EVGA GeForce GTX 580 3GB Review

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Unigine: Heaven v2.1 (DX11)

Unigine: Heaven v2.1 (DX11)

Unigine’s Heaven benchmark is currently the de-facto standard when it comes to simple, straightforward DX11 performance estimates. While it is considered a synthetic benchmark by many, it is important to remember that no less than four games based on this engine will be released within the next year or so. In this test we will be using a standard benchmark run with and without tessellation enabled at three resolutions,


1920 x 1200

2560 x 1600

 

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8xMSAA Testing

8xMSAA Testing

In this section we take a number of games we have tested previously in this review and bring things to the next level by pushing the in-game MSAA up to 8x. All other methodologies remain the same.

BattleField: Bad Company 2 (DX11)
Note that 8x MSAA is enabled via the game’s config file for the NVIDIA cards since it is not a selectable option within the game menu

Dirt 2 (DX11)

F1 2010 (DX11)

Just Cause 2 (DX10)

 

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Temperatures / Acoustical Testing & Power Consumption

Temperature Analysis

For all temperature testing, the cards were placed on an open test bench with a single 120mm 1200RPM fan placed ~8” away from the heatsink. The ambient temperature was kept at a constant 22°C (+/- 0.5°C). If the ambient temperatures rose above 23°C at any time throughout the test, all benchmarking was stopped. For this test we use the 3DMark Batch Size test at its highest triangle count with 4xAA and 16xAF enabled and looped it for one hour to determine the peak load temperature as measured by GPU-Z.

For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 15 minutes and recorded the peak temperature.

The temperatures exhibited on this card were actually quite good when you consider the heatsink has to put up with the added heat produced by higher density GDDR5. However, it can’t come anywhere close to matching the results achieved by its direct competitors.

Acoustical Testing

Yes, we have finally added decibel testing to our repertoire and this section will expand in future reviews. What you see below are the baseline idle dB(A) results attained for a relatively quiet open-case system (specs are in the Methodology section) sans GPU along with the attained results for each individual card in idle and load scenarios. The meter we use has been calibrated and is placed at seated ear-level exactly 12” away from the GPU’s fan. For the load scenarios, a loop of Unigine Heave 2.5 is used in order to generate a constant load on the GPU(s) over the course of 20 minutes.

One of the reasons for the decreased heat profile of the EVGA GTX 580 3GB over the reference card is its slightly higher fan speed. This does push up the acoustical profile but in all reality, this GTX 580 remains extremely quiet when compared to many other cards on the market.

System Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption. We have also included several other tests as well.

Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.

Power consumption numbers don’t exactly fall in favor of the EVGA card. Its higher temperatures directly affect its efficiency when compared to other 3GB cards while the 3GB of GDDR5 also contributes to push consumption past every one of the pre-overclocked products in this review.

 

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Overclocking Results

Overclocking Results

For this section of the review, we used EVGA’s Precision software to overclock this GTX 580’s core and memory. Voltages were left at reference.

Unfortunately, our sample was dead set against core clock speed increases and absolutely refused to go above 818Mhz. Considering the excellent results other users have experienced we’ll chalk this one up to a lame duck sample. The memory wasn’t all that open to overclocking either but that was somewhat expected since higher density memory modules are usually tough nuts to crack.

Core Clock: 818Mhz
Engine Clock: 1636Mhz
Memory Clock: 4244Mhz (QDR)

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

For some, this review will likely be a bitter pill to swallow. We’ve seen countless forum posts of people bitching, whining and complaining that newly released GTX 580 cards don’t come equipped with 3GB of GDDR5. They turned their noses up and uttered “pointless” when MSI introduced their Lightning and Gigabyte first showed the GTX 580 Super Overclock. Both of these sported 1.5GB of memory and they ran circles around the 3GB EVGA card in this review.

The only way we saw the benefits of a 3GB framebuffer was when the deck was seriously stacked its favor. It took ultra high resolutions alongside obscene amounts of anti aliasing to even begin to differentiate between the two memory sizes. But even when the 3GB card pulls away, it usually does so without granting any additional gameplay benefits. Why? Because the underlying GF110 architecture proves to be a rendering bottleneck long before the bandwidth provided by 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory and a 384-bit interface becomes fully saturated.

Another issue we ran into was slightly lower than reference performance at many resolutions and detail settings. This is most likely due to higher latency from the 64x32 modules and increased memory controller overhead. Within games the difference was imperceptible but literally every one of our charts showed a small drop in framerates.

It’s not all doom and gloom for the EVGA GTX 580 3GB though as there are a few games which do benefit from 3GB like Metro 2033. This card was also an excellent choice for consistent performance at higher resolutions since the it tended to provide better minimum framerates. And while we can’t definitively prove this, we’ll go out on a limb and say these 3GB cards will have slightly more staying power as additional cutting edge DX11 games are released.

The last thing that needs to be looked at is EVGA’s price in relation to the immediate competition. Unfortunately, this card’s average price of $589 price puts it within $15 of MSI’s impressive Lightning XE 3GB. EVGA seems to be counting that people will be willing to pay a premium for their lifetime warranty, Step Up program and stellar customer support yet the choice between performance and a well fleshed out support structure is going to be a tough one. Nonetheless, there are benefits to both but we wish EVGA hadn’t priced their card so close to a competing product that’s superior in nearly every way.

Believe it or not, we wouldn’t hesitate in recommending the EVGA GTX 580 3GB if it was priced a bit more reasonably. It has the potential to be a very appealing product as in-game memory requirements increase and the peace of mind a lifetime warranty brings to the table in undeniably appealing. However, it is thoroughly outmatched by MSI’s similarly priced Lightning XE 3GB and even Zotac’s GTX 580 3GB hits a much more reasonable price point. Let’s all hope that we see a slight price cut in this card’s future. If not, it will continue to fight an uphill battle.

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