Product on Review: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580
Manufacturer and Sponsor: ZOTAC
MSRP: $499
Street Price: £399.99
After a year of anguish trying to compete with AMD in both price and performance, Nvidia have finally managed to gain much needed ground in the market. Their most recent additions to their range of cards are the GTX570 and GTX580, aimed at the upper echelon of consumers wanting extreme levels of raw performance no matter the price. The GF110 GPU on which the two cards are based has been successful in more than just the performance department. The chip has tamed Nvidia’s wild ways and delivered reduced noise, thermals and lower power consumption. Not only has it proven to be a worthy successor to the older GF100 GPU but it also competes favourably with AMD’s offerings, who are famed for their cool running, low power draining graphics cards. Looking back at our ASUS GTX580 review, our only drawback was the sheer price at which their flagship card was being sold at. Otherwise, one could say that the GTX580 was the perfect product in many respects, high performance with little trade-offs.
As we have previously covered, the GF110 derivative in the GTX580 has had some crucial tweaks to make it a better performer than its predecessor, namely that it is a fully unlocked core sporting all 16 stream multi-processors for a total of 512 cores and 64 texture units. If that wasn’t enough, the clock speeds have also been boosted relative to the GTX480 to 772/4008MHz. Architectural tweaks have also been made to improve shader performance so the GTX580 is geared up to be a very promising card. For the most part, Nvidia delivered on their promise by providing a card that produces less noise, has a lower TDP and yet performs better that the already might GTX480.
The card we will be looking at today is from ZOTAC. It follows a reference design, similarly to the ASUS card we reviewed earlier this month. The ZOTAC GTX580 comes clocked at 772/4008MHz and on first impression, there isn’t much that stands out from other cards. The question is whether can stay true to their philosophy and deliver the quality we have grown to expect from the company.
A bit about ZOTAC
ZOTAC International is one of the largest producers of NVIDIA VGA and motherboard solutions worldwide.
ZOTAC International (MCO) Limited was established in 2006 with a mission to deliver superb, high quality NVIDIA graphic solutions to the industry. It has strong backing from its parent group, PC Partner Ltd. - with headquarters in Hong Kong, factories in mainland China and regional sales offices in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. The scale of support ZOTAC provides is currently unrivalled in the world. With 40 surface mount technology (SMT) manufacturing lines, 6,000 workers and a production facility with over 9,000,000 square feet, ZOTAC employs a full array of state-of-the-art technologies and skilled personnel in order to meet your hardware needs. In addition, ZOTAC has over 130 research & development professionals in Hong Kong and mainland China, working to bring you the best from the cutting edge of the industry. ZOTAC's international bases of operation work together to enable effective and efficient global as well as localized sales and marketing support.
ZOTAC doesn't just mean top tier quality, it is also synonymous with high performance, absolute reliability and unparalleled value. With a range of products featuring overclocked performance, excellent cooling properties, and unique packaging ZOTAC products routinely meet - and exceed - users’ expectations.
ZOTAC's unwavering commitment to our users is to bring the latest products quickly to the market with the best value. Needless to say ZOTAC is the right choice for those who demand the highest quality graphics solutions.
For more about ZOTAC's philosophy, click here...
ZOTAC International is one of the largest producers of NVIDIA VGA and motherboard solutions worldwide.
ZOTAC International (MCO) Limited was established in 2006 with a mission to deliver superb, high quality NVIDIA graphic solutions to the industry. It has strong backing from its parent group, PC Partner Ltd. - with headquarters in Hong Kong, factories in mainland China and regional sales offices in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. The scale of support ZOTAC provides is currently unrivalled in the world. With 40 surface mount technology (SMT) manufacturing lines, 6,000 workers and a production facility with over 9,000,000 square feet, ZOTAC employs a full array of state-of-the-art technologies and skilled personnel in order to meet your hardware needs. In addition, ZOTAC has over 130 research & development professionals in Hong Kong and mainland China, working to bring you the best from the cutting edge of the industry. ZOTAC's international bases of operation work together to enable effective and efficient global as well as localized sales and marketing support.
ZOTAC doesn't just mean top tier quality, it is also synonymous with high performance, absolute reliability and unparalleled value. With a range of products featuring overclocked performance, excellent cooling properties, and unique packaging ZOTAC products routinely meet - and exceed - users’ expectations.
ZOTAC's unwavering commitment to our users is to bring the latest products quickly to the market with the best value. Needless to say ZOTAC is the right choice for those who demand the highest quality graphics solutions.
For more about ZOTAC's philosophy, click here...
Read on to find out more about the ZOTAC GTX580.
