeForce GTX 580 graphic card is the cooling solution. This card still runs warm and NVIDIA has begun using Vapor Chamber technology. This is nothing new to the PC industry as other companies like AMD have used Vapor Chamber for a number of years now.

NVIDIA states that 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) from a couple generations ago. This also shows that it is quieter than the GeForce GTX 280 and the GTX 285! Let’s take a closer look at the GTX580 video card by taking it apart!