Nvidia GTX 580 Reviews

[safan80]

SKYMTL: I find it funny how you backtrack on the 5970 in your review, but I understand why you did that. All cards at launch suck at performance compared to after being out a year. Nvidia always boosts their cards with driver updates. I would liked to see you guys do a SLI review in a few days other sites are showing almost a 2x boost from the standard 580.. Back to the 5970, most users that have these are not going to be attracted to the 580GTX in single gpu form and I wish you would have talked about that. I do commend you though on using the latest drivers for the ATI products though All in all I like your review more than any of the others, that includes Anandtech and Guru3d's reviews. I also like the folding comparison that you did between the 480 and 580.

I think people should take into fact that all the dual gpu cards minus the Asus one all use a 8pin and 6pin connectors just like the single gpu cards do. According the benchmarks the 5970 is still the single card king.

[SKYMTL]

I don't see where you managed that leap of logic, but it seems like that would be something you could not possibly know. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt though assuming you explain your reasoning.

Sure.

In order to add additional geometry processing horsepower, several things need to be looked at. First of all, you need an expanded fixed function stage which contains additional tessellation horsepower which is necessary for much of that increased geometry performance. To match the increased tessellation power, an expanded shader processor array needs to be created in order to actually PROCESS the large increase in draw calls, etc. Finally, beefing up the cache structure is also a necessity in order to quickly and efficiently move information along the rendering pipeline.

Unfortunately, all of those items above take up space on a GPU die which in turn raises the number of transistors. NVIDIA did all of that and they ended up with a GPU sporting three billion transistors. AMD will need to do the same thing with their upcoming 40nm-based cards since if anything they will likely expand the SP count significantly (why wouldn't they). None of this come "free".

SKYMTL: Back to the 5970, most users that have these are not going to be attracted to the 580GTX in single gpu form and I wish you would have talked about that.

I think I understand what you are saying. However, I don't think the possibility of going from a HD5970 to a GTX 580 is even being discussed. What I did mention though is the inherent performance instability that dual card or dual GPU cards are known for. This isn't a case of "the drivers don't work" but simply an observation that single GPU cards will have consistent performance (most of the time) while dual solutions are usually waiting for driver updates, etc in order to live up to their absolute potential in the newest games.

I don't know about you but I am sure most gamers would want near-full performance from day one rather than waiting for drivers / app profiles weeks after a game is released in order to achieve full performance from their $500 purchase.

[safan80]

I think I understand what you are saying. However, I don't think the possibility of going from a HD5970 to a GTX 580 is even being discussed. What I did mention though is the inherent performance instability that dual card or dual GPU cards are known for. This isn't a case of "the drivers don't work" but simply an observation that single GPU cards will have consistent performance (most of the time) while dual solutions are usually waiting for driver updates, etc in order to live up to their absolute potential in the newest games.

I don't know about you but I am sure most gamers would want near-full performance from day one rather than waiting for drivers / app profiles weeks after a game is released in order to achieve full performance from their $500 purchase.

People that run 2560x1600 need dual gpu solutions at this moment in time because no single gpu setup can handle it. Most gamers know and understand the risks of using dual gpus. Yes it would be nice if the dual gpu setups worked like the old 3Dfx SLI, but that had to do with glide and it was the only reason worked it. People wait all the time for profile updates to their SLI/Crossfire setups all the time. Frame rates are not stable in a lot of games regardless of dual/single gpu unless you're capping the frames with vsync. Switching from different areas of a game cause dips in frame rates and you can't tell me a single gpu card can hold a certain fps throughout a game unless they are cpu bound and running a low resolution. If you want to talk about bad dual gpu performance look at the original 6800 SLI you could not play many games at all with a good fps without a profile. Both Nvidia and ATI have come a long way since and it is foolish to ignore this market segment of gamers and lately crunchers that want or need to use multi gpu setups. It would be good to realize that all the people that buy dual video card like the GTX460 or 6870 and X58 motherboards are going to run them in dual gpu setups. Check the Tech report and guru3d review they use SLI and crossfire in both.

[highoctane]

People that run 2560x1600 need dual gpu solutions at this moment in time because no single gpu setup can handle it.

Thats totally exaggerating, I've been gaming at 2560x1600 since before even the 8800gtx and still do today on the same old monitor. If you want to game with everything on uber max details and filtering dual gpu solutions are the best option sure but single gpu's will without a doubt handle gaming at 2560x1600 with reasonable settings fine.

[safan80]

Thats totally exaggerating, I've been gaming at 2560x1600 since before even the 8800gtx and still do today on the same old monitor. If you want to game with everything on uber max details and filtering dual gpu solutions are the best option sure but single gpu's will without a doubt handle gaming at 2560x1600 with reasonable settings fine.

I only use max details and filtering, if i wanted to deal with anything less I would play games on consoles. I myself used an 8800GTX on my 3007wfp. Is card fashion it would only give me 30-40 fps in games, that is ok for single player games, but not good at all for multi-player games. Later I switched to dual GTX 285s and they gave me 60-80 fps which made multi-player games playable without AA, but i don't use that for multi-player anyways. Now a days I like to keep the frames around 70-100fps for online play.

[highoctane]

I only use max details and filtering, if i wanted to deal with anything less I would play games on consoles. I myself used an 8800GTX on my 3007wfp. Is card fashion it would only give me 30-40 fps in games, that is ok for single player games, but not good at all for multi-player games. Later I switched to dual GTX 285s and they gave me 60-80 fps which made multi-player games playable without AA, but i don't use that for multi-player anyways. Now a days I like to keep the frames around 70-100fps for online play.

I'm not taking issue with your personal preference in regards to what you need/want/like simply that line about "People that run 2560x1600 need dual gpu" is an exaggeration because we all don't "need" nor do I personally want to deal with a multi gpu config to game at 25x16 even with an x58 mb and a crossfire ready amd board.

If a game is good its enjoyable to me just the same without high shadows or uber reflections whether I'm playing a multiplayer games online or a single player game.

[xdan]

Sparkle GTX 580 at 509$ and with the promo code 10%(it has too) it cost's 459$.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814187125
460$ sounds much better...